Grigovia urges calm

Following recent bellicose rhetoric coming from DPRK leader Kim Jong Un and US leader Donald J. Trump, the Parliament of the Glorious Republic of Grigovia released an unanimous statement urging calm. “Nuclear war is against the interests of all humanity,” said prime minister Dr. Frederikka Velldoyend, whose Freedom and Prosperity Party holds a slight majority of seats in the bicameral body. “America is the only nation in the world to have used nuclear weapons in anger; we beg for cool heads to now prevail.” (In Grigovia, the Senate is populated by ten persons selected by the governing body of each independent city-state and canton, and the Congress is selected via popular vote. Similar to the Swiss system, the Grigovian Parliament oversees and manages foreign policy, national defense, federal railways, and the mint.)

“War must only be used as a last resort, a strategy employed once all other options have been exhausted,” said national defense minister Hennda Uilyest of the Grigovian Conservative Green Party. “Diplomacy, cooperation, and open markets alone can assure the future prosperity of all mankind.” Shortly after gaining its independence from the Soviet Union, in 1988, Grigovia dismantled all nuclear weapons the Russians had stored on its soil and promptly joined the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICANW).

“Tinpot tyrants, be they Korean or Ynki, do not have permission to engage in nuclear war,” said Buiryest Darghennd, a 14-year-old student from Pryaghdoyest. “My grandparents fought against the Nazis in the Second World War; their words are still fresh in my mind: ‘Show not mercy, nor give quarter, to those who threaten innocent people with death and destruction.’”

americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan

dispatch 5 - sisterly affection

She was appalled by the seas of ‘Stump for President’ flags she had seen flying through the bus’s windows as she made her way through the small towns of central New Jersey. Erya Rovend had studied history and read or watched every snippet she could find featuring this ‘red’ candidate. In Grigovia under Soviet occupation, ‘red’ candidates had been party hardliners with little concern for the needs of the common man, hardliners who worked to make themselves and their friends rich at the expense of the rest of society. The Ynki, it seemed to her, were too falling for one of the oldest tricks in the oldest of books; they were enamoured with a supposed outsider who voiced simple solutions to complex problems, one who seemingly obscured or denied the truth about his shadowy past in order to win over the hearts and minds of simple people yearning for a better life. A charismatic and quick talker, Stump appeared to be gaining ground no matter how brash and offensive his statements, no matter how checkered and criminal his life had been, previously. ‘A flock of sheep will follow the strongest ram, even if he is a rapist asshole,’ she thought to herself as the bus pulled up to its assigned berth in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Erya retrieved her backpack and headed into town, distracted by the comparisons her brain was making between candidate Stump and Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu, Italy’s Benito Mussolini, and a previous Ynki president, Lyndon Johnson. Each of these eventually brutal and oppressive dictators had taken power on promises of moderation and restraint but had quickly turned autocratic, their fascist policies of military intervention overseas and at home needlessly staining the good Earth with blood. It was still relatively early in the day, and so after checking in at the Grigovian Traveler’s mission and dropping off her bag, she walked over to the buildings in which the Declaration of Independence was housed. There, she wept upon reading the list of reasons that had compelled the supporters of that now-marginalized text to fight for freedom. To her, each reason in that list was something the Ynki regime had been doing to its own and to foreign people since shortly after the ink was dry on its Constitution. ‘The Ynki has come full circle,’ she thought; ‘he is the tyrant he once aimed to oppose, a belligerent beast that violates the principles he once held high, no better than the worst of mankind’s worst oppressors.’ Out of apparent motherly concern, a middle-aged woman sidled close to her, offering her a tissue. “It’s terrible, isn’t it,” the woman said, her dark-brown skin glowing under the bright lights illuminating the Declaration, looking over at the text and releasing a deep sigh. “Let it out, darling. We’ve been fighting for so long we don’t know what peace even feels like, anymore.” Erya sniffled, wiped tears from her cheeks, and said thank you. The older woman nodded in response, walked confidently out into the gathering gloom of a rainy Pennsylvania afternoon, and disappeared into the passing crowds.

© JPR / whorphan / americanifesto / 場黑麥

on novus ordo seclorum

  Every American dollar bill bears the slogan novus ordo seclorum, Latin for New Order for the Ages. The federal government of the United States (the fed) persecutes this new order in hot and cold military conflicts, and by wagingwar on those of its own citizens who would consume drugs other than those it itself licenses or sells.

  Regardless of whether you are American or not, and if you are, whether or not you vote: if you handle US currency, and if you conduct business with it, you give your tacit consent to the aims printed on the American greenback – if you use dollar bills, you perpetuate and maintain this new order for the ages. (I have followed with interest efforts in economically struggling communities to switch to location-specific para-currencies, efforts which seem to nullify the paper money printed by the US Treasury.) In the not too distant past, the fed faced oppressive and mass-murdering dictators that it had to destroy, which required it to reorder its economy and to draft its mission statement anew. By consequence the world was also ordered anew, and the smaller players held their breath as clear battle lines emerged, and as nuclear missile silos sprouted in the Urals, and in the Midwest.

  The outline of this new order began to change in the 1970s, when the fed abandoned the gold standard, causing the US Dollar to decline. Then, it changed the rules for financial regulation, allowing for rampant and destructive speculation, so that now the two hundred and fifty thousands of Americans who speculated best (the Point Oh Five) control the corporate structures that in turn control most aspects of society. But it is the duty of the federal government to shape a new order for the ages, and no other party – not the 0.05% nor the military-industrial complex – can manifest the destiny of this nation with the sort of extreme prejudice and blind dedication needed to finish the job.

  Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on our current dictatorship

  Michelle Bachmann, on Monday 05 September 2011 (see here), warned that the federal government would become “a dictator over our lives” if it were to make the purchasing of health insurance conditional to citizenship. In support of the point she is trying to make, and to illuminate the majestic, abiding truth behind her words, let us review some of the other conditions that state and federal governments have forced upon the American people, conditions that violate our liberty and that Design to reduce us under absolute Despotism:
  The motor vehicle operators of this nation are being forced to insure themselves and their conveyances;
  The parents of this nation are being forced to educate their children;
  The users of this nation are being forced to choose between alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine, all other drugs having been declared illegal;
  The heterosexual couples of this nation are being exposed to the threat of prosecution if found living together while not married (in Florida);
  The homosexual couples of this nation are being restricted in their right to marry;
  The women of this nation are being besieged by forces seeking to restrict their right to terminate unwanted pregnancies;
  The property-owners of this nation are being forced to pay school taxes, even if they are childless;
  The sick patients of this nation are being forced to suffer needlessly, the cures and remedies potential to stem-cell research unexplored and otherwise retarded by the staunch efforts of moralistic and religious extremists;
  The non-believers of this nation are being forced to abide by the tenets of a religion not of their choosing (Pennsylvania's blue laws, laws defining marriage according to the Christian bible), and they have little choice but to handle currency which bears the religious statement, “In God We Trust;”
  The workers of this nation are being forced to live in poverty, their jobs having been sold to the lowest foreign bidder by native corporations seeking to maximize dividends at any cost;
  The peace-loving people of this nation have been forced to accept torture as a means essential to the common defense of their homeland;
  The gullible inhabitants of this nation have been forced to live in constant fear of the specter of terrorism, their fists balling at the mere mention of Islam, their anxiety fueled by the vague warnings and hysterical rhetoric emanating from TV personalities and politicians alike;
  The minority populations of this nation have been forced to live as second-class citizens, their communities neglected, their schools under-funded, their young people incarcerated disproportionately, and their adults abandoned to the ravages of disease and addiction;
  The tranquil people of this nation are being forced to defend constantly the sanctity of their persons and other such property from unscrupulous local police officers, who, in blatant disregard of any pledge they might have made to defend and uphold the Constitution, too often resort to tricking the
people into relinquishing the protections granted them in the Bill of Rights;
  The millions of registered voters of this nation are being forced to select from candidates of but two political parties, political parties that because of their size, complexity, and ossification cannot possibly endeavor to represent the myriad opinions of a people as diverse as our own;
  The once-proud citizens of this nation have been forced to give up their inalienable rights, their elected officials passing legislation (Patriot Act) to this effect soon after 11 September 2001, legislation that has left the citizenry exposed to willful and unwarranted intrusions into its private affairs.

  Americans do not fear the threat of dictatorship: we have already engaged the existing dictatorship. I call on Michelle Bachmann to expand her efforts, and to join in the struggle to right the wrongs listed above, if not to satisfy her base, then to prove to the rest of the voters that she is prepared to battle oppression regardless of form or frequency.
  It matters little our color, conviction, or creed – we must never forget that our republic is a fragile and fleeting affair, an unusual configuration too easily corrupted by those with much to gain, too readily abandoned by those with nothing to lose. Only through vigilant and persistent action can we rekindle the Torch of Progress, and regain for ourselves and our Posterity those Blessings of Liberty that for generations have been denied us.

Ultima Ratio Regum - 場黑麥 John Paul Roggenkamp

on rioting in oppressed nations

Since the fall of the autocratic government in Tunisia, there have been uprisings in other states in and bordering the African continent. Pundits and politicians point to efforts of past presidents or to wars of aggression waged in the region to explain this sudden increase in democratic expression.
I, however, will suggest different causes. I will suggest that the oppressed masses in a country ruled by a ruthless and authoritarian dictator (Egypt) who is supported by the United States of America (for purposes of the shadowy and ill-defined goal of regional stability) rose up on their own, without foreign intervention, for three reasons:
1) They are sick of living under the iron boot of a ruthless dictator who oppresses his population with America's tacit blessing
2) They do not wish to be invaded in another illegal war of aggression waged by the US when the American government decides that support of said dictator has become politically or economically unsustainable
3) They have decided that since American forces are bogged down in wars initially begun for self-serving reasons (control of Iraqi oil, punishment of terrorist in Afghanistan), and since America shows no sign of removing those regimes that truly oppress their people (most notably Saudi Arabia), any progress toward an open and democratic society must come from the downtrodden populace itself.
An old maxim reads: Something given has no value.
The Iraqis do not see the value of their democratic institutions because they did not ask for them in the first place.
The Afghanis do not see the value of democratic institutions because the system they have been running since Alexander the Great passed through over two thousand years ago worked; they saw no need to change their ways in order to accommodate an upstart political philosophy.
These uprisings are not signs of democracy's success; they are signs that, via social networking websites, individuals can change their world.
The United States is resembling more a police state, a society of rigidly enforced controls and widespread homogenization. What will happen when the people here, the millions upon millions of individuals who every year are extruded from the anus of the capitalist machine to wallow in a cold pit of washed-out excrement, what will happen when they call for change? Will our government welcome their demands with open ears and mind, or will it send in the riot cops and water cannons?
Democracy fails largely because people are not intrinsically equal. Simply put, some people are better than others. The way our system is set up here in America, those citizens with better connections or a better jumping off point will have better lives filled with more Happiness and greater Safety than those people without the skills or contacts or capital needed to excel.
Have we developed in harmony with the goals enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Is our government providing for the general Welfare and creating for all her citizens a world of Safety and Happiness? Can we honestly say that we live in a democratic society and not one run by the interests of the military-industrial complex and the massive intelligence gathering and law-enforcement communities? If there were riots in American streets, our country would eventually become more democratic. If there were masses of protesters screaming for the repeal of the Patriot Act, that foul and unconstitutional piece of legislation would be repealed. If our citizens risked their lives to speak, perhaps our senators would not fight so ferociously to maintain low taxes for the wealthiest three percent of all citizens.
We can only hope.
We can only read our founding texts and demand liberty, equality, and justice for all.
Ultima Ratio Regum.
JP