Chile 1973 - 9/11- England 2022 - Making the Economy Scream - Pinochet in a pinafore - avoiding avoidable harm as standard practice.

My first version of this piece was not well written, or edited. Ooops. So here goes again.

Liz Truss, in economic terms, is Pinochet in a pinafore, without the guns and uniforms. Liz Truss is a power seeking missionary, a neoliberal ideologue whose primary political concern is to dismantle the Welfare State at pace, sponsored by Shell and others of similar stature who are causing immense harm to all of humanity. The Corporate State, where taxation is a revenue stream for private profit rather than social good, is a cruel state.

I think that this short film (see below) is appropriate viewing - it's a starting point to reflect upon a wider angle view of the shituation (spelling error is deliberate) the people - poor working class and middle class alike - face across England at this time, when a self proclaimed Conservative 'Thatcherite' is seeking to grab the office of Prime Minister, elected by a small majority within a small minority, (80,000 votes won her the PM's office, to Rule over a population of 67,000,000 people from another Conservative 'Churchillian' Bully who was both elected and then ejected because he was a liar, his Cabinet were grifters - collectively, since 2010 they and their predecessors caused the deaths of over 350,000 vulnerable UK citizens through 'Austerity' and deliberate COVID mismanagement.

Raw Sewage pours into England's rivers, and onto the beaches.

"we will blight them in the rivers, blight them on the beaches, blight them with low wages and high rents and we will never surrender."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4L5mMTO_J3Y

There are so many ways that the actions of a few people - persons who occupy institutional and economic positions of immense, medium and small power, always at a distance from ordinary folk where that distance insulates the people in power from the harms they cause (Cameron's ten million commission 'earned' by his lobbying on behalf of Greensill is a good example) - can have a profoundly adverse impact on the lived experience of millions upon millions, and even billions of people. The technical term is Distal Power.

Those few who wield great political, industrial and economic power and who refuse to avoid avoidable harms, to underpin 'profitability' as they pursue wealth extraction through political dominance of our culture. 

So much human psychological distress and physical trauma is attributable to this one dynamic.

Putin's Wars, the Bush-Blair Wars, the destruction of Libya, Syria and Palestine, the Work Capability Assessment Regime, Buy-to-let Mortgages, Exxon, Shell and BP's obfuscation and denial of Climate Disruption, living rivers killed by Chicken Factory Farms, Sea-beds destroyed by destructive trawling, raw sewage released in order to maximise profits, the trauma of poverty and Universal Credit Sanctions Regime, as a 'nudge' to drive people into low paid work, sending children into schools with no mitigation support during an ongoing pandemic, colonialism, and neo-colonialism, slavery, Racism and misogyny.

All of these are dynamics set in place by a tiny minority of people who wield immense power.

Chile 1973. Making the Economy Scream in order to undermine a Socialist Government, democratically elected by a huge majority as a means to an end - preserving USUK dominance over the Chilean Industrial Economy.

The costs of admitting that a Socialist government had a genuine mandate from the people (Allende's Government was well liked and supported by the larger majority of the working class population) were set aside, externalised by means of a bloody coup. Military Dictatorship was preferable to humility before Democracy.

The slaughter of Allende and his ministers, the thousands of violent deaths of democratic activists, the maiming's, the tortures, the disappearances, the theft and so much more was a externalised cost of the coup - the American political establishment did not pay those costs. The English political establishment did not pay those costs. Both establishments gathered more wealth, extracted from Chile. Pinochet found sanctuary under the wing of Thatcher and the Conservative Party.

http://markcurtis.info/2007/02/12/the-pinochet-coup-in-chile-1973/ *

Mark Curtis writes about the realities of English political involvement in Chile in 1973 and beyond.

"The files clearly show that British planners in Santiago and London totally welcomed the coup and immediately set about conducting good relations with the military rulers as repression increased, even secretly conniving with the junta to mislead the British public."*

The minds and bodies of progressive community and political leaders and workers paid the price. The Chilean State and all Chilean people paid the price in decades of a brutal military dictatorship. Thatcher did not pay the price of those externalised costs. The USUK Oligarchy made a lot of money out of that dictatorship.

"The ambassador also told the Foreign Office that ‘most British businessmen… will be overjoyed at the prospect of consolidation which the new military regime offers’. British companies, such as Shell, he added ‘are all breathing deep sighs of relief’. ‘Now is the time to get in’, he recommended, while urging the British government to provide early diplomatic recognition of the new regime."*

Indeed, we ordinary people are faced with this 'war' at every turn, by degree.

I have posted, (see below) what I think are two useful historical examples, where in Norway and Sweden in the 1930s the population - workers and the middle class united to elect progressive socialist legislators into power to regulate the Oligarchy and more recently in 1999/2000, the Bolivian population ejected Bechtel, who had been given the Water Monopoly and had raised the cost of water to households - and I believe these examples demonstrate the viability of a pertinent social solidarity response to the shituation, and that this way to rein in the Oligarchy is currently available to the UK population of voters.  If only the 'progressive parties' in England would support it. But they do not.
We do have the right to vote, with which we can elect decent, honest people to represent us and we can set them to make laws we agree upon as fruitful for the whole community, and take such steps as necessary to legislate a legal duty to avoid avoidable harm, as the basic root of Government policy and future industrial activity.
There is a way to work towards a more nurtured shared environment, public and private, cultivated and wild.
https://wagingnonviolence.org/2012/01/how-swedes-and-norwegians-broke-the-power-of-the-1-percent/

https://www.democracyctr.org/bechtel-vs-bolivia
Social Solidarity,: person to person, person and family, person, family and community, community with other communities. Workers, unemployed, the poor, the destitute, the artisans, the clerks, the managers, the middle class, the majority in social solidarity when faced with a Government that is claiming that a cruel policy is an essential part of 'growing the economy'.
With care for one another as our basic social, economic and political setting, through organisation, education and network development, with training in deliberation, conflict de-escalation, conflict resolution, community based electoral democratic campaigning, to build a solidarity movement which by campaigning to gain the legislature, and by gaining the legislature drafting the legislation to regulate the Wealth Extraction, abolish the practice of Externalised Costs, for others to pay, in order to reawaken the Social Contract State, the social contract between Institutional Power and the ordinary person. This is just a rather simplistic overview. 

Obviously the class structure, with it's 1000 year reign, (class wars aside) there's a firm cultural attachment internalised by English people, to 'their betters', 'The Good and The Great'.  I am Irish by birth and education, and living in England I understand that the English have no history of resistance to their own Ruling Class.

Suella Cruella waits in the wings, ready to pounce on the poor. Iain Duncan Smith and Kwarteng assert that social support for the poor, disabled, the chronically unwell, pensioners and the unemployed is an incentive to not work.
There is no way around this. 

Pork Markets Liz Truss is Pinochet in a pinafore, without the military uniform. Exporting Yorkshire Tea to China, Cheese to France. 
A genuinely healthy Government rooted in social justice must legislate to provide support for whatever best practice that is needed to protect the people, to protect our shared environment, as climate and environmental disruption escalate. 
It is important to understand that poverty is a critical element of wealth accumulation as a political hegemon.  Poverty is an Externalised Cost of an extractive economic system.
Globally, Nationally and locally Governments of States must legislate new practice to implement, at pace, regulation ensuring that  industrial activity must pay all previously externalised costs associated with industrial production and consumer activity in order top prevent environmental and social harm. We cannot continue to pay the costs of Wealth Extraction. We need to implement a robust nurture culture to replace the externalised costs cult. 

"Penalise harm causation, reward harm prevention."
This is not a call to reform the existing culture. That task is impossible from within it. This is a call for a new culture. A nurture culture that ensures our children's children will grow into a healthy, sustainable social, political, economic and natural environment. An adaptive 100 year plan for humanity.
This cannot be build on ideology - it must be evidence based, transparent, honest and rooted in understanding that  meeting immediate human needs, medium and long term concerns, reducing vulnerabilities rather than exploiting them, enhancing the natural strength of people as a community, a society that is predicated upon, above all, human empathy,  respect and love.

Big ask?

Really?


Kindest regards

Corneilius

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