2015, Cigars and Brandy

Well, it’s the next to last day of this year, a year full of polarization and negativity and murder in much of the world. But a great year for multinationals, financiers and profits.

The international financial cartel honed its governance strategies and staged several successful coups in Latin America where naïve optimists hope that perhaps something has been learned and the fleecing will be more gentle and subtle this time. Led by its avenging angel Angela Meckel in Europe, the cartel is giddy with pride that attempts at independence in Greece were shredded and hopeful that its increasing sophistication will trivialize democratic prospects in Portugal and Spain. Ally Hillary Clinton promises to keep the cartel fully in power in the United States but that may prove a stretch as even the controlled media is having a bit of difficulty arranging for her coronation. Still, regardless of who assumes the uniform, power will rest comfortably where it has since the end of that wonderful Civil War a century and half ago.

In the Middle East, the Zionazis’ Lebensraum juggernaut continues unabated with ripples causing devastation almost everywhere, but the cartel’s controlled media keeps the news fairly well out of sight and thus, out of mind. That seems good enough. There are humans and then again, there are beings that seem human but just don’t make the grade and thus don’t count; “Never Again” is inapplicable in their case. The cartel just labels them terrorists instead of victims, incites a few headline grabbing incidents and the flow of orders for more and more munitions with attendant profits is assured. Malthus just never grasped how easily the overpopulation problem could be resolved. Oh the wonders of a controlled media.

Some troubling ripples from Iran, Russia and China mar the party but those attempts at independence from the cartel can be subverted with a bit of patience. Despite the cartel’s success in Argentina and Venezuela and signs of success in destabilizing Brazil, the cartel is a bit worried about its hold on Colombia. Its agent in charge proved singularly unsuccessful at sabotaging the embryonic peace process during state and local elections despite his omnipresent visage staring down from lampposts that made it seem as though he were a candidate for every office. Still, the oligarchy remains fairly firmly in place, the threat from Bogota’s municipal palace having been effectively neutralized. And after all, they’re just Hispanics, how much does Latin America matter anyway.

And the jewel on this year’s crown?

The cartel attained the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement which eliminates the threat sometimes (albeit admittedly infrequently) posed by national judiciaries. That should solve a host of nagging little problems.

So, while everything has not been perfect the cartel controls the media and thus truth is relative. Piketty Who?    Pope Francis, a pain, true, but ….

All in all, not a bad year. George Orwell didn’t realize that “1984” was a manual rather than a warning. Archimedes’ principle of the fulcrum was perhaps the most important rediscovery for the cartel in recent times. Who’d have thought that millennia’s-old discovery would provide the leverage necessary for one tenth of one percent to control a purportedly democratic world?

Cigars and brandy all around!

OK, not all around, but ….
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2015; all rights reserved