Main menu:
The Dark Side UpdatedThe Original Dark Side
In the original Dark Side paper, finished in the winter of 2013, I speculated that the US Founding Fathers had set up a system that not only tolerated corruption, but encouraged it. They realized that the struggle to repress factions, later known as parties, was hopeless. Men would always strive to band together and conspire to increase the power they had over their fellow citizens. Past attempts to appeal to morality had proven to be largely useless, and the use of brute strength always resulted in tyranny. Too often in the past the attempt of one party to overcome another had resulted in assassination, military coups, or civil war.
Click to more
The Dark Side Six The Federal Reserve, Interest Rates and Stimulus Part 3
As was first proposed in the Dark Side 2: “Consumer Power: America’s Secret Weapon” (www.fritz-thecat.net) , US consumption patterns are currently being used as a weapon of war, targeting primarily illiberal democracies such as Russia, Iran, and China, who have an under developed consumer class at home and\or are overly dependent on resource extraction, primarily oil, (Russia and the Middle East), or manufacturing for export (China).
The Dark Side Six Part 4Federal Reserve Board, Interest Rates, and Stimulus
Encouraging people to borrow money to buy things helps the short term economy, but harms the long term economy. The degree to which borrowing harms the future economy depends on the interest rate. The higher the interest rate, the more harm is done do future consumption by borrowing to consume today. Let me clarify that. When I talk of consumption I am talking of consuming material things, like cars, houses, and nights out on the town. You could say that when you borrow money you are consuming a loan, and that does show up on the GDP, but the financial industry does not create jobs to the extent that, say, manufacturing or construction does.
I began the Dark Side following the insight that the biggest taxpayer got to write the tax laws. In the Second Dark Side I was trying to make sense of the 2008 housing colllapse and financial meltdown. By the Third Dark Side I pretty much knew where I was going. I recently thought of cleaning the first two up, but recently found this while looking for something else. Written in 2017.
The author indicates that his theory of business cycles is, so far as he knows, new. He says that previous theories of the business cycle, over-production, under-consumption, price-dislocation, mal-adjustment between agriculture and industrial prices, over-confidence, over-saving, over-spending, and the discrepancy between saving and investment, are inadequate to explain the downward swing in the business cycle, especially when it is severe.
John Maynard Keynes Volume Three Fighting for Freedom 1937-1946 Roberts Skidelsky Viking N.Y. 2000
This is the third and final volume of his Skidelsky`s biography of Keynes. Its 500 pages of rather small print promise a look at the struggle, not between the Allies and the Axis, but between Britain and the U.S., for dominance of the world. The Americans were using Lend -Lease as a lever to destroy Britain's pre-war financial and trading system, based on the sterling area and imperial preference.
Click to more...
Architects of Annihilation Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction Gotz Ally and Susanne Heim1991 Phoenix London Allan Blunden (trans) 2002DARK SIDE V
(Introduction pg1) This is a book about the politics of modernization and the politics of annihilation. This project was predicated on war and the taking away of human life and property. At the very apex of the project, 1941, the decision was taken to murder millions of men, women, and children. Three factors made this possible: the abandonment of moral restraint, the pursuit of a nationalistic and expansionistic social utopia, and the emergence of a modern technocracy.
Dark Side IVChapter 1
Permaculture Missive Number One
Please accept my apologies in advance if I make suggestions that are either out of place or ... Click to more...
Dark Side IVChapter 2
Dark SideIV Chapter 3
Dark Side IVChapter 4
But now for some excerpts from a Monetary History of United States, 1867 to 1960 by Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz.
Dark Side III Chapter 5
(Page 604). The first days of the German invasion of France, which started on May 10, 1940, were a catalog of "what ifs" and "if onlys", but decisive was not this or that missed opportunity by the French, but their feeble efforts at modernization and their dim awareness of the lessons of Poland
Dark Side III Chapter 4
Collapse of the third Republic dark side three chapters fourEditor’s comment
Most of the missed opportunities to put a stop to Hitler’s war machine foundered on the misapprehension of its true strength. Fritz the cat smells a rat. He takes with a grain of salt all the protestation of ignorance and fear used as excuses for not taking a "stitch in time".
Dark Side III Chapter 3
History of Europe an especially France from the mid 30's up to Hitler's invasion of Poland. Note the many chances to stop Hitles that were by passed. War was on the agenda, as it is now.
Dark Side III Chapter 2
Blum's Popular Front tries to cope with Hitler's aggression, a civil war in Spain, the flight of gold to the U.S., and strikes by workers and capitalists
Clic to more...
The Dark Side IIIChapter I
A review of "The Collapse of the Third Republic" by William Shirer. France collapsed with hardly a fight before Hitler`s blitzkrieg. Why? This is the question Shirer (better known for "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich") asks. Fritz the Cat sees a pattern here. A depression (is this simply a strike by the capitalists?) leading up to war. The world has been in a depression (capital strike) since 2008, with Europe going down the same deflationary path it trod in the 30s. The far right gains strength and the left falls apart. Know your history or repeat it. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Zen BuddhismFirst Approximation - Part Two
Zen BuddhismFirst Approximation - Part One
Its not your mama's zen.
Understanding HeideggerThird Approximation - Part One
Coherent knowledge of "our world" is only possible because we have forgotten that we fell out of the sky as stardust and rain, that we exchange our gasses with plants and our fluids with ditches. (From After Nietzsche.)
The Dark Side Part IIAmerica's Secrete Weapon:Consumer Power
While not traditionally considered to be part of America’s soft power, the effects of American consumptionpatterns would seem to be a major cause of the various economic crises around the world today.
Understanding HeideggerSecond Approximation Part Three
Truth as representation, temporalize, enown. The well is empty, time to fill it up again
Understanding HeideggerSecond Approximation Part One
Before construction comes deconstruction, but first I´ll clear the ground with a dose of deuside, from the poison pen of fritzthecat
Understanding HeideggerSecond Approximation Part Two
Logic Deconstructed Coherent knowledge 'of our world' is only possible because we have forgotten that we fell out of the sky as stardust and rain, and that we exchange our gasses with plants and our fluids with ditches. From 'After Neitzsche'Reconstruction begins. After the dark night a little light appears.
The Dark Side
Deny that the U.S.A. is the best country in the world and I'll argue with you. But King of the Mountain is a blood sport, with "Progress at any cost, and the devil take hindmost" as a guiding light.
Understanding Heidegger: First Hypotheses
The most influential German Philosopher at this century has a mystical streak, and would rather plant seeds than be understood. Watch these seed grow, fertilized the mighty pen of Fritz the Cat.
European Crisis
More economics, this time from Europe circa November, 2011, off the top of my head, maybe I'll update and polish it some time...
The CIA, LSD, and Political Dissent
Subterrainian Homesick Blues. Those who think "Lead us not into temptation" applys don't have a prayer...
Ayahuasca
Whoa Dude, at 62 you shouldn't have your mind blown! Seriously, a serious look at serious drug.
My First Visit to Heidegger Land
Guided by Derrida, I take a rough ride down a fast river, in a small boat, with no rudder. Shift your stance to avoid the rocks, and hold on.
Brain Washing
The ultimate crime against humanity, brain washing was first investigated scientifically after U.S. soldiers captured during the Korean War denounced America for imaginary crimes.
Why I Became a Communist, and why I Quit
A little personal history
Liberation Theology I
Revisionist history of the New Testament. The "preferential Option for the Poor", firs proclaimed during Latin America's 1970-1980 civil wars, has been raised again by the new Pope
Liberation Theology II
Slightly diferent from L.T.I.
Reaganomics
Reagan fired the first shot in The New World Order with the firing of the striking Air Traffic Controllers. Written in 1987, I think it still reads well.
The Nehawka Hog Roast
An annual party in the country is raided by state and county police...