From Minding the Darkness, IV.i
And now for something a bit more serious Virgil Ecl. 4.1 a poem that looks at the eye in the triangle
above the blunted pyramid
…… Though we continue to prate about the Open Society
54 percent of the total net financial assets are held by the 2 percent Federal Reserve Board; Greider ’87 39
whose two top institutions the Fed and the CIA Federal Reserve Board the most powerful and unpopular
lie beyond the reach and even the comprehension not just of the people
but Congress the legal system and the press In the crisis of ’82 when Mexico almost defaulted
on its $80 billion debt the largest banks would have been swamped in the resulting panic Greider ’87 517
had they not been saved by actions taken in secret Between the Fed and the Treasury
an unprecedented bailout was arranged $3.5 billion in new loans for Mexico
So why did the NIC National Intelligence Council concerned about foreign exchange Mills 1129 produce a CIA evaluation
the profits of drug export revenues of Colombia and Mexico probably represent
75 percent of source-country export earnings? NIC Report; Mills 1181, cf. 1135 Nazar Haro the DFS Chief Mexican Direccion Federal de Seguridad
who sold protection to the traffickers and obstructed the HSCA investigation House Select Committee on Assassinations protected in turn by the CIA
from an indictment in San Diego for his indispensability as a source of intelligence
the objecting U.S. Attorney fired for revealing this Scott ’95 135; Scott and Marshall 36 And why did the Treasury in ’84
introduce bearer bonds despite the expert advice they would become instruments
used by the traffickers for money-laundering? Naylor 284 The Fed and the CIA
both so powerful we know almost nothing about them Greider ’87 11-12 not to mention the IMF International Monetary Fund
whose draconian remedies for impoverished countries like Yugoslavia and Rwanda
and perhaps now Indonesia Wall St. Journal 5/7/98; Toronto Star 5/17/98 have been followed by massacres Chossudovsky 111-20, 243-60 If the secrets were revealed
the money mystery would dissolve people would have to look upon these things directly Greider ’87 717
Why put all this in a poem? There are times when the most novel act of creativity
is to aim at the simplest truth the rich are getting richer the poor poorer
and if not checked this will destroy us Why does this happen? Bassesse oblige! And the cure? we must live by
what we have always known: No crime worse than avarice Tao Te Ching 46 likewise the political hegemony
of money must end Greider ’87 715 One need not even abolish the Fed only find the will
to abandon money’s value to save the real economy Greider ’87 716 the problem is not even capital
the new fluidity from America which as Marx observed erased those feudal
English preconceptions when it was `respectable’ to sell Negroes into slavery
(the crest of Sir John Hawkins a demi-naked man the hands extended and manacled) Fairburn 1, 165
but not to make sausages boots or bread Marx ’76 1014; MacGregor ’84 216 No! the problem is the abuse of capital power Pramoedya ’99 253
always consolidating privilege by taxing the misery of the poor cf. MacGregor ’84 8, 169 When a president of a bank
can reward himself after slashing 12,600 jobs with a one-year salary and bonus
of seventy-six million dollars Los Angeles Times 3/25/00 how shall we talk of America’s doctrine of equality? Beard 250-52
We have not failed at production we have failed at distribution if we have learnt anything
in the 2000 years since Virgil it is to expect no moral progress from our political leaders
or the banks British merchants and insurance companies Madison to Jefferson 5/1/1796; feared by our Founding Fathers Ellis 162
and none either from that supreme abstraction money MacGregor ’84 167 which empowers a worker to act
as a free agent Marx ’76 1033; MacGregor ’84 211 in the surface process of equality and freedom
beneath which in the depths entirely different processes go on where equality and liberty disappear Marx ’73 247-50; MacGregor ’84 159-60
Money as an abstraction Hegel ’42 240; MacGregor ’84 167 unifying our world at the same time making obsolete American Heritage Dictionary
the first meaning of commonwealth the public welfare Thus in the last fifty years for want of correspondence
with the imagination Shelley 1887 30-31; Yeats ’68 68 the CIA has helped install the thugs of drug cartels
in Thailand Bolivia Afghanistan Haiti and Peru accelerating the flow
of profits from the poorest nations to the richest (why houses cost so much:
In 1984 alone the Commerce Department calculated a net influx of foreign capital
into the US at about $100 billion) Naylor 332 while with draconian drug laws
in the name of order we had a million people in prisons by the year 1994 Washington Post 10/28/94
1.8 million just four and a half years later Washington Post 3/15/99 And should my poem take refuge
in rich sensuous detail or shall I say more clearly what we removed from our book
that when Clinton and the Fed lent Mexico $40 billion New York Times 1/17/95 it should have been clear even then
how this debt would be repaid Mexico’s Attorney General’s office states that drug traffickers
earned $28 billion in 1992 and 1993 amounts similar to all
of the country’s legal exports combined Latinamerica Press 9/2/95 for the benefit of this corrupt ordo seclorum Virgil Ecl. 4.5
all of us without thinking carry round in our billfolds
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