Trump Escalates -- Trump is not Above the law

We won the house. That means our Democracy is not yet dead. But it is still endangered as illustrated by what Donald Trump did yesterday.

Improving Scrutiny - Lessons from Trump and Kavanaugh Part I

Without Scrutiny Any System Fails

The Athenians were driven to put the vetting job into jury functions or ruling councils by experiences with demagogues or military rule. The difficulty of controlling officers was such that Athenian born philosophers came to be somewhat cynical about the prospects for survival of Democracy. But the lesson of history, including recent history, is that without formal vetting and accounting, monarchy, dictatorship, oligarchy and plutocracy all degenerate into tyranny, kakacracy (rule by the worst) and kleptocracy (rule by thieves); and resulting violence, inequity, & misery. There really is no good alternative to creating a system of scrutiny that has integrity.

Vital to our Survival as a Nation and a World are:

Separation of Powers

Scrutiny involving:

1. Free Press
2. Legislative Oversight
3. Executive Oversight
4. Judicial Oversight/Jury Forms
5. Scientific Scrutiny
6. Establishing Measures
7. Holding officers to account by those measures

Last day til tomorrow

Tomorrow is the midterm election. Both Maryland and National Republicans are transparently lying with claims that they'll be "bi-partisan" and moderate. Kathy Afzali is running ads attacking David Trone as an insider, bashing County Executive Gardner for the over-growth in the county and pretending that she's not an insider. The whole party is running a campaign of blatant lying. Trump and his Trumpers country-wide are suddenly for the ACA they spent the past 8 years trying to end and claiming they are for protecting people against Insurance Companies messing people up over pre-existing conditions, blatant lies. I'm writing on this on the website "The Brunswick Democrat" but I'm worried. This sort of lying works. It is known as the Big Lie. Trump practices it. He learned it from a long series of dictators and demagogues.

Will they succeed?

Please Vote

The Death of José Antonio Primo De Rivera

One reason I started latching onto José Antonio Primo De Rivera and Federico Garcia Lorca, is that after fascism fails in a country, no one usually will admit they ever were fascist. That is not so much the case with José Antonio Primo De Rivera. To Spanish speaking Fascists, Primo de Rivera is still a hero. Why? Because he too died at the outset of the Spanish Civil war. General Francisco Franco made Primo De Rivera a hero, and thus he became enshrined in Catholic, Falange, Fascism ever more, as a hero. He was no hero. Spanish Fascism didn't originate with Primo De Rivera it originated as much with his father and King Alfonso.

Lessons Learned

There are three main lessons to be learned from Rivera, his life, and his death:

1. General Fancisco Franco was doing what Fascists do; creating myths.
2. Killing the leader of a totalitarian group does not stop the movement.
3. Fascists turn scoundrels into heroes.

Falangist Fascism and Terror versus Federico Garcia Lorca

I started reading a biography of Federico Garcia Lorca as a diversion from what is going on with Trump and his Trumpers. With Horror I soon realized that what was going on in Spain was so similar to the present that reading that book was no longer a pleasure but something I had to dive into. The reason? The Right Wing in the United States is looking more and more like the 1930s Falange down to the details. The result was that I had to study the Falange down to its details, before I could digest what happened to Garcia Lorca. They murdered him. For more on this:

Garcia Lorca

The Life of Garcia Lorca

Garcia Lorca and Charlie Chaplin

The Death of Garcia Lorca

Falange Fascism

Falange was fascism in a pure form. In the end, whether it is falangism and its offshoots, Nazism, Stalinism, Pol Potism, Maoism, or whatever, these ideologies are authoritarian, kleptocratic, kakacratic and violent. They were and are driven by a cruel mood of the citizenry and their leadership and a viciousness that is not even masked by the pretend glories and righteousness of the totalitarian movements that conduct the viciousness. The Falange went to war with liberals, progressives and people of good will in Spain. They went to war with principles of ecumenicism, equality, liberty, fraternity, good will, multiculturalism. They saw different dialects as an enemy of the State. They saw religious liberty as heresy. And they saw human freedom as perversity. Ironically that dogmatic authoritarianism led the Fascists to go on a vicious and blood thirsty rampage.

People of fundamental good will, like Federico Garcia Lorca, never had a chance of surviving the raw power of such hate. Even so killing Lorca made him a hero and a martyr to a cause and his name still stands for something opposite of the fascism of the Falangists and of Franco. Franco is now a name remembered by most people with Shame. Lorca is now celebrated by much of the Spanish Speaking World. He is still a difficult subject for people with rigid beliefs. He was to the left, and gay. For more:

This continues: The Life of Garcia Lorca and Fascist Spain

Celebrating a Life

http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2018/08/the-life-of-garcia-lorca-and-fascist.html

https://www.amazon.com/Federico-Garcia-Lorca-Ian-Gibson/dp/0571142249

What Is Falangism?

The Word Falange comes from the Spanish for "Phalanx". Similar fascist movements in other countries have a similar meaning. I have a series of posts on Falangism:

These start with:

Parallels between Falangists and the American Right Wing

And:

This post flows from the introduction in the post: The 26 Point Plank of the Falangist Party

Then I break down the subject into a number of posts:

1. Right Wing Imperialism, & Myth Making
2. Right Wing Explicit Authoritarianism and Totalitarianism
3. Right Wing National Syndicalism and Corporatism
4. Right Wing Land Reform and Privatization
5. Right Wing Chauvinism and Indoctrination
6. Right Wing Violent Revolution And Dictatorship
7. Parallels between Falange fascists and US Fascists on Abortion

Falangism and Fascism:

The Birth of Falange Fascism

The Death of Primo De Rivera

Operation Condor, Exporting Fascism to South America

I was going to update this later within the post. But I found myself exploring a maze of related subjects and things happening in the United States kept taking me down new rabbit holes. So I've got a number of separate and related posts now, instead.

Privateering, smuggling & Piracy

Some key Definitions, Piracy

First, piracy is a term for theft and the thieves who commit those thefts. It is also used in other contexts, such as labeling those who use copyrighted material without permission. People usually restrict the meaning to thieves operating on the seas. Piracy has been a feature of world history since at least the 14th century BC, when pirates were described in Egyptian and Canaan correspondences. The Sea People's who disrupted Minoan and Mycenaean life, were pirates. So were both the Greeks and the Trojans.

http://maritime-connector.com/wiki/history-of-piracy/

Privateering

When an entire nation engages in piracy, it is considered legal by the State and the term for that is “privateering.” The distinction between privateers and pirates is often a corrupt barely legal one.

Privateering and Admiralty courts

Moreover, the term itself "private + teering" implies private warfare, private government, and government sanction and allocation of loot. In the European World and the British one, specifically, Admiralty courts adjudicated loot from the sea, both that acquired through privateering and "salvage." Admiralty courts and similar, through auctions served the role of legitimizing loot, slavery, salvage, and thus laundering proceeds from smuggling, buccaneering, piracy, "filibustering (private warfare), traditionally, for centuries. They have ranged from laundering implicit corruption (we didn't know!) to explicitly corrupt money laundering.

Letters of Marquee

The vehicle for traditional piracy was the "letter of marquee." That was a contractual instrument that granted and individual or bearer, the right to "take prizes" from ships belonging to a country the contractual authority, government, was at war at. The concept of "letter of marquee" was also behind some early corporations such as the East India Company, from around 1601, which is one of the models for the modern corporation. They would grant the company or bearer, the power to wage private warfare, on the seas and often on land as well, to raid, steal, attack and capture enemy ships. Sometimes pirates would have letters of marquee from both sides of a conflict so they could simply attack anyone passing thru a chokepoint.

Privateering as barely legal piracy

Thus privateering has traditionally represented legalized robbery under cover of contract. Essentially privateering enabled economic royalty, as the companies granted this power could govern their crews as they pleased. Some privateers behaved like pirate ships and treated their crew well. But many employed the sailor as slave model of governance. Privateers, warships and private shipping in general in general, were infamous for beatings, whippings, poor food, low pay and tyranny, (defined by John Locke as power exercised for Private, separate advantage) over thier crews. Pirate ships were often a model for rough democratic governance. Ironically legal pirate ships, not so much. The purpose of privateering was to acquire property for private ownership. The attitude of privateering is anything for a buck.

For more on what Privateering is:

Elements of Privateering

Privatization historically is a tool of Privateering

An Ideology of Piratical Banking

Freedom versus Free booting

Thus the enemy of liberty is in fact privateering because privateering is the conversion of what should be ruled for the common good into private property ruled for the advantage of the few. Privateers were pirates, who, operating under a Letter of Marquee, were authorized to engage in private warfare on behalf of the State. Generalizing that meaning, privateers are those who engage in commerce, warfare, theft, espionage or any other action, under the protection of Government. Privateers are private government. That privateers originally were also pirates, often from the point of view of other countries who had issued no such letters, just illustrates the barbarity of the practice. Privateering is as old as piracy. Vikings were only pirates to the people of the lands they predated.

The Rough Democracy of Pirates Versus the Tyranny of Privateers -- Tom Paine

Even classical pirates, lived lives, internally that were governed by democratic rules. When Thom Paine served as a privateer:

“At sixteen, in 1753, he brought it off. He shipped out on a privateer — a private warship authorized by the English government to attack and loot commercial vessels sailing under the flag of any nation with whom England was legally at war.”

He tells of that experience that he experienced good captains and bad captains. The Good captains treated the crew with respect. The bad captains whipped and beat their crew and looked down on them as little more than vermin. The British Royal Navy whipped and beat sailors. Pirates and the better Privateers, motivated them.

A Privateering Tradition As the Foundation of the West

The tradition of both the United States and the British (including Scotland and all of Ireland) is founded on privateering. The major Sea Captain Families even called themselves "Sea Dogs" and they'd later branch out into other businesses. But most of their businesses were or derived from Privateering. Thus Privateering involves the Following Activities, when either barely legal or they don't get caught:

• Privateering: Piracy as legalized theft of enemy ships and cargo.
• Smuggling: Piracy as semi-legal smuggling, trafficking, which also included the slave trade and enslaving captured persons.
• Filibustering: Piracy as waging war, "marines style", on people on land, sometimes as mercenaries. This was termed filibustering
• Chartered Privateers: Privateering on large scale via privately or publicly chartered companies such as the East India Company, corporatism
• Colonialism as Privateering: Privateering extended into the form of creating colonies, enslaving locals, importing slaves, exploiting slaves, exploring, exploiting and extracting loot from the land so colonized.
• Land Pirates, Grifters, Swindlers, Bankers and Monopolists

Financial Capitalism as Laundering ill gotten goods. Most money is either some kind of private debt, or in emergencies it might be recycled loot. It always comes from labor in some way. Financial Capitalism arrogates wealth and uses some of it to generate more wealth. Actual capitalism mixes labor with wealth and winds up a public good even when not intended to be.

European Thievery and Frederick Douglas

Thus Privateering is at the root of the modern world, European Adventurism, and European Thievery. Often it was excused as "saving" benighted souls. But more often the souls that were reduced to abject subjection were originally noble souls reduced by the forces of kleptocracy and kakacracy. From the Point of View of European ship captains and many of their crew, taking slaves on the "Guinea coast" of Africa was simply yet another way to make a living. But from the point of view of their victims, such as Frederick Douglas describes in a famous quote:

“The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery” -Douglass, p84

An Ideology of Piracy

Privateering has even become an ideology. Modern Pirates don't have peg legs or carry a saber. They wear suits and carry brief cases. They seek to privatize, "enclose the commons;" take what had been an institution, property or service that is intended for the public good, and turn it to private control. This is not "free-market economics" it is free booting economics. The ideology of piracy is expressed by people like Donald Trump who say we did wrong by not seizing Iraqi Oil fields when we invaded Iraq. That is what pirates do.

I've written about this before so I may come back to this post and put in references. I just wanted to make it plain (and relatively succinct) what I'm talking about when I talk about privateering.

Tyranny by Definition versus Democracy

Voting is our best weapon. The Greeks didn't trust voting. They used a jury system type government to run judiciary, executive and legislative. They picked citizens by lottery for for offices from those qualified to hold those offices. Voting was used for cleanup operations like ostracizing bad politicians. Nevertheless voting is a means the Romans used for selecting and regulating officers. In a local democracy voting is useful, but it is the participation of citizens that makes the place democratic. Voting is a tool of representative government. In truth   It is not our only weapon. Truth is a weapon. Right is a weapon. Reason is a weapon. Our enemies are tyranny, lies & cruelty, and non-participation. Tyranny by definition is as John Locke described it: