HoltesThoughts

Monday, June 18, 2018

Blowing Winds of Time

Seasons March

Winds blow and leaves turn,

take on dying colors,

go dry and burn

Billowing up into the sky,

clouds that dissipate and die

Then comes the cold,

relentless until winter gets old

Time goes by

and soon enough spring is back.

Time is blowing on the wind.

Year after year;

spring blows in,

bringing summer storms,

and falling rain

then winter again.

Change Marches

And time waits for no-one.

So a young man has fun, and soon enough a son;

And the winds blow, and go where they go;

And they bring love, and hate, tears and fate;

And soon enough an old man goes walking hand in hand;

With other old people;

With a father he barely can understand,

except that he’s been there too.

So the spring leaves return until they fall

And the snow buries all in an innocent blanket

And we walk by the walls, and say hi to our friends;

We are all like the leaves and the rain

Except that we number our loved ones

with names and stones, tears and pain.

Father and son a long march down the road;

Each thinning in his own time, each failing in turn

vanishing like a dream, Sons, fathers survive and move on

leaving markers by the road for the fallen.

We walk together with no hope of eternity

Beyond handing off a baton;

Not really enjoying the moment the baton gets handed on.

Praying our children and our children’s children do better than we did;

But knowing that in the end,

We are like clouds going by.

Daisy in the Rain

I plant a daisy in the rain

Thinking of fathers, grandfathers,

their fathers and their father’s fathers;

What must it have been like?

What secrets could they tell me?

What troubles did they bear?

What feats they dare?

Do they sleep in peace at last?

I look up at the sky

And watch the clouds walk by;

Whispers in my imagination

And their voices live in my heart.

Chris

By Christopher Hartly Holte

June 17, 2012 · Silver Spring ·

The Question

and will there be sons and daughters?

Will the baton be there to hand on?

Will we endure, survive, thrive and learn?

Will we ever learn, to live in peace?

Friday, June 15, 2018

Immigration Courts as Unjust Administrative/Admiralty Courts

The Tyranny of Mock Courts

This is pure Tyranny and breaking International Law: [UNHCR Child Asylum]

To me there is a process issue in the awful oppression of our Immigration and Naturalization Courts and ICE. This oppression is the expression of a corrupt administration. But it is inherent in the constitution of the Immigration System. The fact that we have administrative courts at all is an inheritance of our Colonial and Feudal origins. I noted the injustice and wealth favoritism of our system when I made the half joking, very serious comparisons between admiralty courts and administrative courts in this previous post:

Tribunals, Admiralty Courts, Privateers versus Common Pirates

Orwell Warned that 1984 newspeak is not new

Orwell criticized use of euphemisms, Dying Metaphors, "verbal false limb 'Operators'", Pretentious diction, & meaningless words," because these debase the language and are tools of corrupt government. Suggest people read his article, Politics and the English Language in addition to "1984" and "Animal Farm."

Further Reading:: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/politics-and-the-english-language-trump_us_5888da31e4b061cf898c18b3; Official Copy: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/politics-and-the-english-language/; PDF: https://faculty.washington.edu/rsoder/EDLPS579/HonorsOrwellPoliticsEnglishLanguage.pdf; pdf: https://www.planetebook.com/free-ebooks/1984.pdf; By 1984 at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/1984-George-Orwell/dp/1328869334; Animal Farm: http://www.huzheng.org/geniusreligion/AnimalFarm.pdf

Wednesday, May 30, 2018

The Authoritarian Playbook

Trump is following an Old playbook.

The Dictator's playbook is old. This list is inspired by an article in "Raw Story," but it is a list I already had so this is my version. I've been writing on this for a long time. So this post is a place to put related posts.

Lie Often, Lie Big.
Target, Challenge and Coopt Institutions that Enforce Accountability.
Consolidate power by putting sychophants in key positions (military and law enforcement).
Target, Attack and Control the Press.
Target & Scapegoat minority groups, rivals and foreigners.
Target, Vilify as Enemies and bad people, protesters, minorities and scapegoats.
Find and Recruit the Angry, dogmatic, disaffected, ignorant and fearful.
Rile up the Mob, but exclude anyone not onboard.
Play on Religious, Ethnic, Racial and cultural prejudice.
Enforce identity of the movement and leader.
Enforce Personal loyalty in key institutions.
Indoctrinate thru Repetition belief in alternative facts over facts.
Relentlessly go after disloyalty and criticism.
Instigate and use violence to beat down opposition verbally and physically.

That "Muddle Head [Marx]" David Ellerman and Henry George on Marx

One thing that both David Ellerman in the present age and Henry George in the 19th Century, both have cogent criticisms of Marxism from the left, from a Human Rights/fundamental rights point of view. Henry George Considered Marx a "muddle-head". Ernst Wigforss made corrections to Marxism that made it effective in Scandinavia based on similar critiques to those of George. Ellerman explans why. These critiques explain both why Marxism doesn't work as advertised, and why even when it works as promised it fails.

This post follows on the post titled "The Fraud of Rented Labor"

http://www.cooperative-individualism.org/holmes-john_henry-george-and-karl-marx-1947-159.pdf

Ellerman explains how Marx, Lenin, and the Russian Revolution have set back the Left for over a century. More like a century and a half.

“As if the central question was whether people should be publicly or privately rented–with the Great Capitalism-Communism Debate and Cold War being like a ‘Peloponnesian War’ over whether slaves should be publicly owned (Sparta) or privately owned (Athens).”

To summarize:

Marx:: “brought a knife to a gun fight.”[Ellerman]; “He brought a value theory to a property-theoretic fight.”[Ellerman]
Both Ellerman and Henry George believed that:: “His “labor theory of value and exploitation” is inherently superficial” and Ellerman adds "and thus the favorite foil in economics.”[Ellerman]
“But that is not worst of it.”[Ellerman]: “By misunderstanding the basis for the employer’s appropriation (i.e., the human rental contract), he ended up attacking the idea of private property!”[Ellerman]; “This allowed the employers (“capitalists”), who are the beneficiaries of the whole fraudulent human rental system, to appropriate the positive and negative fruits of other people’s labor by “renting” them; and to parade as the defenders of private property that is supposed to rest on the principle of people getting the fruits of their labor!”[Ellerman]
Thus: “How screwed up is a so-called “critique”” that:: “allows those who violate human rights (to the fruits of your labor or to self-government)”; “to parade as the “defenders of human rights”!” [Ellerman]
“The conclusions of these arguments is that, contrary to Marx”: the Left should be arguing for the abolition (not nationalization) of the whole system of renting human beings:”[Ellerman]; “In the name of inalienable rights (no renting of human beings);”[Ellerman]; “In the name of private property (getting the fruits of one’s labor);”
and In the name of democracy (in the workplace).”[Ellerman]

This argument draws on the Swedish thinker Ernst Wiggforss for much of it's inspiration. But it also, unconsciously draws on Henry George.

For a Detailed discussion continue:

The Fraud of "Renting Labor."

Some currently "legal" tropes are in-fact logically unjust. With things like exploiting labor, "renting" labor, and binding laborers to abusive contracts, most folks recognize their innate injustice. Unfortunately, as displayed in the corrupt SCOTUS decision announced just 12 days after I first drafted this post (5/21/2018), stealing wages is perfectly legal under the sophist arguments of "right to contract" having primacy over a right to own oneself, the fraud of "renting labor" is a perfectly legal fraud.

See:Supreme Court upholds Employers Right to Require Arbitration

David Ellerman and related historians and economists offers better arguments than the raw emotional ones offered by many activists. His arguments, founded in the arguments of the enlightenment and the abolitionist movement apply the logic of inalienable human rights. Listening to them could drive a paradigm shift in understanding the legal rights and wrongs of our system; and a framework for righting them. But of course only if we can upend the corruption in our electoral and legal system.

This post is intended to be a follow on to the post: “Justice, Injustice And "Legal Fictions" = Fraud” Ellerman explains why the "rental of labor" is a legal fraud and a tool for wage slavery and inequality.

Justice, Injustice And "Legal Fictions" = Fraud

Professor David Ellerman wrote some things that really, really impressed me and I want to summarize some of what he's saying that is relative to me. Starting with the Following Table, which expresses the truth table of what constitutes justice and injustice:

http://www.ellerman.org/the-case-against-the-employment-system-based-on-the-norms-of-ordinary-jurisprudence/

In talking about slavery, Ellerman points out how slaves were held legally liable as persons for their individual acts, even if coerced, while were denied personhood in all the ways that a human deserves to be treated as a human. When seeking freedom or rights they were not persons. When they violated any law, they were suddenly persons. Slaves were in a Catch 22 situation.

The Catch 22 of Unjust Legal Systems

In the book "Catch 22", Joseph Heller, built his story around a plausible provision in the General Orders for the Air Force stationed in Southern Italy and bombing the Germans from there. This provision was known as the "Catch 22".

“by applying for exemption from highly dangerous bombing missions on the grounds of insanity, the applicant proved himself to be sane”

Joseph Heller was setting up a situation where the insanity of war was no bar to being sent out on bombing runs. He went on the book to describe a whole series of "Catch 22" situations that soldiers were put into while fighting in Europe.

The Truth Table of Catch 22 Situations

The term has become a regular expression in modern English. A Catch 22, generally, is any provision of law or policy that sets up no-win situation for those trying to comply with them. No win Situations are by definition unjust.

Any Law is only just when the person who is held responsible is actually in fact responsible. Catch 22's are by definition unjust and therefore an instrument of oppression and repression. That ought to be tautological, but in our corrupted times, both type one and type two injustice are common, sometimes due to failures in the discovery process for seeking the truth, but also because modern governments employ oppressive and/or Fraudulent legal theories.

If a decision is coerced, the claim that it is truly consensual is a fraud

David explains the table as:

“analogous to Type I and Type II error in statistics”

But it really is also a logical truth table. Injustice is also illogical. Sophisticated arguments may give the arguments a patina of truthiness, but sophism is merely an ancient greek word for making a con. If a person is blackmailed into doing something, only a sophist of a lawyer would insist that his decision was not coerced or was truly consensual.

Ellerson Notes that:

“Historically, the sophisticated arguments for slavery and autocratic government were consent-based in terms of implicit or explicit contracts. And the legalized oppression of married women was based on the coverture marriage contract.” [Ellerson-Case]

Natural Rights Arguments on behalf of Genuine Liberty

Moderns forget that the cases against Abolition of Slavery, worker rights, even women's rights, all were framed on the argument that somehow those forms of oppression were actually (despite the facts) oppressive.

“the critiques developed in the abolitionist, democratic, and feminist movements were not simply arguments for consent as opposed to coercion, but arguments against certain voluntary contracts, e.g., in the form of inalienable rights arguments.”

Legal Fiction of Consent = Fraud

These inalienable rights arguments focus on the fact that labor cannot be divorced from either personhood or capital. The abolitionists argued successfully that labor cannot be alienated from personhood but is inseparable from it. Thus Alienating a persons labor from his personhood degrades the person and is oppression, infringing on the very basic rights of the persons enslaved. Moreover, this is true even if the person agreed to the sale. The basis of that argument starts with recognizing the fraud of catch 22s, no-win contracts and of holding innocent parties guilty where they are not and guilty parties innocent were they are in fact guilty.

The Fraud continues

As illustrated by the spread of terms like "newspeak", "catch 22" and modern legal frauds, the job of the enlightenment isn't over. After Racist Permanent Bondage slavery was abolished. Other legal frauds were invented to justify "renting labor" wage slavery and other forms of legalized theft, oppression and injustice. All of which start with "legal fictions" which are in fact legalized Frauds. To stop such frauds from propagating we need lawyers and politicians to understand and adamantly argue that they are frauds. They've had, some of them, hundreds of years of normalization so they've gone from outright lies, to myths that are actually lies.

I have a lot more to say, but for the sake of clarity I cut this post down to a shorter version. And am writing out the case in separate posts.

The Type I and Type II Frauds of Corporate Personhood

Corporate Personhood legalizes both type I injustice by shifting fictional liability from guilty parties to a fictional entity, the Corporation, and type II injustice by (usually) letting the corporation get a criminal law pass when the people within a corporation kill, defraud or commit felonies. As Ellerman says:

“In the case at hand, both errors occur. The factually responsible party or association, the people working within a firm, do not get the legal responsibility for the whole product (the Type I injustice with X = whole product), and the party or association that does get the legal responsibility, such as the corporate shareholders in the employing corporation, do not have the factual responsibility (the Type II injustice with X = whole product). ”

By reviewing the arguments of the Abolitionists and pre-Marxist activists we can correct the mistakes of 150 years of sophism and neo-liberal arguments.