Ending Global Corruption: What Are Our Chances?

I Can’t Get You Out of My Head

Part 6 Are We Pigeon? Or Are We Dancer?

Directed by Adam Curtis (2021)

Film Review

The final episode in Adam Curtis’ I Can’t Get You Out of My Mind series focuses on complexity theory. According to the theory, because human beings are part of a complicated system they can never totally understand, our conscious thoughts have nothing to do with our actions. Therefore, it concludes, social activists have no hope of ending corruption and human suffering in modern day society.

Until the total commercialization of the Internet that occurred after 2010, Silicon Valley icons believed the Internet could be used for social change. This by enabling large groups of people to share information outside the control of corporate and political elites. 

Curtis covers the 1999 rise of Putin, who Curtis describes as the ultimate technocrat who believes in nothing. The film portrays all Putin’s political decisions as tactical moves, devoid of any ultimate objective. Throughout his career he has cynically played off popular anger against the oligarchs. When this fails he plays the populist/nationalist card and to appeal to Russia’s glorious history and its (alleged) role as the last defense against a corrupt West.

Other key events Curtis covers in Part 6 include

• The 2001 dotcom crash, which he blames on private banks lavishing money on essentially worthless dotcom companies to drive up their share prices.
• The CIA torture (at Guantanamo) of former Mujaheddin* operative Abu Zubaydah, who was kidnapped in Pakistan in 2002 despite discontinuing his paramilitary (“terrorist”) activities in 1992 following a severe head injury.  
• The rise of Dominic Cummings within Britain’s Brexit movement. Cummings believes computers allow us to to use complexity theory to understand the unelected global elite behind globalization and to take back power from them.
• The rise of corruption in China, in part due to collusion between party and government officials and criminal gangs. According to Curtis, the main purpose of Xi Jinping’s Social Credit policy is to suppress growing popular anger against government corruption.**
• The role of artificial intelligence (ie allowing computers to write their own algorithms by feeding them massive data) in disastrous decisions (by the financial sector and their regulators) in triggering the 2008 global economic crash.
• The Russiagate and Qanon conspiracies that dominated media and social media during Trump’s presidency

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*The CIA secretly trained, armed and funded the Mujahaddin (under the leadership of Osama bin Laden) in their fight against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1989).

**Social Credit uses a massive public surveillance system to monitor the activities and social interactions with every resident and reward them for “acceptable” behavior with financial benefits and other perks.

 

Due to age restrictions video can only be played on YouTube.

 

We Need to End Money Creation by Private Banks – Urgently

After 18 years with the New Zealand Green Party, I will be voting for the Social Credit Party in our parliamentary elections in September. Founded in 1954, Social Credit was NZ’s official third party for many years, winning 20-30% of the vote in the 1970s. They have consistently campaigned around ending the ability of private banks to create money. Contrary to popular belief, 97% of the money circulating in the global economy is created (out of thin air) by private banks when they issue loans. (See 97% Owned)

Given the impending dual crisis we face (post-COVID19 economic collapse and catastrophic climate change), the need to regain public control over our money system is more urgent than ever. New Zealand, like the US has embarked on massive Quantitative Easing (QE).  Under QE, money created by central banks is handed over to private banks to buy back Treasury bonds.* This influx of new cash is supposed to inspire private banks to lend lots of money to businesses to create new jobs.

The US, UK, and EU tried QE following the 2008 global economic collapse. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. Instead of using these funds to increase business lending, private banks used it to increase stock prices by buying back shares, to increase CEO salaries, and to speculate in the housing market (driving up house prices) and derivatives.

The result? A so-called jobless recovery in which stock prices soared with minimal new job creation.

What we needed then and what we need now is for the new money central banks (including the Federal Reserve) to be spent directly into the economy to fund the COVID19 recovery.

The movement to retake public control of money creating is a very old one, growing out of the US Greenback Party. Named after the Greenbacks Lincoln issued to fund the Civil War (rather than incurring massive debt to private banks). In 1892, the party was reborn as the Populist Party (aka the People’s Party). In 1892, the Populist candidate for president won 8.5% of the popular vote. (See The Populist Moment)

It was a Labour government that first used the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to fund state housing and the State Advances Corporation* in 1936. The US and Canada also used direct Reserve Bank funding to reduce joblessness during the Great Depression and to help pay for World War II. The US continued to use this so-called “overdraft facility” to cover deficits until 1981, Canada used theirs until the mid-seventies, and New Zealand theirs until 1987.

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*Treasury bonds are the financial instruments governments issue when they borrow money from financial institutions to fund their deficits.

**The State Advances Corporation was a government agency providing extremely low interest mortgages for first time home owners.

Below is a recent local radio interview I gave with New Plymouth’s Social Credit candidate.