The Hundred Flowers of The Matrix

Once upon a time in China, after the revolution had bedded down and things were going well enough, the leadership under Mao Zedong, and premier Zhou Enlai particularly, declared that China needed the participation of its intellectuals and that their criticism would help improve Chinese communism. This was called the Hundred Flowers Campaign. The title came from one of Mao's own poems: 'let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend.'


Depending on who you listen to, this was either a well meaning attempt to improve communism and lend it the kind of well-rounded timelessness of confucianism and taoism, or it was a trap. Intended or no, the latter is what occurred. From its early start of 'healthy criticism' to its final orgy of demands that the communists be thrown out, it seemed that China's ancient curse of luan (乱 - chaos) wasn't far away. In China, it never is. What followed was an Anti-Rightist Campaign that saw hundreds of thousands of students, intellectuals, and bureaucrats demoted, fired, imprisoned, or killed. It seems that provided the centre holds, luan isn't really luan. Not that dead people can tell the difference, sure enough.


Mind you, the Hundred Flowers Campaign and its follow-on Anti-Rightist Campaign wasn't a patch on the Cultural Revolution. But that's a whole other story. As is the earlier Three Anti Five Anti Campaign, the later Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown, and ten years later, the Falung Gong protests and the subsequent anti-Falung Gong campaign. But each had in common the removal of anyone, or more specifically any collective, who could threaten the centre. But the Hundred Flowers is the clearest and most graphic - a hundred flowers open their petals, impressed with their own gorgeousness, all the while unaware that over by the shed the mower is being started up.

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Speaking of China, in the first year I was there an obscure film called The Matrix was released. Has anyone heard of it? I recommend it and you can probably pick it up in any number of Beijing DVD shops. Don't pay more than 8RMB ($1.30) or else you're being ripped off. Anyway, The Matrix starred Keanan Wynn, or Christopher Reeves, or somesuch, and was made by the Wachowski brothers who astoundingly appear not to be Jewish.

I say that because The Matrix is very very Jewish. Apart from the Jewish uberman nature of the hero Neo; the slo-mo orgiastic promised land of Zion; and the constant repetition of the number six; the plot revolves around humans living lives of complete delusion with everything they understand of the world being false - the reality being that they are little more than sources of sustenance for a parasitic uber-intelligence, here represented by computers.


But this is merely one layer of truth. Beneath it is another. Appallingly (for Zionists), Zion is merely a throwaway vehicle intended only to nurture each successive uberman. Millennia after millennia, Zion is repeatedly destroyed, as is the uberman du jour - all of this so that the godhead computer rulers of the world may more nearly perfect the nature of the delusion that holds the humans in their thrall.

Astoundingly, at the end of the film Neo does not defeat the godhead. Rather he earns their thanks and reverence by being a loyal servant who sacrifices himself to ensure their survival by killing the mutual enemy 'Smith'. In defiance of whatever sense of realpolitik computers might possess, and not forgetting the endlessly repeated historical precedent of killing without mercy, the godhead keeps its end of the bargain and does not rid itself of the threat of Neo, and nor does it wipe out Zion.


Otherwise, looked at objectively, Smith was potentially a good guy, an ally worth having. He was the only means by which the godhead could have been destroyed. But never mind, he's killed, the pitiful human slaves are left to live lives of delusion in their goop-filled coffins, and Zion is free to rescue the odd individual here and there and otherwise carry on with their ecstasy-fueled rave parties. And Neo? He is embraced in the loving arms of the godhead and ends the film on a bier like some warrior on his way to Valhalla.

Forgetting the come from nowhere 'happy' ending for a moment, as well as the initial red-pill arrival at not-quite-the-truth, the actual time-and-time-again reality of the Matrix's world is that each given period of enlightenment, climaxing with the arrival of 'The One', is merely this millennia's variant of the hundred flowers campaign.

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And so! Here we are! We took the red pill, and by way of the internet, we woke up to the truth of the world and the veil of delusion that's kept us in thrall all these years. Let's not be distracted by the fact that the internet was initially set up by the military - just like Al Qaeda was set up by the CIA, American nazis by various Jews, communism by the bankers etc. etc. Let's also think little of the prediction by that most loyal servant to the bankers, Rupert Murdoch, that the internet will all be over soon. To hell with that! We've woken up to what's going on. We've read the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for chrissakes!


But wasn't the Protocols a best seller in Russia just before the Tsar was thrown down and the Bolsheviks began their seventy year reign of terror? Far more people were familiar with it then than are familiar with it now and yet it seemed to make no difference whatsoever. Indeed here we are, one hundred years later, and everyone is convinced that it's a 'forgery'.

That aside, how many times have the lords of usury been thrown out of each given country exactly? Edward Longshanks (the villain of Hollywood's Braveheart) threw the goldsmiths out of England in 1290 and yet in 1654 all-round good guy (unless you're Irish) Oliver Cromwell readmitted them. Dig it - in the time of Shakespeare there were no Jews in England. Or to put it another way, in the time of no Jews in England there was Shakespeare. I wonder if The Stranglers got the irony of singing 'whatever happened to all the Shakespearoes' whilst surrounded by strippers? Probably not.


Sure enough today the City of London rules, and all those hard-done-by Jewish oligarchs hounded out of Russia by the villainous Putin (and otherwise known as the 'Russian' mafia) are all welcome to come on down and buy half of Mayfair (and a famous football team while they're at it). Did you know that the City of London is its own jurisdiction, with its own police force, and is otherwise not subject to the mayor of London, or parliament, or anyone at all? The Vatican eat your heart out.

But we're on to them! Or should I say, we're blooming well onto them? With the internet as our spring time, we have burst forth from our cold dark earth of ignorance and now turn our faces to the sun of truth. Here now in this time, the like of which the world has never seen, we glory in our pursuit of knowledge and open discussion. We are the hundred flowers.

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Yeah, yeah, what a cynical party-pooper I am. Here we are grasping the hard-fought-for truth and I'm asserting a truth above this that says it's a big con, that it's merely a trick by the world's greatest liars to strengthen their position, and that ultimately we're all fucked.

Ha! Not so fast! Here's one small truth - um, I've run out of space and shall have to continue in the next piece. Another (and less self-referential one) is that the world is very great, far greater than the people who imagine that they are in control of it. Coming up next - Stephen Chow, chaos theory, cocks and cunts, and, um, the Buddha possibly. Mind you, if it's somewhat different I'll come back here and edit the preceding sentence to make myself look clever. God forbid I should ever be wrong. Ha!

Buy Nothing Day? Bank Nothing Day!

When I had an income I used to buy Adbusters magazine. Adbusters is a good magazine, albeit in a oxymoronic fashion. They're anti-corporate, anti-consumerist, and are the chief proponents of 'Buy Nothing Day'. Me, I took this sentiment to heart and made every day Buy Nothing Day, Adbusters included. Do they still exist Adbusters? You'd have to wonder about a product that urges you not to buy any products, theirs included. Perhaps they should have called it 'Buy Nothing Except This Magazine Day', ha ha. But then Adbusters never did have a sense of humour.

Self contradictions aside, their broad point was perfectly valid. Corporations are soulless inhuman entities that will only ever view people in terms of dollars. In many ways, they're just the old company-store gag writ large, and with a marketing division. Fuck the lot of them. If somebody took corporations out the back and shot them, I'd bring the beers.

But corporations aren't intrinsically wicked. There's no reason a corporation couldn't be as good as their marketing says they are. Conceivably they could make good and useful products that make the world a better place; they could make all their staff into shareholders and pay them a decent wage; they could also pay decent prices for any raw materials purchased in the third world; they could... hell I could go on and on describing some fantasy corporation that will never exist. Not in this world. If such a creature did exist, the other corporations would have to kill it if for no other reason than it makes them look bad.

Daydreaming aside, the point I'm getting at is that corporations are not intrinsically wicked in the way that (apropos the last piece) banks are. By banks I mean the banks that we're all forced to use, those based on a system of usury. Usury is their operating system and every aspect of them is built on it. On top of usury's intrinsic wickedness, there's also its undeniable no-future pyramid scam idiocy. Truth be known the former is derived from the latter. It's like how pork is considered wicked on account of its propensity, if stored without refrigeration, to kill people.

So if we object to corporations and can withdraw our custom by way of a Buy Nothing Day, why can't we do the same for banks? Why can't we have a Bank Nothing Day? Well, I'll tell you, because it's actually very simple. It's because this option is a non-option. Or to put it another way, an abject impossibility. When it comes to banks, you can either use them or you can fuck off and die. Banks, which should be merely just another service provider, ain't. They are utterly singular. They are the only service provider that your own government demands you must be a customer of.


Take me for example. I actually did this. I took all my money out of the bank, shut down my accounts, and cut up my credit cards. If you wanted to tell me I'm nuts, I'm not going to argue with you. Hell, I'll agree, I am nuts. It all seemed like a good idea at the time what with me imagining that I'd be spending the rest of my life in a Zen temple. But that didn't work out and here I am back in the white man's world, a mad bastard who refuses to go back to the bank.

Mind you, it's all very well for me, what with being single with no kids. People who do have kids don't have this option open to them. But that's somewhat short-sighted - I don't actually have this option open to me either. My life is precisely as impossible as yours would be. Not having a bank account bars me from just about everything. Working, or more exactly working legally, is impossible. Not only are there very few employers willing to pay cash but the only way to deal with the tax department is via a bank account. Likewise no government monies can be paid or received without a bank account. I have several reasons for refusing to take the government's money but not least amongst them is the fact that they demand I be a bank customer.

It's not just things monetary that one is barred from. I cannot get a driver's license either because I don't have enough ID's. One needs three pieces of identification to get a driver's license and the one that I'm missing is a bank account. They've got it stitched up these fucking banks don't they? My own government acts as their stand-over man insisting I give them my money.

So what's to be done? Apart from following me into oblivion? There's Islamic banking, sure. Good luck with that one. Can a punter walk into an Islamic bank and open an account? Not where I live. What of those non-money exchange systems that one hears of people in country areas using? They have various names - hours, echoes, etc. These are a perfectly brilliant idea and are the living embodiment of non-usurious money. Invariably there is no 'money' as such. They are often merely a 'credit' in a public central register. If one works an hour (say, mowing Mrs. Farquhar's lawn) one is credited with an 'hour'. It's debt free and functions on a simple labour-equals-credit basis. The richest person in town, rather than being an object of envy, would be admired by all on account of the fact that he/she has done the most for the most people.


Otherwise, perhaps people could get together and just make their own bank. Is there any reason why this can't be done? Find a building, renovate it with a big fuck-off safe, and declare yourselves a no-interest, 100% reserve, non-fractional bank. Hell, run it on Islamic principles. The appeal to customers is that unlike every other bank, it cannot collapse and will never have a bank run. The sales pitch to new customers would function as a quick lesson in the history of banking.

Mind you, it occurs to me that the regular bullshit cartel banks would view such a creature as the anti-christ and would do whatever it took to kill it. Perhaps it would be best to keep it low-key, very low-key. Before I ran off to the Zen monastery, I attempted to talk all of my friends into quitting the city and running off to the country to form some variation of commune (not that I care for the word). I failed obviously but had that succeeded a simple let's-keep-it-to-ourselves version of the above private bank would have made a lot of sense. It would have been a variation of 'keeping your money under the bed' albeit with some crazy big bed with a dozen families in it. Don't worry, it's just a metaphor. Actually it would just be a well-hidden safe in which everyone kept their money, and all administered by, I don't know, several senior trustworthy people. Individuals could know how much money they had, and otherwise keep an eye on things, by checking a public computer kept in the lavanderia/meeting house. Well that was my plan anyway. (BTW - the name of this place, had it come off, would have been selflessness. Sigh)

The key to each of the above is people acting in concert. The word 'commonwealth' just popped into my head. It's been abused to the point of death now, but in principle it's a worthy idea. It's meaning now, as in 'The Commonwealth of Australia', is so far departed from its roots that it's laughable. The state owns it, and the state, such as it is, belongs to the bankers. The bankers, sure enough, don't view the word 'common' as meaning 'shared'. They view it as meaning 'of, or belonging to, serfs'. And for them, the punchline to the 'commonwealth' gag is 'all flows to us', ha ha. Well, fuck them. We can steal it back. But only if we can act in concert. Easier said than done, sure enough. The success of the banks and their corporate whores in turning Western society into an atomised, centrifugal collection of self-obsessed greedheads has been almost total.

Without any mechanism by which we can act in concert, we're fucked. We're just a bunch of John Connors hoping we don't fall afoul of Arnie or any of the other terminators. Well not quite. John Connor didn't have the internet (Hollywood hates the internet, doncha know). We have it, but what does that mean? We can communicate sure, but can we act in concert? Nup. We don't have the numbers to do anything global. We could do something if we were local, but we ain't. Never mind, we've found a quiet corner and we can all swap ideas. So enough of me and mine, you tell me yours. Buy Nothing Day is a doddle. How do we do Bank Nothing Day? Over to you...

Islamic banking, Jewish banking, and a medley of mixed metaphors

In the current discussion of all things economic, there's been one aspect of it all that I've been keeping an eye out for, so far without much luck. But the odd piece pops up. Here's an article out of AP that's one of the few that I've found - Crisis widens appeal of Islamic finance.

Before we get into the big stuff let's just tear the article apart. It seems pretty innocuous doesn't it? It says nice things about Islamic banking. Sure enough, it's not what's in the article that is the problem. It's what's not in it. And what's not in it is the word 'usury'. Likewise, 'interest' gets a single blink-and-you-miss-it mention, and only in a sentence that's as fine an example of ambiguity as you'd find in an English textbook. The next sentence is perfectly idiotic. "[Islamic banking's limitations] rule out some of the products that got Western finance into so much trouble such as subprime mortgages, collateralized debt obligations or credit default swaps". Some of the products? God spare me! Is that the best this fellow do? Me to him - 'Wake up dickhead! It doesn't have interest! Can you grasp the significance of this?' Somebody slap that hack. Hard.

This piece (like every other MSM piece, sure) is not so much designed to enlighten readers but to befuddle them. Those not familiar with the topic would come away thinking that Islamic banking is some religious variation of 'not quite the thing'. It finishes, just as we'd expect, with a defence of 'conventional' banking. God forbid we should call 'conventional' banking what it is - Jewish banking.

Honestly, isn't that a fair description? In fact, what we now refer to as Islamic banking used to be Christian banking. Christians, like Muslims, used to consider usury, and the charging of interest, to be a sin. Apparently the Reformation somehow put paid to that. From a state of complete ignorance, I ask the question - How did that happen? Did any historian ever write a book looking at the Reformation from the point of view of Christianity's 180° turn on usury? Or if they did, did any publisher put it into print? Or if they did, did the media pick it up, run with it, and enter it into the vernacular? Ha ha ha, we're not a million miles away from a Dyson vacuum cleaner commercial with its three-tiered filter system ensuring no dirt gets through to ruin Jewish banking's otherwise spotless house.


But to hell with vacuum cleaners. I'm going to call 'conventional' banking what it is - Jewish banking. It's their gig, they invented it, and they've held the reins ever since. It started with the goldsmiths and it never changed. And now it rules the world. Three cheers. Sure enough, those chosen by God would have us view everything they do as an act of that self same God. Jewish banking is to be viewed as being as inevitable as the sunrise. In much the same way that no one will ever say, 'What's to be done about that sun coming up every morning?', same-same usury, credit, and interest. No discussion of the essential nature of money, banking, and how it all works (or doesn't work), is to be permitted. Certainly not in any way that will lead to enlightenment. Befuddlement is the key. If the whole world were scratching their collective head with only those who run the gag getting it, then all is as it should be. Or so say the bankers (sotto voce, of course).

Jewish banking, such as it is, is actually a pyramid scam, not so very far removed from what we've been told Bernard Madoff did. (Speaking of which, remember those pyramid scams that bankrupted Eastern Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Did we ever hear who ran those, or where the money went? No? Gosh, I wonder who it was.) Anyway, under Jewish banking, with all money as debt, eventually a point must be arrived at where there's more debt than there is actual real world stuff to pay for it all. Really the insanity of this arrangement is obvious. Take Indonesia. They owe so much to the IMF that the debt can never be paid. Not without the Indonesians moving out and handing the whole country, lock stock and oil barrel, over to their creditors. Not that that would work of course. Best they all just stay on as debt peons. And so it is for the world. Eventually we must come to a point where everything in the world, us included, belongs to the bankers.

Are we at that point yet? Looks like it doesn't it? The pyramid scam has hit its endpoint. Now comes the chaotic crossover period where the priests of banking declare themselves god-kings of the new world order. But mucky stuff happens in periods of chaos. Our media supplied rose-tinted glasses slip. The three-tiered filter can't quite suck up all the dirt. People look about. Islamic banking eh? Sure enough, nobody needed it when the pyramid scam was raging. This thing would go on forever! Fuck shank's pony! Everyone get on the gravy train!


Ha ha ha. Now the train has derailed. We all look to the conductor. 'Don't worry, stay in your seats. Everything's being sorted out.' he says. But out the window we see an old iron horse, like some thing from the dimly remembered past. It chugs away - weedy-puff, weedy-puff - barely faster than walking speed. It can no more derail than Ayer's Rock could just fall over. It's the Islamic Banking steam engine. What if we got off this stupid Jewish banking streamliner and got on the old reliable? And that's the thing. We could all get on it. And with perfectly dry eyes we would watch as the nightmare wreckage of the Jewish dream machine slowly recedes into the unlamented past.

And that's what it's all about. The means of our peonage is the Jewish banking system's control of money and debt. The only way this works is if we have no choice, ie. it's a monopoly. Anyone with an alternative must be destroyed. The only substantial alternative to Jewish usury is Islamic non-usury. Remember - Jewish usury and banking is precisely the vehicle (I'll argue the only vehicle) by which the ultimate ambition, subjugation of the whole world, can be achieved. Everything else comes second. Everything else is servant to this ne plus ultra mechanism. Neither war, nor religion, nor culture could achieve this. Each of them is limited. None of them can achieve the strategic endpoint of world domination. They can only serve as tactical responses to threats to the usury strategy.

Soapbox time now - Everything that's going on between us, the subjects of Jewish banking, and the people of the Islamic banking alternative is about the sanctity of usury. Everything. Don't think small. Think big. Thinking big now, how about this - the founding of Israel was not an end in itself. It too is merely a tactical ploy in the long term strategic effort of having the entire world being owned by the banking families. Israel is merely a cancer expressly planted in the geographic heart of the lands that do not pay fealty to Jewish banking. In the Middle East. Where the Muslims are. And do the Rothschilds and their pals actually live there? No? Um, okay. Is that not significant?

Way back when, like a century ago, various other countries were being mooted as potential homes for Zion. These were just lobbed up as smokescreen. Israel was never intended to be a safe home for Jews. It was always intended to be a mad little hornet's nest that would ensure war with its neighbours. The religiously deluded, expendable Jews in Israel are there to be used up and thrown away by the banking families in their campaign of dominance by usury. Forget platitudes and homilies. Whatever Israel claims to be on about, it will never achieve it. It will never be a safe haven. It will never be a regularly functioning country. It has no future that makes any sense.


The impossibility of Israel only makes sense if we view it as, I don't know, how about a parachute regiment dropped behind enemy lines? Their mission is (truth be known) to blow up some Islamic banks. Everything else is bullshit designed to convince the regiment to go on a mission from which they cannot be saved. And what? We're going to tell them that? Hardly. 'Men of the paratroop regiment! Take that terrain and make an eternal home for paratroopers the world over! The future is yours!' The strategists back in their villas on the shores of Lago di Como (who'd no more live in Israel than eat their own shit) know how to inspire their men.

And they know how to inspire us. We've been sold that fucking mission statement too. (Am I alone in hating that expression? When I hear the words 'mission statement' I reach for my gun, ha ha.) And we bought it. Israel something or other, terrorism, bullshit, bullshit, the economy, governments, fucking hell, let's riot and set fire to cars! We shake our fists at whomever.

Meanwhile, down at the Islamic bank, Mr Anouar "I don't think conventional banks are dirty, bad, or money obsessed" Hassoune is diligently, and honestly, totting up the figures with no idea that it's all about him. He's it.

Kikz's Halloween

Hat's off! Kikz goes above and beyond! God knows what the kids made of it, ha ha. Click on the pic for a higher rez.



BTW - The '666' was me. Me, and photoshop, that is.

Insight with Jenny Brockie

Here is the transcript of my appearance on SBS Television's 'Insight' programme with Jenny Brockie*. The topic of the evening was 'Mortgages in a recession - How will families be affected?'. The panel was composed of various representatives of banking, real estate, politics, as well as home-owner's associations.


Jenny Brockie - We'll go to another question from the audience. Perhaps the tall fellow at the back who's been very quiet. Yes, hello. What was your question?

nobody - Thanks, Jennie. I don't know that I have a question as such. Certainly not one that anyone on the panel would care to address I expect. Rather I'd like to wonder at the rightness of an economic system run on interest and interest rates.

Banker on Panel - There's no other system. If you don't like interest you should take it somewhere else.

n - Well I understand that you like interest. It's money for nothing. But this is not your show mate. You haven't bought it yet. This is a show that seeks a variety of views, yes? And here we have the views of the lending industry, and the views of those who must borrow from them and pay them interest, yes? Well here's another somewhat more holistic angle - why not question the whole arrangement? It seems to me that it's flawed at a fundamental level and that if we were really interested in alternative views, (which is the point of the programme as I understand it), we'd step outside this model and look at how we might come to some other arrangement. [interjections from panel and audience].

No, listen, if we were discussing medicine here, as you've done in the past, it would be inconceivable to do so without including the views of practitioners of alternative medicine. And yet this discussion here is like that, except that the only people on the panel are the practitioners of conventional medicine, along with the representatives of the hospitals that employ them, the drug companies that supply them, the insurer middle men who make out in both directions, and of course the patients, happy and otherwise, of this conventional medicine. There is no alternative here. Well, now there is. And it already seems [indicates the panel] I'm making the members of the AMA here unhappy. [laughter]

JB - What is this alternative?

n - We ban interest. [uproar] Gee whiz, the bankers don't like that do they?

JB - You can't ban interest!

n - Why not? Interest used to be called usury. It used to be a sin. Christians used not to practice it. Muslims still don't. Believe it or not, economies can function without it. In fact they'd function far better. Muslim economies right now, the ones that aren't being bombed that is, are coping with the current 'economic shake-out' better than we are.

JB - But every aspect of our economy is controlled by interest.

n - It's crazy isn't it? Interest rate changes are inevitably the biggest story on any given day. They control our lives. And yet the Reserve Bank is 'independent'. Why is that? Why is the single most powerful body in this country not answerable to: the people; our representatives; anyone at all? Kevin Rudd in his election campaign declared his fealty to the independence of the Reserve Bank. Why did he do that? It's a head-scratcher for voters. So who was he talking to? That question aside, we subsequently have politicians flapping their arms about, pleading with the banks not to raise interest. Why do we, the people of Australia have no say in this? You'd almost think we were talking about the weather and other acts of God. Aren't we grown-ups? Can't we walk and chew gum at the same time? Why do we act as if there's no alternative? [yelling from panel and audience]

JB - Well what are you suggesting? That we all become Muslims?

n - Hardly. Eating fish on a Friday doesn't make you a Catholic. And eating falafel doesn't make me a Muslim. [confused laughter]

JB - So...

n - So, how about this - the means of exchange, which is all money is, is the single most crucial thing in any country. Believe it or not, it's more crucial than any other thing that we seem to think should be publicly owned and controlled by the people of this democracy. Even defence, believe it or not. And no one here would care to have our defence force as an 'independent' body answerable to no one, would they?

Audience Member - Like Blackwater! [isolated laughter]

n- Exactly, thank you. Okay then. We keep it simple. We have a single publicly owned bank. It charges no interest and nor does it pay any. It is merely a safe place to put your money. And for those small depositors thinking they'll miss out the interest they'd otherwise earn - seriously, do you earn any? Last time I did my tax and had to declare interest, in spite of having over ten thousand dollars in the bank all year, my interest was a few tens of dollars. What a waste of time! There's nothing in it for you, or me

To hell with it, scrap the whole thing. Interest only serves the bankers. We ban making money from money. The only way to make money should be from labour, ie. making goods or providing services. Charging money for money is not a service. It's a disservice. An economy is not served by paying yet more money to those who already have heaping great piles of it. It stands to reason.

Banker - This is bullshit! Why do we have to listen to this? It's economic lunacy...

n - Bullshit yourself! You want lunacy? Lunacy is global debt that exceeds the GDP of the whole world. That's lunacy! Figure the logic of this - to repay the bankers to whom we are indebted we'd have to hand them every piece of land, every building, everything we own, from our cars to our shoes, and we'd still owe them! How does that work? It makes no sense at all. The bankers, who didn't make anything, but merely ran some expensive printing presses, effectively own everything. To hell with them! To hell with the whole system! [At this point, the microphone is taken away and I am dragged from the studio].

n - [Voice diminishing down the corridor] No alternative permitted folks! You're going to pay interest whether it makes sense or not! All money flows to the bankers...




*Not really. I just made it all up.

The Gordian Knot and other Impossible Riddles

It seems I am the expert on things economic. Ha ha ha. Actually I'm the furthest thing from it. I never understood economics. Curiously enough, I did it in high-school as a major and did quite well at it. I even momentarily considered studying it at uni. But the truth is, I never got it. It was like I knew how to use a sextant to find a true midday, but I didn't care what time it was, nor knew why it mattered. It's a less than brilliant analogy, but whatever.

And whatever! Here we are on the edge of the economic armageddon I cleverly predicted years ago and obviously I must know the ins and outs of it. So a friend who didn't care for any of my ideas then, is now emailing me with questions like, 'Why is the Australian dollar falling?' Ha! Hell if I know! Instead I told her about Alexander and the Gordian knot.


This is a myth, sure, with various versions and various meanings. But since we're here, this is my version. And my version is less interested in what the knot looked like, say, than in whose knot it was and what purpose it served. Apparently the knot was tied on the brace of the first king of Gordia's ox-cart. Or was it a chariot? Who knows? Who cares? The main thing was that the cart was in the temple and it belonged to the priests. The knot was their impossible riddle to ensure that no one else took the reins of power (ahem).

And sure enough, everyone fell for it. 'I want to have a go at the puzzle!' 'No, me!' People came from far and wide to see if they were smart enough to solve the priests' genius puzzle. But truth be known, it wasn't a genius puzzle. It was a con. The only genius in its making was in ensuring that it couldn't be solved and that no one would be any the wiser. The trick with impossible riddles is that they're hard to solve but easy to make.

Does anyone remember that old sitcom 'WKRP in Cincinnati'? I used to like that show. I recall an episode where, in a desperate attempt to boost ratings, the staff decided to host a competition with an absurdly large cash prize. They didn't have the cash natch, so they made a name-that-tune competition that no one would ever be able to solve. There were ten songs jammed into one second and all you got was pi,ca,fa,mb,pe,ho,ip,un,ca,gr. Nuts. But where would a sitcom be without a situation? The comedy situation was that the listeners unbelievably solved the puzzle and the team had to flail about looking for the money. Thank you ball-boy, thank you scriptwriters.

In the real world however, with no writers pulling the deus-ex-machina strings, the puzzle would never have been solved. Just like the Gordian knot. For those who don't know, the fellow to 'unsolve' the Gordian knot was Alexander the Great. Whilst uttering the famous words 'Fuck this shit!', he cut the knot in two with his sword. And sure enough went on to win whatever it was the solver of the riddle was promised - the keys to Asia or something. Mind you, I expect having a big army helped somewhat.

If it hadn't been for Alexander's involvement this story would have been a very minor footnote. It's Alexander's action that counts here. The conventional wisdom on the Gordian knot is that it represented 'an intractable problem' and Alexander's cutting of it was a 'bold stroke'. God forbid we should discuss it in terms of who made the knot and why, nor should we view Alexander's actions as an emphatic rejection of an impossible riddle and the bullshit artists who made it. We may not have that discussion because where would the priest class be then? Impossible riddles is all they have. And God forbid they should be called bullshit on it.

'Hmm... is he having a go at religions now?' Sure, why not? The logic works and the argument is sustainable. But let's do a quick double-pike-with-twist and say that between God and money, money wins. The old religions ain't a patch on the new one. The religious might pray and go to church but the other ninety five percent of their waking lives are devoted to things economic. Bankers comprise our priest class now.

And in the last couple of years they've really topped themselves haven't they? Their impossible riddles have reached impossible heights. Take derivatives. Please! No one understands them. Except for Warren Buffet who famously called them 'Weapons of Financial Mass Destruction'. And what - we think that the people who invented derivatives don't know that? Ha ha ha, of course they do. In fact, it's why they invented them. And you'll note that Buffet isn't explaining derivatives so much as calling them out as bullshit. Well almost anyway. He's Alexander without a sword and without wishing to cause offence. These be powerful priests.

Mind you, derivatives are just the piece-of-resistance, the final curlicue, on the insanely busy Gordian knot that is control-of-the-money-supply and usury. This impossible riddle isn't sitting harmlessly on an ox-cart in a temple. It has each and every one of us tied up. And how we labour looking for the end of the snarl! We tug and we pull and spend our entire lives labouring to free ourselves. And all we want is what we see on TV. We want big houses, cars, nice clothes, and a life that doesn't seem to involve much work.

And yet madly, we imagine that this can be done with debt. We imagine that interest is natural and right. We imagine that those who've accumulated heaping great sums of money should be rewarded with yet more money for letting people use their piles of otherwise inedible paper. At a really fundamental level there's no logic to this. Like there was no logic to a knot on the brace of an ox-cart in a temple in Gordia.

The only answer to the Gordian knot was Alexander's anti-bullshit sword. The only answer to the current impossible economic riddle is to likewise call bullshit to the whole caper. Monetarism is bullshit. Interest is bullshit. Banks are bullshit. Throw them all down. And the priests? They can all fuck off.

Governments may print money. People with an excess of money may put it in a safe place - say, a non-profit publically-owned bank. Those with more money than others may consider themselves fortunate. But that's it. Their money doesn't then go on to earn more money by way of some imagined gravitional pull. All debt is reconsidered with interest viewed in a new (and unflattering) light. Any interest paid to date is counted against the principal. This consideration is only extended to real humans. Debts to banks, the IMF, and other supranational entities - wiped off the board. Tabula Rasa Time.

And that is how you cut a Gordian knot.