The Protocols of the Private Zone

BREXIT might be what one-hand-clapping sounds like. It might also be the reappearance of concerns relating to, “where have all the flowers gone”, where have all the manufacturing jobs disappeared to, where has all the untaxed wealth stashed itself, where have regulations protecting public interest gone to, or, a falling out of love with the Brussels techno-oligarchs and their boots-on-the-ground Mighty Mouse NATO Military. Most of all, it’s likely to be the sound of suffering humanity scraping itself off the canvas after its initial stoush with the counterrevolutionary protocols of neoconservative privatisation. But best of all, it is a public response to a major political issue that was supposed to produce an outcome that served the wishes and diktats of the masters of the universe, but instead the people’s dissident voice rang out loudly and clearly. The people did more than just bleat!

To be sure, privatisation in neo-conservative hands is a heist that captures public assets by stealth, leaving whole communities exposed to the vagaries of parasitism. It is anti-social and antithetical to universal norms of fair play. Privatisation is capitalism’s bare-faced way of grabbing everything for itself by way of denying the public their right to participate in wealth creation. Public assets or people’s rights are impediments to Privateers scheming to steal public assets. In the US, UK, and Western European heartlands of the Global Capitalist Empire, after nearly four decades of globalization, deregulation, privatization, austerity measures and debt-enslavement, the British alienated classes finally found their voices and feet and said enough is enough. The ‘natives’ took the opportunity to retaliate against the forces of the deep-state-elites in Brussels (HQ Wall Street) in this truly Custer’s-Last-Stand-moment, equipped with the knowledge that Britain still had control of its own currency. In other words, unlike many of the other members of the EU, they were free from European Zone rulings in matters of currency controls.

To go back in time, the Protocols of Zone were partly focused on by President Dwight Eisenhower on January 17, 1961, in his retirement speech, famously warning the U.S. about the increased expansion of the ‘military-industrial-complex’ becoming a problem; the military-industrial-complex becoming so big as to stifle democratic input into the national narrative. A set of powers so centralised as to imperil the very constitution if it were allowing unfettered growth. But if President Eisenhower ‘was onto’ the growth of the ‘military-industrial-complex’ in 1961… the elephant-in-the-room…what would he think about his beloved country now if he were alive? Would he acknowledge that there are elephants within the elephants within the elephants within the room and all of them debauch the spirit of the American way of life? He might very well despair at the level of the military mayhem that was imposed on the Middle East, turning that part of the world into a virtual abattoir for the sole purpose of exploiting it for economic gain.

corpocracy

JP Morgan Chase, ICBC, HSBC, Berkshire Hathaway, Royal Dutch Shell, AXA Group, Toyota, Exxon, Pfizer Novartis etc. etc., are omnipresent power structures governed by the interests of global finance. Corporations requiring protocols to serve their bottom line do so under the radar. Corporations are people and ordinary people are merely neutral units separated from the rules of trans-national businesses creating ever newer dubious protocols. Greece, for example, was loaned billions which the banks knew could not be repaid. Thus came into being, perhaps the most egregious example of usury choking the life out of a nation in order to gain control of its assets through privatisation. Globalization is about avoiding regulation wherever it can in order to avoid jurisdictions that might prove to be liabilities to them.
‘Place’, on the other hand exists within borders for the average Jo. Where public life evolves norms that produce, amongst other things, dialogues that connected real people in real time to the knowledge that politics is about sharing in the management of public affairs. Where the term, cut-from-the-same-cloth has a visceral meaning which also contains collective dreaming space for those believing in a fair go society. Where the voters and representatives can craft a meaningful relationship based on trust. But this can only be spoken about in the past tense now. Dreams have been sold off as black lives once were to corporations. All is co-opted into the big end of town. The great society is dead; long live the great society.

The neo-liberal regime that has come out of US, UK, and Western Europe, has entrapped a whole plethora of countries in austerity straightjackets that replicate the operations of the spider spinning the web that catches the fly for the purpose of sucking out its life-blood. The seeds of privatisation are within the Old Testament as much as they are to be found within the Protestant work ethic. Paternalistic control of assets is where it starts. Self-justifications distort reality however; to appropriate wealth as the criminal practises of the neo-con mind-set do with impunity, is to do business according to protocols that have no respect for human dignity. In the end corporations are not people. Corporations have no awareness of what constitute people’s needs. Their emollients come in the form of products delivered conveyor-belt style for the appeasement of the unwary. Awareness is as infinite in scope as the desert is empty of dialogue, but try telling that to the ‘bottom-liners’. Corporations and their lobbyists should be kept away from Government and the ears of politicians. They engage in inhuman practises. They see people as fodder. We need to realise that politicians are talking at us rather than with us. There is much conversation between lobbyist and the politicians who are talking at us. They are the unilateralists who are totally unaware of the value of dialogue and multilateral engagements.

The following passage is an extract from Edward W. Said’s Orientalism:

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires. As if one shouldn’t trust the evidence of one’s eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.

So on from the late President Dwight Eisenhower’s forebodings and anxiety concerning power concentrated in the hands of the few…right-wing cabals and their ability to run amok in procuring economic advantage is notorious…history is full of examples of how economic dictatorship has run roughshod over the democratic process. It has come to pass that the Neoliberal Playbook is really the upgrading of protocols that have extended the ambit of undercover forces that manipulate and influence governments in financial-warfare stratagems. The coalition of the willing who got behind the American Empire’s soulless campaigns in the Middle East and elsewhere, were the dregs of the factotum lowlands willing to engage with the quislings in the conquered country for a percentage of the $ action. The behind the scenes discourse involved all who had an interest in keeping power private. Mighty Mouse Military (intelligent networks included), Wall Street, AIPAC, status quo Media were the people doing the talking and the action…and look where we are now?

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was the ‘brainchild’ of a neoconservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that focused on United States Foreign Policy, and founded by William Kristol and Robert Kagan…they were the seminal force behind regime change in Iraq.

The Project for the New American Century ceased to function in 2006, but was replaced by a new think-tank Foreign Policy initiated and co-founded by Kristol and Kagan in 2009. Which begs the question; are they the only people talking to Government, the neo-conservatives in the State Department, the Pentagon, Wall Street, AIPAC and the supplicants within the fourth estate? Is the brouhaha that constitutes the Neo-Con narrative at the Victor’s Banquet meant to be the new Golden Age…and for whom? Nothing changes now because control is in the hands of the invisible few…the 1% who privatized governance and Godliness? The voice from Main Street is silent because it is not allowed to speak in the financial zone.

And adding insult to injury, the authors of the de-regulated nightmare that the youth of America finds itself in…the same authors who orchestrate the terms of the European Economic Zone…impose political rudderless-ness on the disenfranchised youth in this election year in America. In privatized zones, the means by which power is consolidated is in the hands of the bankers. Manufacturing terror tropes to justify centralist control is just another way of covering up inept austerity. The name of the game is to silence and make ineffectual those who are deemed erroneous to the activities occurring in the Private Zone. The consequences of which condemns many to peonage. That there was a Brexit moment suggests that there are forces in the West that may not automatically fall into lockstep with the military/financial juggernaut that seeks ingress to global resources for the purpose of imposing the tag of privatisation on a captive world-market. There can be no ‘left’ in politics until the scourge of duplicitous and covert protocols influencing the destiny of the many is brought to account.

Goodbye salad days; hello George Carlin.

Denis Conroy is a retired businessman and journalist and a voracious follower of matters political outside of the mainstream arena. Read other articles by Denis A..