By Bill Lindo
Belize City, Jan 27th 2022: Over the last several months I have been dreaming quite a lot in the early morning, usually around dawn. I have been dreaming about my beloved Belize, my country, and perhaps, a budding nation-state.
Last week I dreamt that I had acquired ten million Belize dollars. The first question was, what would I spend it on. What would I do with the money?
Most people would say, put it in the bank and start to live-up life – travel to exotic places and party like never before. But not Bill Lindo. NO!
Dreams of music
The first thing I would do would be to go to the convent of the Pallontine Sisters in Belize City to ask their permission to use part of the empty lot in the area to build a Music Centre – the Pat Lindo Centre. The Pallotti High School is the only high school in Belize that has a track record of teaching classical music – the music of order, of God’s Creation, not that other stuff of sex, drugs and rock and roll. The centre would be a three story, steel frame building that would host about 120 musicians on stage, and a minimum audience of 800 persons for opera, symphonic concerts, and the ballet. The centre would also have small rooms for teaching music, from playing musical instruments to learning to produce operas, and the performing arts. I imagine such an undertaking would cost about $ 6 million dollars.
Belize as a society must end the cultural pessimism that is slowly destroying our society. Music and poetry is the means humans have always used to believe that we are more than just animals, that we are capable of great things – of creation.
The classical music of Mozart, of Beethoven, of Handel, of Verdi, of Hall Johnson’s Afro-American Spirituals are what distinguish us as humans — man made in the image of his Creator. This kind of music is not random, not based on feelings, but ordered like our universe. The Americans in their education system, used to insist that every student must learn to read music and play an instrument so as to create a well-rounded educated free individual, not one merely training for some job. I don’t know if that’s still the case. As old Ben Franklin said, “Republican Democracy is the best form of government if you can keep it”. Sadly, it looks like we can’t keep it.By 2005, the cultural pessimism unleashed by evil wing of the Anglo-American oligarchy/elites had taken root in the American and European mind-set. Over a period of 40 years the high paying manufacturing jobs were moved overseas, especially to Asia, while wages became stagnant and debt became unbearable. The result is pessimism of a people.
Today, the Empire has robbed us of the beautiful unity of culture, science, and political self-government, and without this unity, the population, its culture, and its powers of reason all slowly die. It is time to create the next revolutionary leap by owning the principle of the unity of culture, science and self-government, as Mozart did, and through our actions, create a new political leadership shaped by the principles which can create our nation-state — Belize.
Today is the 266th birthday of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (born January 27th 1756). Mozart was both a musical and political revolutionary, as were his friends before him, like J.S. Bach, or his contemporary Joseph Haydn, and later Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, and Verdi.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, January 27th 1756 to December 5, 1791
He lived at a time of upheaval, like today, when the young America was struggling to become a new nation. Mozart was a devout ally of the American fight and knew that if Europe and the world were going to be free of Empire, then all people had to help win the American Revolution. Mozart’s father Leopold even wrote to his son Wolfgang while he was in Paris, on April 6, 1778, saying, “Write and tell me whether France has really declared war on England. You will now see the American Minister, Dr Franklin. France recognizes the independence of the 13 American provinces and has concluded treaties with them.”
Mozart knew that the new school of British liberalism was the real enemy. In 1778, Mozart wrote to his father upon the death of Voltaire, who had been a leading agent of British liberalism. He wrote, “Now I have a piece of news for you which you may have heard already, namely, that that godless arch-rascal Voltaire has pegged out like a dog, like a beast! That is his reward!”
Following the success of the American Revolution, the year 1782 was crucial for Mozart’s own discovery in musical composition. Through the republican circles in Vienna, it was Baron van Swieten who brought Mozart and Haydn into his musical evenings. It was there where the works of J.S. Bach were finally renewed, studied, and played. These musical evenings were not only a revival of Bach’s works after decades of suppression, but also held in direct defiance of the ruling elite, especially the British Empire, which did not want Bach’s discoveries enriching the culture of the continent, nor the newly independent American colonies.
These insights from Bach along with his collaboration with Haydn, led Mozart to develop a new breakthrough in musical modality, a quality captured in his revolutionary “Haydn Quartets.” Mozart’s new compositions, including his last, his immortal “Requiem,” was a sign of Bach’s mastery of the fugal process and its role in fostering new creative insights. This musical revolution was nothing less than a new discovery into the human creative process – how creation works.
One of his last works was a prayer in Latin entitled “Ave Verum Corpus,” or “Hail True Body,” which takes up the life and death of Christ. In this beautiful and very short composition, Mozart puts before the listener the challenge of leadership. The composition’s last words are “in mortis examine” — in the test of death. Christ has died. Will you now take up his cross and carry forward “in the test of death”? Can you go to your grave with a smile on your face, knowing that with your passing you have stayed true to the ancient truths, and brought forth new discoveries which future generations can build upon? That is true immortality. In other words, it is the true secret to a life well spent.
Herr Mozart looked to inspire the population of his time, as well as all future generations to come. He hoped to help them find their inner strength, to fight for truth, to overthrow the Empire, and create real nation-states. Even today, the music of Mozart brings forth new breakthroughs and moves the mind and soul to new heights of discovery.
And the remaining $ 4 million?
I would keep about $1 million in government treasury bills and notes which would yield about $ 30,000 per year in interest. That is enough for me and my wife to live on for the rest of our lives.
I would invest the remaining $3 million in a sewing factory. I would buy machines from Taiwan and China and also establish a 600 acre farm to mechanically plant cotton and beans. Not in the manner of slavery and servitude, but as a means to build an industry and society where people can earn a living wage.
The farm would employ about 40 workers at wages ranging from $ 275/week to $ 450/week. The factory to process the cotton from the farm, to a gin, to the spinning of the cotton yarn on a bobbin will employ about 75 workers at normal wages of $ 475/week. The final process of turning the cotton into a cloth is the weaving process. This process will require some 48 workers using computer controlled looms with the average wages being some $ 560/week. The finished fabric would then go to the sewing factory where some 200 workers will turn the fabric into finished uniforms for our police, nurses, doctors and others.
Thus with an investment of $ 3 million dollars some 363 Belizean citizens would permanently earn about $ 445 per week and the country of Belize would save about $ 15 million every year in foreign exchange. Nearly every machine from the farm to the sewing factory would be computerized – leap-frogging to the latest technology so that nature instead of man can be exploited. This way high wages can be paid to workers, thus ensuring a harmonious Belizean society.
A new awakening is occurring in the United States. The drive to go to the planet Mars in the near future is creating what some are calling a Mars vortex. The interesting thing about this Mars vortex is that it is down-grading the influence of MBAs and Wall Street. It is forcing more and more recognition that the source of “prosperity lies not in clever financial calculations”, but in giving more weight to the ideas — including some which may draw initial ridicule – of scientific/engineering and production people. Production people are being pulled upward. The situation is very much like the process which took place during World War II, in which the war vortex pulled people upward within production organizations – unskilled workers became skilled workers, skilled workers became engineers, engineers became scientists. China in the last 30 years has proven this over and over.
At the same time, all of us are aware of the so-called supply problems which are causing shortages of goods, rapid price increases, and other problems. It is easy to blame the ports, the drivers, the shipping companies, and the logistics industry. However if we wish to sincerely identify the root cause of the problem we are required to go back in time, back to the mid-1980s.
American auto makers were very impressed by the Japanese Toyota model and the efficiency of its supply chain. This allowed the Japanese to produce cars in the United States at similar costs to those produced in Japan, despite the higher labour costs in America. Of particular interest was Just in Time (JIT) — no inventory costs, warehousing or tied-up capital. It worked well enough, but never as well as when the Japanese used it. The essence of the Japanese model was the relationship with its suppliers. They regarded their supply chain as an ecosystem, rather than the predatory feudal system preferred in the Western/Wall Street/Empire model. Toyota preferred to use suppliers who were within 200 miles of their plant.
Around 2001/2002 American auto makers decided that rather than embrace the Japanese (JIT) they were going to choose what they wanted and throw out what was not needed. Greed took over. Now they wanted JIT with “China prices.” And there was the rub. The JIT model was secure because it was highly localized; any risks of disruption were minimal. But that qualification didn’t matter to the MBA’s on Wall Street. Another burden, “risk”, had been outsourced to Chinese suppliers. Now the chickens have come home to roost.
Especially related to this in the last few years is the “climate change/environmental” decisions of humans on planet Earth. Of course everyone would like to breathe fresh air and drink clean water. Some degree of regulation of agriculture and industry was in order, but the tiny concession of the necessity of some regulation was twisted into the extreme mandate that the only tolerable condition is the complete eradication of human kind from planet Earth, and restoration of the Earth to the pre-human conditions. The most extreme measure in this direction was the US President Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency’s bare-faced-lie designation of a plant food – carbon dioxide (CO2) — as a pollutant, a first step to the complete closure of the fossil fuel industry and the mass deaths of mankind on Earth. Every day we hear about Ukraine and Taiwan, but those are distractions from the real fight – the unwillingness of Russia and China to abide by the West’s timeline to end the use of fossil fuels. Both countries have decided that they will determine their own future – not the global oligarchical central banking system/Empire.
While such vital industries were under attack via arbitrary imperial regulations, the British imperial financial games inside the United States were deregulated, beginning with the decoupling of the dollar from gold in 1971 and extending up through the complete deregulation of banking in 1999. These financial deregulation measures put imperial finance, centered in the City of London and Wall Street, in a commanding position over all aspects of the global economy and much of politics. Regulate the physical economy out of existence but deregulate and free up the Empire to loot, loot, loot!
This leads to questions such as these: Why is it that nations on every continent have declared, in unison, their intention to fight “climate change”? Why is it that almost every nation implemented the same failed COVID 19 policy of lockdowns and mandates? Why is it that almost every nation outside of Africa is now facing a demographic collapse? Why is it that every nation now obeys the axioms and dictates of an oligarchical central banking system/Empire? And why has this subservience worsened so much in recent decades?
Part of the reason, perhaps the major part of the reason, is fear. When confronted with the combined financial and economic power of the modern-day British financial/oligarchical empire, most nations have no defence. The City of London, Wall Street, Brussels, and the other centres of imperial finance now possess unprecedented financial power over nation states.
We as people have allowed lawyers and MBA’s to run our societies. Look around – who runs successful nation-states such as China? Every leader in China since Deng Xiaoping have been an engineer. The current President, Xi Jinping is a hydraulic engineer. In the West we incentivizes all the wrong things. If a public company announces it is outsourcing to China, the stock prices goes up. Should it plan to re-shore production, the stock goes down. If a company plans to invest in research and development, its stock is send to negative territory. JIT was good for stock prices, but it was bad for American industry. We can blame Wall Street and the “financialization” of just about every aspect of Anglo-American life in the West, including in Belize. It is why there is no industrial policy, and as long as that remains the case, there will never be a solution to the West’s crumbling societies. And here in Belize poverty will continue to hover, somewhere between 51% to 62% of the population, well into the future as we try to copy the foolish drive to “financialization”.
Never forget how the British Empire has dominated the world since 1919 — not by military might but by control of finance, language, perception, and ideas (or as some would say — lack thereof). Always look beneath the terms and appearances: what are the intentions of those who speak and act? Over and over we see that patriots/nationalists and imperialists/globalists may be using the same words, but with diametrically opposite intentions and consequences.
Make no mistake! A nation-state is not sovereign unless it has sovereign control of its currency, its credit system, and its economic future. The American genius Alexander Hamilton showed how to do this with his national banking policy. Abe Lincoln showed how to do it with his Greenback policy. George Cadle Price always –ALWAYS — identified the system of private central banking as anathema to the Belize Constitution and also as the enemy of humanity. And our former Prime Minister, Dean Oliver Barrow tried a thing – the creation of the National Bank of Belize, which is currently under attack. Why should we let a bunch of oligarchical cultists tell us differently?
And the dream? This is Belize and I would be willing to bet that Bill Lindo will never be allowed to have ten million dollars because no classical music will ever be allowed, and no manufacturing industry which increases living standards will be allowed.
I will keep on dreaming!
Bill Lindo blog 