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IP: CHAOSTAN
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Delivered-To: [email protected]
Date: Wed, 28 Oct 1998 00:26:49 -0800
To: [email protected]
From: "A.C." <[email protected]>
Subject: IP: CHAOSTAN: EARLY WARNING REPORT.
Sender: [email protected]
Precedence: list
Reply-To: "A.C." <[email protected]>
Richard was a reporter for the US Army, in Germany, until recently. I hope
I recall the correct branch of the military, Richard, that you served as a
reporter with. Richard ran into a whole lot of trouble when he began to
expose some rather "controversial" things he saw, that involved US troops
in the former Yugoslavia. See also the article below Richard's brief
missive, written by Richard Maybury, editor of EARLY WARNING report
newsletter. It is probably one of the best written essays on the subject
of our now universal dillema. Maybury's handle on history makes it all the
more credible, especially as he shows the parallels with the present. AC
---------------------------------------------------
>Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 22:00:38 -0800
>From: Richard=20
>To: Angie Carlson <[email protected]>
>Subject: Richard Holbrooke
>
>Angie,
>Did you see Richard Holbrooke on the PBS Newshour With Jim Lehrer on
>Tues. Oct. 27? He talked about sending more troops to Macedonia because
>of the Kosovo situation and that "It's been a plan for years." But he
>also says they have "an emergency evacuation plan for every person."
>I was surprised Judy Woodruff mentioned the danger of taking U.S. troops
>
>hostage. This had previously been something of a taboo subject in U.S.
>media.
>This "plan for some years" of sending more U.N./NATO troops to Macedonia
>
>may be what I came up against in January of 1994. The planners didn't
>want Americans to learn about the threat to U.S. troops in this region
>of the world.
>Best wishes,
>Rick Haverinen
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Maybury's U.S. and World EARLY WARNING REPORT
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Chaostan, the Full Story
Dear Reader,
Having invented the Chaostan model, I'm embarrassed to admit I have
never written a complete explanation of it. Investors found it so
valuable that Henry-Madison Research and EWR began to grow rapidly and
I have been unable to find time to give you the full story until now.
Chaostan is pronounced Chaos-tan, with the emphasis on Chaos. In
Central Asia, the suffix "stan" means "the land of." Uzbekistan, for
instance, is the land of the Uzbeks. I coined the term Chaostan to
mean the land of the Great Chaos. It comprises the area from the
Arctic Ocean to the Indian Ocean and Poland to the Pacific Ocean, plus
North Africa. This is roughly a third of the earth's land surface.
To understand Chaostan, we must first understand these two lines; they
are the most important you will ever see. They represent the "standard
of living" or, if you prefer, "quality of life" of the typical
individual in western civilization. This can be measured however you
wish to measure it -- quantity of food, number of bathtubs, warmth of
clothing, number of telephones, speed of transportation, amount of
entertainment or medical care, and so forth.
Line 1 is the line we have all been taught. We leave school thinking
civilization advanced slowly but steadily over thousands of years
until we reached our present high level.
This line is false. Line 2 is the real line. Nearly all progress
happened recently and suddenly. The typical individual in 1500 AD
lived little better than in 1500 BC. He had little food, little
clothing or shelter, and so much disease, filth and ignorance he was
lucky to survive till age 30; most died in childhood. Until recently,
poverty was so awful that even royalty lived in conditions we would
regard as horrifying.
What happened to cause this sudden, dramatic takeoff? What year did
the sharp escalation begin?
1776. You can verify this yourself and I urge you to do so. Walk
around your home and make a list of everything you have that was
developed after 1776. Electricity, indoor plumbing, plastic, aluminum,
central heating, air conditioning, plywood, refrigerators, nylon,
jogging shoes, inner spring mattresses, rayon, facial tissue,
stainless steel, corn flakes, underwear, radio... Then make another
list of everything developed before 1776. Do the same in a hospital
and dentist's office. Compare the lists and ask yourself what your
life would have been like if you had lived before 1776.
For thousands of years up until the American Revolution, our ancestors
lived just barely above the base line of human existence. Destitution
had been the normal condition since Adam and Eve. The past two
centuries -- a mere eyeblink in the vast span of history -- have been
a spectacular exception.
I do not exaggerate when I say that at least once a week I give thanks
that I was born when and where I was -- in America after 1776.
Why did the American Revolution have this wonderful effect? The answer
is the story of Chaostan. It begins, as almost everything in today's
political world begins, in ancient Rome.
After Roman civilization in Europe fell apart around 500 AD, Europe
was taken over by hundreds of independent cutthroats called feudal
lords. Each set up his own little kingdom of a square mile or so, with
a castle at the center. The people on this tiny estate were the lord's
property--his serfs--to be taxed, regulated and killed as he saw fit.
This was the Dark Ages, a time of starvation, endless war, ignorance
and bottomless misery. The Roman legal system had died along with the
Empire, so Europe had no law. Two people embroiled in a dispute had to
work it out on their own. The feudal lord seldom paid much attention;
he didn't care as long as the taxes kept rolling in.
When a dispute occurred, there was often bloodshed. To avoid this,
participants in disputes increasingly called on neutral third parties
to hear both sides of their stories and make decisions. Usually, the
most trusted person in a community was a clergyman and some clergymen
made careers of hearing disputes and making judgments. They became
judges.
Being clergymen, these judges' decisions in each case were based on
religious principles such as "Thou shalt not steal," and "Thou shalt
not kill."
Decisions were preserved in writing as precedents for later decisions.
This collection of precedents became a body of "case law" (law derived
from actual cases).
One problem. Often people were from different religions. Which
principles should a judge apply? Judges hit on the idea of using the
principles all religions hold in= common.
There are two: (1) Do all you have agreed to do. This became the basis
of contract law. (2) Do not encroach on other persons or their
property. This became the basis of tort law and some criminal law.
These two laws taught by all religions were held to be common to all
persons and they became the foundation of the body of precedents
called Common Law. (All this is fully explained in my Uncle Eric book
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JUSTICE?)
Another problem. Governments hated the two fundamental laws. They
wanted the privilege of breaking agreements, stealing, killing and
doing whatever else they= pleased.
Right from the beginning, there was conflict between governments and
Common Law judges, and these judges were under extreme pressure to
make exceptions for public officials. This is the meaning of the
so-called divine right of kings. Governments declared that, although
they were as human as everyone else, God had given them the special
right to violate the two fundamental laws.
The modern version of the divine right of kings is what I call the
divine right of the majority. In democracies it is held that the
government can do anything it pleases if the majority or their
representatives vote for it.
Thanks to the divine right of kings, the heavy taxes, regulations and
wars kept the people in crushing poverty.
In England, a huge underground economy sprang up to escape the taxes
and regulations.
Finally, after 1492, shipbuilding advanced enough for people to cross
the ocean to America to escape their governments, and thousands did.
England's underground economy was transplanted to America, where it
flourished. Virtually every adult was engaged in smuggling or tax
evasion of one sort or another.
The early Americans hated the government's political law, but in
regard to Common Law, were probably some of the most law abiding
people ever to walk the earth. They were not perfect, but they had,
after all, risked their lives crossing the ocean to live under the
principles of this law. These principles came not from a legislature
of crooked politicians, but from their religions.
By 1765, enjoying very little taxation or regulation, Americans had
become the wealthiest population on earth.
Here it is important to note that the American Revolution was a
revolution. These were Englishmen fighting their own government. They
did not split from England until July 4, 1776, which was fifteen
months after the war started. Government officials in England decided
to tap into the colonists' wealth. They sent tax collectors.
The tax collectors were tarred and feathered.
They sent troops to protect the tax collectors.
At Lexington and Concord in 1775, the troops arrived to confiscate the
American colonists' guns, and the colonists decided to fight. Then, in
1776, the colonists overthrew their government and, in their
Declaration of Independence said, "All men are created equal." No
special privileges--everyone obeys the two fundamental laws.
After the 1776 revolution, the American founders set up a new
government with a Constitution and Bill of Rights based on the two
fundamental laws.
[The Common Law orgins of the American system are traced in the
Pultizer Prize winning book THE IDEOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN
REVOLUTION by Bernard Bailyn, Harvard University Press, 1967.]
The size and power of this government was severely limited and its
ability to steal ("tax") was reduced almost to zero. Until the 20th
century, the tiny US government was supported only by import taxes and
taxes on liquor and tobacco; there was no income tax.
America became a haven for flight capital as people all over the world
began investing their money here. With this mountain of capital to
work with, new businesses sprang up like mushrooms, and inventors such
as Robert Fulton and Eli Whitney were able to acquire funds to develop
a vast array of new machines to make life better. This is where we get
the term "American ingenuity." When he died in 1931, Thomas Edison had
more than a thousand patents.
This mountain of capital also enabled industrialists to produce and
sell these new items at prices everyone could afford, while paying the
world's highest wages.
America still had a lot of flaws, the worst being slavery and the
genocide of the Native American Indians, but it was the freest, most
prosperous land ever known.
The Old World remained so wretchedly poor that archaeological evidence
from American slave dwellings shows Europe's heavily taxed and
regulated middle class did not live as well as America's slaves.
The rest of the world saw America's great wealth and liberty and
wanted it for themselves. In the 1800s, millions came here, and
millions more stayed at home and fought to limit their governments.
Now we come to three questions that are crucial for understanding
Chaostan: (1) Why was the Battle of Lexington called the Shot Heard
Round The World, not the Shot Heard Round America? (2) When the French
gave us the Statue of Liberty, why did they name it Liberty
Enlightening the World, not Liberty Enlightening America? (3) Why does
the statue face outward toward Europe, not inward toward America?
The principles of the 1776 revolution began to spread around the
world, and the nations where they became established came to be known
as the Free World. These nations are also the richest. Liberty is the
source of prosperity. This, incidentally, is the meaning of the
Henry-Madison Company's logo, a Liberty Bell with an economic chart
showing rapid advancement. (The company is named after Patrick Henry
and James Madison.)
America is the only country in history that has been, not so much a
place, as an idea.
Unfortunately, the mid-1800s brought catastrophe. The economic
philosophy that had destroyed the Roman Empire was revived. This was
socialism. Bread and circuses. The all-powerful state.
This old Roman system legitimatized covetousness and claimed
"redistribution of wealth" is not stealing if it is done with good
intentions. It began to spread like a prairie fire and quickly became
so popular that it overwhelmed the philosophy of America's Founders
and buried the principles of Common Law. This is why today few know
anything about the original American philosophy or the two laws which
gave it birth.
The spread of liberty was halted. This map shows the lands where it
had become established before its progress was reversed.
As we would expect, liberty had sunk its deepest roots in regions with
the strongest British Common Law heritage -- America, Canada, Britain,
Australia and New Zealand.=
In a few areas, liberty was introduced forcibly, as when Douglas
MacArthur imposed it on Japan after the second world war. The jury is
still out as to whether the Japanese will retain it or revert to their
old statist ways.
India was a British colony and liberty did take root there, but
socialism was too popular for it to grow. India remains poor, with a
per capita gross national product (GNP) of only $1,300 per year. (In
the US it is $24,700.)
For a while in the early 1800s, Latin America appeared to be on the
verge of adopting liberty. Instead, these countries got sidetracked
and went for democracy -- majority rule -- and the majority liked
socialism. The richest Latin country is Mexico with a per capita GDP
of only $8,200.
In Africa, liberty never had a chance. Nearly all the African
revolutions were 100% socialist, and today Africa is the poorest place
on earth. Zaire's per capita GNP is $500, which is not unusual in
Africa.
In Europe, liberty had become well established as far east as Vienna,
and to a lesser extent in the east European nations of Czechoslovakia,
Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Some knowledge of it reached Moscow
under Kerensky in 1917, but the movement was quickly snuffed out by
socialists. Today, East Europe, Russia and Asia remain almost entirely
ignorant of the system of liberty. They are mired in unworkable
statist systems and hundreds of millions of people live only slightly
above the base line.
In other words, Chaostan -- the land of the Great Chaos -- is the
main area that never developed legal systems based on the two
fundamental laws. (Or if they did, they allowed government officials
the special privilege of violating these laws.)
This schematic is derived from a map in the 10/95 EWR. It shows that
the Balkan peninsula has long been one of the bloodiest parts of
Chaostan because this is where three major religious cultures collide.
Since the beginning of history, this area has been inhabited by
hundreds of nations, tribes and ethnic groups that have hated and
fought each other incessantly. Russia alone contains some 250 of these
groups and they know nothing of the legal principles that make an
advanced, peaceful civilization possible. Worse, there is no one to
teach them, for the West has forgotten these principles, too.
The importance of all this was hidden by the Cold War. From 1945 to
1990, the US and Soviet governments divided the world into two
"spheres of influence," and Russia sat on its sphere like a lid on a
pressure cooker. Peace in Chaostan was artificial; the hundreds of
fractious groups under the Kremlin's thumb had not been
civilized--they had only been suppressed. Now that the lid is off the
pressure cooker, the explosion has begun. The area is returning to its
original condition of poverty and war. Saddam Hussein was the first to
realize the Kremlin's weakness was an opportunity to settle old
scores. Since the fall of the Soviet Empire, no less than 17 wars have
broken out in Chaostan.
Travel around the world and study the economies of the countries you
visit. You will see a pattern. The more socialistic a country is, the
poorer it is. The former USSR is the textbook example. It was poor
when the Soviet Empire was at its peak and it remains poor today. A
degree of advancement can be achieved through force, by telling people
to work or die, but slaves do only the minimum necessary to escape
punishment and have little interest in progress. The mighty USSR was a
Third World nation with missiles.
After the USSR broke up, the Russians were deceived. They were taught
democracy. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, they were led to believe
that if they got majority rule like America, they would get rich like
America. It did not work because it cannot work.
In all the thousands of years of human history, the only thing that
has been found to work is liberty -- the two fundamental laws. When
these laws are widely obeyed by everyone, including government
officials, life gets better. When they are disobeyed, life gets worse;
it is automatic. We don't know why our species is made this way, we
only know we are.
These principles cannot be established by a government, for
governments claim the special right to violate them, and hypocrites
are laughed at. The principles must exist in the hearts and minds of
the people, which means they must be anchored in the peoples'
philosophical beliefs.
Unfortunately, even in America these principles have been almost
totally erased, so there is no one to teach the principles to the
inhabitants of Chaostan. These people have learned only the simplistic
notion of democracy -- majority rule.
Wait a minute, you say, if the principles are so important, and if
America has forgotten them, how does America continue?
Momentum. This great land and all the rest of the Free World still
have the principles embedded in their legal systems, but few know or
care about this. When the momentum runs out, we will head down the
same road as the former USSR. This is why I write the Uncle Eric
series of books: to help reverse this decline.
Look again at Line 2. Perhaps the twenty most important words you will
ever read are these: When the two laws are not widely obeyed by
everyone, including the government, a civilization returns to the base
line.
This was demonstrated over and over again in Africa. Colonialism was
bad enough, but after Africans threw off their European rulers, they
jumped from the colonial frying pan to the socialist fire. The result
was a descent into poverty and war reminiscent of the Dark Ages.
This descent is what is happening now in Chaostan, and what will
happen to us if we do not revive the two fundamental laws.
At bottom, there are only three possible political conditions --
liberty, tyranny or chaos. All political systems are variations of
these. For the people of Chaostan, liberty is not an option. They are
condemned to either tyranny or chaos, for they have never known
anything else and there is no one to teach them.
Until 1989, the former USSR had tyranny. Since then they have had
chaos, and now I believe they are ready for a return to tyranny. But
not all the hundreds of groups originally conquered by the Kremlin
will submit. We can only guess at what will happen, but it will not be
pretty.
SUMMARY
War, tyranny and poverty have been the normal conditions of mankind
throughout history. My personal estimate is that 99% of everything
good that ever happened to our species happened in one fell swoop, in
the brief two centuries since 1776. This was due to the discovery and
application of the two fundamental Common Law principles that make
liberty and prosperity possible.
After 1776, these principles began to spread around the world.
Unfortunately, by 1900, this movement had been choked off by the
revival of socialism. Large parts of the earth never got the
principles, and the largest, which I call Chaostan, is now reverting
to its original condition of war, tyranny and poverty.
The principles of liberty are being rediscovered and if we all do our
best to spread the word, I believe we have a good chance to rescue the
Free World. But Chaostan is too far gone. The area is so huge, it will
continue causing major changes in the world economy and investment
markets. This will mean big losses for those who do not understand,
and big profits for those who do. I will keep you informed.
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--- end forwarded text
-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: [email protected]>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'