I just watched the Rising Tide Foundation’s interview with Ray McGovern titled “Understanding Today’s War Danger and its Remedies.” McGovern, a retired CIA officer turned activist, is the founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. In this seminar he provides a geopolitical analysis of world events. In the show notes Rising Tide founder Matthew Ehret states:
As the nations of the world are pulled into a storm unlike anything ever experienced by humanity, various futures are opening up over the horizon. Some of those futures are beautiful ad others darker than you can possibly imagine. However, without understanding the nature of the battle front in either the Pacific, Ukraine or elsewhere it is impossible to see those better solution-oriented pathways.
McGovern lays out the history of the post USSR period and how Vladimir Putin watched “the plunder of the USSR by oligarchs of both the East and the West from 1991-1995.” I especially appreciated that he showed sections of relevant speeches given by Putin indicating both the several attempts he made at rapprochement with the West and also his frustration at the betrayals and lies he experienced.
Unfortunately the vast majority of people holding hostile attitudes towards Putin have never listened to even a minute of what the man says, relying completely upon mainstream Western media as their interlocutor.
With his typical dry humor McGovern lays out what we are up against with the MICIMAC – the Military Industrial Congressional Intelligence Media Academic Complex. With such vast institutional forces holding the “Putin/Russia Bad” narrative and intensely behind maintenance of a unipolar world with the US as Planetary Top Dog, it would seem a tall order to find those “better solution-oriented pathways.” But McGovern believes that the “multipolaristas” have already succeeded with the now strong alliance between China and Russia. But we are in for a rocky ride because the end of an empire is the most dangerous time as the power mongers of the old system thrash about in the doomed effort to maintain control.
Those few who have peered deeply into the economic structural analysis of empire, and McGovern does not touch on this, have revealed that our challenge lies in the control of both the land and natural resources and the money system, now predominantly in the hands of an elite coterie of oligarchs who hold the reins of political and economic power. For instance note the land and money themes regarding Ukraine and the IMF:
In 2014, Ukraine needed a loan. There were two offers:
The World Bank/IMF offered $15 Billion with these conditions: (1) Lift the ban on private sector land ownership; and (2) cut pensions and fuel subsidies.
Russia offered $15 Billion, too, but WITHOUT the austerity and privatization requirements.
Ukrainian President Yanukovych chose Russia’s offer, so the U.S. instigated a coup, ousting Yanukovych. The coup government accepted the IMF loan and conditions: austerity and privatization.
Multinational consortia with U.S. capital have already bought 1/3 of Ukraine’s farmland. (Analysis by Frédéric Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute.)
The Land/Money matrix is the precise area we must now focus on to get to the basics of how to build a world that works for everyone. We need to understand how MICIMAC meets FIRE – the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate matrix. War kills but too many seek to “make a killing in real estate” thus depriving others of the means of survival. When the gifts of nature are treated as market commodities, land prices and thus housing costs rise faster than wages (the economic Law of Rent). Those who work for a living must borrow at usurious rates from the banksters or consign themselves to a lifetime as renters, often tottering on the edge of homelessness. The Insurance part of FIRE is predominantly the cost of health insurance, another basic that has become exorbitantly expensive.
There are two primary solutions to extortion and ruination by FIRE. These same two keys can help us break through the MICIMAC control dilemma. The keys are: (1) the establishment of non-profit banking whereby money is issued as a public utility needed to facilitate trade and services rather than as a mechanism of control and debt enslavement (example above of IMF shenanigans); and (2) a holistic Tax Shift that drives both supply and demand in a direction that addresses wealth inequality and enables affordable housing, education, good food, clean water and other basic needs to be met for all.
As taxes are removed from labor, purchasing capacity and thus effective demand increases. Simultaneously shifting the tax base to land and resource rent is crucial and addresses supply side issues. Currently land rent is mostly private income but individuals do nothing to earn the increase in socially generated land values. For example, population growth, schools, libraries, good roads, and other public infrastructure increase the price of land locations. Land value (land rent) is thus a type of commons that in fairness belongs to society as a whole.
Socializing land rent via land value taxation is a solid and sufficient way to fund needed public goods and services while curbing land speculation and profiteering. Land then becomes affordable for housing and other basic needs. Affordable land is the “supply side” driver of the equation for the economic harmonic of enabling the maximum of both personal freedom and social fairness.
From the International Declaration of Individual and Common Rights to Earth:
The exercise of both common and individual rights in land is essential to a society based on justice. But the rights of individuals in natural resources are limited by the just rights of the community. Denying the existence of common rights in land creates a condition of society wherein the exercise of individual rights becomes impossible for the great mass of the people.
To join with others working for these solution paths go to:
You are welcome. What do you mean by "introducing me Ray McGovern?
How does this work vis a vis farm land? Already family farms are becoming extinct while the price of farm land is making land ownership impossible except for the wealthy big corporations. Also what incentives exist to work hard when many services are socialized and there is greater wealth equality? Of course it's true that the situation of wealth INequality is at a terrible and untenable extreme right now. Democracy ends as the middle class is squeezed out of existence.