In this issue:
Duterte’s Affiliation with Hitler Confirms the Path to Ochlocratic Dictatorship; Didn’t You Know: Hitler was Not only an alleged Drug Addict but a Drug Pusher as well!!!
-Drift to Dictatorship Confirmed!
-Nazism is Socialism, The Nazi Economy as Paradigm
-My Feedback Mechanism in Progress; THE Black Swan
-Post Script 1: Neuroscientist: War on Drugs Fuels More Drug Usage
-Post Script 2: Didn’t You Know, Hitler was both an Alleged Drug Addict and a Drug Pusher!
Drift to Dictatorship Confirmed!
The Duterte regime has just been 3 months old. And yet she has swiftly been digging herself amazingly deeper into a political rut by the day.
Because the “war on drugs” has been predicated mainly on summary executions, which hardly stands on any political and legal grounds (PCIJ), the administration has resorted to a slew of combative or virulent ad hominems and blackmails or political smokescreens as mechanical verbal responses to her critics.
So while in the domestic scenario this ploy seems to have worked in the shoring up of the administration’s political capital (popularity), the leadership has used the same maneuvering as foreign policy tool.
Unfortunately, instead of attaining the same results, a backlash emerged as foreign peers have furiously pushed back from the administration’s invectives laden assaults.
And in response to international rebuff (UN, US government, EU), like North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, blackmail have surfaced as the administration’s intuitive foreign policy framework.
And as part of the escalation of the geopolitical brinkmanship, the administration has now stunningly likened (assimilated) himself to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
From CNN (September 30): "Hitler massacred 3 million Jews. Now there is 3 million, what is it, 3 million drug addicts (in the Philippines), there are," he said in a speech in his hometown of Davao City. "I'd be happy to slaughter them. At least if Germany had Hitler, the Philippines would have (me). You know my victims, I would like (them) to be all criminals, to finish the problem of my country and save the next generation from perdition."
In response to the onslaught or avalanche of censures, emissaries of the administration then passed on the Hitler reference to pre-election campaign days (CNN October 1). Yet another (non sequitur) fallacy based politics.
And because of the Hitler saga, which resulted to the genocide of millions of Jews through the nefarious “Holocaust”, leaders of the Jewish population has now been drawn into controversy (BBC September 30). Considering that the administration gravely disdains criticism, it would not be farfetched that the next phase of antagonism will be trained to the Jewish community.
See, war on everything?!
As I have repeatedly noted here, this has not just been about spasmodic tantrums.
Such flare-ups have signified an endemic pattern.
Not only has the pattern been designed to severely undermine the entrenched beliefs of residents—in particular, the popular affinity to the US and the deep-seated or cultural religious piety—such dynamics seems to have been mainly engineered as brainwashing/indoctrination process designed to “transform the conscious beliefs” of the society.
This, in essence, represents a communications or PR strategy or propaganda.
And propaganda (mind control) signifies a means to an end
The palpable end has been that of the establishment of a leftist “state-atheist” ochlocratic dictatorship which the administration has been working to accomplish in haste.
The “war on drugs” has only served as a shibboleth or a pretext to achieve this end.
And by referencing Hitler, the administration’s pursuit of, or drift towards the rule of mob dictatorship has been affirmed.
[as a side note, Hitler was allegedly both an addict and a pusher see below]
The swing towards a police state via the massive shift and expansion in public expenditures towards the government, the war on everything (through substantial impositions of restrictions and prohibitions in the economy) and the brazen disregard for legal and institutional structures have already been pointing at this direction.
In short, actions have now been validated by promulgation. The international community is being conditioned for a critical pivot of the Philippine political economy towards a leftist dictatorship.
Nazism is Socialism, The Nazi Economy as Paradigm
But one may retort, Hitler was not a leftist or communist.
Such comment would reflect on a poor grasp of the nature of the state.
Hitler’s NAZI stood for National Socialist German Workers' Party. Nazism operates on the principle ofNational Socialism.
The common denominator and the difference between communism and Nazism as explained by the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises*: (bold mine)
The fight between Marxists and the parties calling themselves emphatically anti-Marxists is carried on by both sides with such a violence of expression that one might easily be led into supposing them irreconcilable. But this is by no means the case. Both parties, Marxism and National Socialism, agree in opposing Liberalism and rejecting the capitalist social order. Both desire a socialist order of society. The only difference in their programme lies in slight variations in their respective pictures of the future socialist State; nonessential variations, as we could easily show. The foremost demands of the National Socialist agitation are different from those of the Marxists.While the Marxists speak of abolishing the commodity character of labour, the National Socialists speak of breaking the slavery of interest (Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft). While the Marxists hold the "capitalists" responsible for every evil, the National Socialists think to express themselves more concretely by shouting "Death to the Jews" (Juda verrecke).
In short, Marxism and Nazism are similar in substance (socialism) but different in forms.
*Ludwig von Mises, Section 9 Marxism and Destructionism, CHAPTER 34 The Methods of DestructionismSocialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis (p 497) Mises.org/Econolib
In fact, the great Mises wrote at length in his magnum opus** (Human Action) of the socialist character of the Nazism (bold added)
There are two patterns for the realization of socialism. The first pattern (we may call it theLenin or the Russian pattern) is purely bureaucratic. All plants, shops, and farms are formally nationalized (verstaatlicht); they are departments of the government operated by civil servants.Every unit of the apparatus of production stands in the same relation to the superior central organization as does a local post office to the office of the postmaster general.
The second pattern (we may call it the Hindenburg or German pattern) nominally and seemingly preserves private ownership of the means of production and keeps the appearance of ordinary markets, prices, wages, and interest rates. There are, however, no longer entrepreneurs, but only shop managers (Betriebsfuhrer in the terminology of the Nazi legislation). These shop managers are seemingly instrumental in the conduct of the enterprises entrusted to them; they buy and sell, hire and discharge workers and remunerate their services, contract debts and pay interest and amortization. But in all their activities they are bound to obey unconditionally the orders issued by the government's supreme office of production management. This office (TheReichswirtschaftsministeri um in Nazi Germany) tells the shop managers what and how to produce, at what prices and from [p. 718] whom to buy, at what prices and to whom to sell. It assigns every worker to his job and fixes his wages. It decrees to whom and on what terms the capitalists must entrust their funds. Market exchange is merely a sham. All the wages, prices, and interest rates are fixed by the government; they are wages, prices, and interest rates in appearance only; in factthey are merely quantitative terms in the government's orders determining each citizen's job, income, consumption, and standard of living. The government directs all production activities. The shop managers are subject to the government, not the consumers' demand and the market's price structure. This is socialism under the outward guise of the terminology of capitalism. Some labels of the capitalistic market economy are retained, but they signify something entirely different from what they mean in the market economy.
**Ludwig von Mises 2. The Intervention Part Six: The Hampered Market Economy Chapter XXVII. The Government and the Market Human Action Mises.org
Instead of government ownership of the factors of production as ingrained in the elementary or basic socialist paradigm, a government dictated privately (partially) owned economy or fascism (authoritarian nationalism) characterized the Nazi political (really a war) economy.
And through the war economy, Germany's pre-war economy had been focused on record military spending. And that the so-called Nazi economic miracle had been nothing more than a statistical mirage: Jews lost their citizenship, women were not included in statistics, people were forced to work for the government or be placed in a concentration camp and more…
In addition, due to a system-wide imposition of price controls, according to the Mises Wiki “foundations of the market economy were destroyed and turned into a system of rationing, a pure command economy. The purchasing power of money seemed to be preserved, but the economy was still doomed. A new wave of inflation was initiated, while the prices were kept low.”
So if Nazi Germany would be the paradigm for this government, then these are the scenarios to expect.
But unlike Nazi government, which rose out of the ashes from the Weimar Hyperinflation (1921 to 1924), and consequently, which stigmatized the average Germans, the Philippine version will likely embrace highly inflationary Helicopter money policies (central bank financed deficit spending).
My Feedback Mechanism in Progress; THE Black Swan
Moving back to international affairs.
Bilateral strains with the US government has only been mounting
Of course, embracing Nazism would account for a politically incorrect stance in the context of du jour global politics.
Aside from this, last week the administration declared that the Philippine military will end its joint exercise with the US; the “upcoming U.S.-Philippines military exercises" will be "the last," "and ruling out any joint navy patrols” (Reuters September 29).
Compounding to the threat by the US government to cut law enforcement assistance as I mentioned last week, this week Uncle Sam impliedly admonished that they would sever aid assistance to the Philippine government
From the AP/MSN (October 2, 2016): Influential U.S. lawmakers are warning that the extra-judicial killings in the drug war — President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday compared it to the Holocaust — could affect American aid…Leahy, a senior figure on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said because of the "systemic challenges" in the Philippines it may be necessary to consider further conditions on aid until the Duterte government "demonstrates a commitment to the rule of law." The aid Manila gets from Washington is substantial — although it may pale next to the investment that could potentially flow from regional economic powerhouse China, where Duterte is expected to visit in October in a bid to improve ties with Beijing. The Philippines received about $175 million in U.S. development assistance in fiscal 2015 and $50 million in foreign military financing. In 2016, it has gotten $75 million for counterterrorism and maritime security. Since 2011, it has received three decommissioned U.S. Coast Guard cutters to bolster its meager navy.
One thing leads to another. The feedback mechanism, which I wrote about from escalation of brinkmanship politics, has been snowballing. My template (September 13)
If the Philippine government makes real of the threat to undermine the interests of the shadow but powerful and highly influential political forces behind Washington—the neo-conservative and military industrial complex—then potential responses or repercussions may have already been set in motion. To repeat:
-This would eventually prompt US rating agencies credit downgrades—especially if US military interests are compromised.
-This would reduce investment and portfolio flows from the US and allied nations.
-Credit flows will likely ebb too, thereby putting pressure on access to international credit markets and thereby tightening financing conditions. This will be baneful to a leftist government with a penchant for political spending profligacy: social spending (welfare state), bureaucracy, infrastructure, and most importantly, the military institution.
The reduced access to credit and fund flows will likely accelerate on the unraveling of the mounting economic and financial imbalances inherited by this government from the previous two regimes.
-The Philippine government will be alone to deal with territorial disputes. (This should be a good thing if only the Philippines government’s response would be to increase trade rather than through brinkmanship politics)
-Finally, it would be a lot cheaper or cost effective for the US government to engage in covert operations to influence the domestic political environment than to pullout from the country. The US government may surreptitiously work to offset whatever leverage the administration has been building to countermand the US government’s influences in the country. The US government has been no stranger to the financing, influencing and orchestrating destabilization to regimes it perceives as hostile to its interests. Operation Gladio should be a stark reminder.
So if the US government makes good of its provocation to terminate aid money to the Philippine government, aid which represents public fund flows to the country, then aside from the imminence of credit downgrades, financial and economic sanctions may be next in the line.
As a side note, has the wilting peso been signs of the coming downgrades?
Of course, since one thing leads to another, or action spawns reaction and vice versa, we may never know up to what extent the whole thing may escalate into.
Here is a potential black swan. If the US government gets so riled up with the administration, what stops them from launching covert operations meant to topple the administration as they have done in different nations? William Blum listed 57 countries since World War II, whose governments the US government has worked to overthrow or has helped ousted (as of 2013). Of the 57, 33 represented a successful eviction.
Moreover, what happens if this doesn’t work? Could it be entirely ruled out that instead of China, the US may wage a shooting war with the Duterte administration? That my friends would be THE black swan!
Oh, there were 10 assassination attempts on Hitler
Post Script 1: Neuroscientist: War on Drugs Fuels More Drug Usage
This article written by a neuroscientist, Joel Finkelstein (Aeon August 8) concludes that from a neuroscience perspective prohibition or the war on drugs only fuels more demand for drugs. An excerpt (bold added)
What this finding, and others like it, make clear is that lawmakers are not neuroscientists. By way of proof, they have designed a war on drugs that fundamentally neglects our new insights into how the brain orchestrates addiction at its very core. Since addicts will go to incredible lengths to reinforce the contexts in which they consume drugs, we literally could not have devised a worse system, which reliably produces awful contexts to become addicted to. Taken together, what our new findings make clear is that the war on drugs reinforces the very criminal context it nominally aims to prevent.
When we criminalise drugs and drug users, we ensure that the context of drug use habitually turns the brain toward shame, illegality, secrecy and depravity. Do you know what else drives relapse to drugs of abuse? Stress and social isolation. We reinforce jails. We reinforce drug dealers. We reinforce violence. We reinforce the associated contexts of every other criminal enterprise that accommodates drug use. We habitually recreate a tragedy where the so-called solution causes the problem.
Yet we can’t seem to kick the habit, no matter how much evidence of harm science reveals. It is time for us to take the first step and admit we need help, admit we have a problem. We are addicted to the war on drugs.
Economics and neuroscience conjointly herald to the utter failure of the administration's fetish or pet project
Post Script 2: Didn’t You Know, Hitler was both an Alleged Drug Addict and a Drug Pusher!
Oh and speaking of Hitler, didn’t you know that Hitler was not only a drug addict but a drug pusher?
Excerpted from “High Hitler: how Nazi drug abuse steered the course of history” (The Guardian September 25)
First, Hitler as a pusher, drugs as stimulant for war
In 1940, as plans were made to invade France through the Ardennes mountains, a “stimulant decree” was sent out to army doctors, recommending that soldiers take one tablet per day, two at night in short sequence, and another one or two tablets after two or three hours if necessary. The Wehrmacht ordered 35m tablets for the army and Luftwaffe, and the Temmler factory increased production. The likes of Böll, it’s fair to say, wouldn’t need to ask their parents for Pervitin again.
Was Blitzkrieg, then, largely the result of the Wehrmacht’s reliance on crystal meth? How far is Ohler willing to go with this? He smiles. “Well, Mommsen always told me not to be mono-causal. But the invasion of France was made possible by the drugs. No drugs, no invasion. When Hitler heard about the plan to invade through Ardennes, he loved it [the allies were massed in northern Belgium]. But the high command said: it’s not possible, at night we have to rest, and they [the allies] will retreat and we will be stuck in the mountains. But then the stimulant decree was released, and that enabled them to stay awake for three days and three nights. Rommel [who then led one of the panzer divisions] and all those tank commanders were high – and without the tanks, they certainly wouldn’t have won.”
Thereafter, drugs were regarded as an effective weapon by high command, one that could be deployed against the greatest odds. In 1944-45, for instance, when it was increasingly clear that victory against the allies was all but impossible, the German navy developed a range of one-man U-boats; the fantastical idea was that these pint-sized submarines would make their way up the Thames estuary. But since they could only be used if the lone marines piloting them could stay awake for days at a time, Dr Gerhard Orzechowski, the head pharmacologist of the naval supreme command on the Baltic, had no choice but to begin working on the development of a new super-medication – a cocaine chewing gum that would be the hardest drug German soldiers had ever taken. It was tested at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, on a track used to trial new shoe soles for German factories; prisoners were required to walk – and walk – until they dropped.
Second, Hitler as an addict
When Hitler fell seriously ill in 1941, however, the vitamin injections that Morell had counted on no longer had any effect – and so he began to ramp things up. First, there were injections of animal hormones for this most notorious of vegetarians, and then a whole series of ever strongermedications until, at last, he began giving him a “wonder drug” called Eukodal, a designer opiate and close cousin of heroin whose chief characteristic was its potential to induce a euphoric state in the patient (today it is known as oxycodone). It wasn’t long before Hitler was receiving injections of Eukodal several times a day. Eventually he would combine it with twice daily doses of the high grade cocaine he had originally been prescribed for a problem with his ears, following an explosion in the Wolf’s Lair, his bunker on the eastern front.
Did Morell deliberately turn Hitler into an addict? Or was he simply powerless to resist the Führer’s addictive personality? “I don’t think it was deliberate,” says Ohler. “But Hitler trusted him. When those around him tried to remove Morell in the fall of 1944, Hitler stood up for him – though by then, he knew that if he was to go, he [Hitler] would be finished. They got along very well. Morell loved to give injections, and Hitler liked to have them. He didn’t like pills because of his weak stomach and he wanted a quick effect. He was time-pressed; he thought he was going to die young.” When did Hitler realise he was an addict? “Quite late. Someone quotes him as saying to Morell: you’ve been giving me opiates all the time. But mostly, they talked about it in oblique terms. Hitler didn’t like to refer to the Eukodal. Maybe he was trying to block it off from his mind. And like any dealer, Morell was never going to say: yeah, you’re addicted, and I have something to feed that for you.” So he talked in terms of health rather than addiction? “Yes, exactly.”
Not only a murderer but a politician hooked on drugs which it used as means to conduct mass murder.
Some model eh?
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