Mokenman’s Weblog

About six months ago, I researched the top candidates running for the office of President of the United States. What I was looking for was simply the money and power behind the candidates.

Since I have espoused the idea that there is actually no election in the U.S. any more, and the power elites have, after killing John Kennedy, taken over the U.S. in a coup, then who has the backing of the power elite? If dynasties rule, who do they support? (See Mokenman Blog Feb. 1, 2008 “American Illusion”)

Now I was ready to look only at the money and power behind the preselected “candidates”. Who had the power elites picked to “run” the fake race? Now I would be in a position to see who the baton will be passed to, if in fact I am correct about the election being an illusion. Now I could just look at the facts with no spin or bias. No media, no hype, no opinion or beliefs! All I need to do is look at the lists published as to who is behind each so called candidate, and where does their money come from, and presto I have the next president picked for me!

Here is the interesting thing I found. John McCain had nearly the identical support team listed as campaign promoters and his hand picked advisers, as G.W. Bush! Most are active or retired military officers. In addition he listed many of the persons currently serving in the Bush administration as part of his preselected team. If you look at the decision makers behind the president, NOTHING CHANGES WITH THE PASSING OF THE BATON FROM BUSH TO MCCAIN!

McCain has more bundled money than Obama or Clinton, and although he has put up denials about connections to lobbyists, has more bundled money from lobbyists than anyone else!

Bundlers: 473
Lobbyist Bundlers: 66)

What is bundling and who is a bundler?
Bundling describes the activity of fund raisers who pool a large number of campaign contributions from political action committees (PACs) and individuals. Bundlers, who are often corporate CEOs, lobbyists, hedge fund managers or independently wealthy people, are able to funnel far more money to campaigns than they could personally give under campaign finance laws.

Next I looked at Hilary Clinton. It should come as no surprise, she listed nearly the identical support team as was in power when her husband Bill was President! Again top pentagon guys were well represented, although to a slightly lesser degree than with McCain.

Lastly, Barak Obama. A bit of a surprise in two ways. First he listed many intellectuals and educators on his team. Of all the candidates at the time, none other than Obama listed people who apparently were successful based on using their brain. The second surprise for me was, he too listed a significant number of military brass!

Money donated by major corporations seemed to be hedged among both parties. The largest contributors were wall street bankers! (Home of Corporate America and a den of thieves). If the candidates are actually no different, and preselected by the power elite, then it makes lots of sense for the corporate elite to grease everyone up with contributions to ensure access, no matter what. This also explains why the corporations who control the country never need to speak during the elections! They are the missing voices because they speak with money and influence! They are the silence behind the media and public who are engaged in a daily dialog about who is beating who. Pretty funny actually.

What the clear result of the facts showed was that John McCain was the obvious choice to carry the baton for those already in power! If you have control of the country, and wish to carry on what can only be termed an unconstitutional government, without checks and balances, and the law says Bush is done, you must get someone of like mind and someone you can control! Up steps McCain.

The choice on the other side was Hilary Clinton. Baton goes from George Bush Sr., to Bill Clinton, to GW Bush, and back to Mrs. Clinton. Chain of control remains in tact!

Obama looked like he had the “also ran” backing and was useful for keeping the Americans in the hoax, hyped as having a serious chance. My guess is, based on past experience with the likes of the Bush clan and all the criminals who surround them, Obama would be assassinated before ever being allowed to take power, should something go astray with the preselected plan.

Now my admission. I did not write the blog at the time of my research because McCain HAD NO CHANCE ACCORDING TO THE POLLS AT THE TIME! Remember when he was not considered to have any chance whatsoever? If I had told you then what the media is telling you today, you would have said NO WAY MOKENMAN! And I did not have the courage to tell you what I saw happening. But, I am telling you now, in April 2008.

The fact that McCain is a candidate at all, supports my contentions totally. There is no way this man could have been selected by the public! The only way he could have been picked as the Republican candidate for President of the United States is if there is no race! And if I am correct about the election sham, then I am sorry to report, you will be calling John McCain your commander in chief. Let the war continue, and may you have many, many more! That is the path the Neocons are taking and have been on for a long time. This ensures higher energy prices, food shortages, and the justification for “military control” and more invasions of sovereign nations. Fear-control-we will save you-the cycle continues!

Zap, like magic, the Neocons remain in power! And If you want to know their plans, they were printed up years ago in “The Project for a New American Century”. (see: http://www.newamericancentury.org/index.html)

I hope I’m wrong about what I have seen!

The truth will set you free.

Its called “ATTITUDE” in Antigua.  Buy something from the grocery store, try to get something done which requires some effort on an Antiguans part, and without exception dealing with a government worker, and you will get “ATTITUDE”!

The Immigration department must have special training for their officers to teach them to show “ATTITUDE”.  My experience over 7 years with Antiguan Immigration Officials is not nice.  They begin by searching for “something wrong” with your documents or your story.  Friendly, polite, courteous, and helpful, they are not!  Once they latch on to anything they feel like latching on to, they begin to demonstrate their “POWER”, by telling you what you need to do, asking lots of questions, and then finding more reasons to abuse and belittle you.  If you are white this is typical.  If you are from Jamaica, The Dominican Republic, Guyana, or Dominica, they will hassle you.  The show of “POWER” simply emerges because they seem to have none as individuals.  It’s as if they want to make up in an instant for all the ill deeds perpetrated on their ancestors.  A major need to gratify EGO,indeed!

Antiguans have been deemed the most xenophobic people in the world.  If you are not from Antigua, they find fault with you.  I never met an Antiguan who liked Jamaicans.  Not only do Antiguans find fault with outsiders, they often blame the crime and lack of any abiltiy at all to manage crime on their island, on all the “foreigners”.  Antiguans generally will not accept blame or responsibility for even small things or simple errors.

My son just left Antigua to join me on a neighboring island.  He is thirteen traveling on a Jamaican passport.  Immigration sent him back outside the boarding area to get his mother.  The officer then began to tell my wife she owed money for time on the island since my son’s passport showed he last entered in 2006.   She also began to demonstrate her “ATTITUDE” by telling my wife she would have a much more difficult time next time one of her children traveled out.  My wife is used to this nonsense and she laughed out loud.  Her reply was, “what makes you think I’m going to have more children”?  My wife then produced a receipt for my son’s Antiguan passport.  My family are all Antiguan citizens as well as Jamaican.

My wife has noted how the Antiugan authorities treat her if she uses her Antiguan passport.  Or when they detect she is not born in Antigua they treat her with “ATTITUDE”, until they learn she is Antiguan by decent, and then they rapidly change their tune.

I have just let them ramble on over the years, standing quietly, answering only when asked, and then keeping my answers as simple and vague as possible.  And never, ever, ask a question or state any kind of thing which might be interpreted as your taking power from them.  DO NOT TRY TO TAKE THEIR POWER!  IT IS ALL THEY HAVE!  After all, they are descendent from slaves for the most part.  They are paid tiny amounts of money.  They usually obtain their govenment job based on nepotism, and rarely if ever on merit.  Jobs are retained for life unless you commit a serious crime and are convicted. Since the justice system in Antigua is completely broken and even the worst criminals are rarely caught or convicted, you are pretty much in a job for life.  Incompetence, dishonesty, rudeness, and the general inability to deal effectively and politely with customers, has little or no effect on getting a promotion or keeping your job.  Promotions are few and far between, and government workers usually have no expection or hope of ever rising above their current position.  Where is any incentive for excellence?

I mentioned “slave mentality”.  If you want to understand how this manifests, simply go back to the days when the slave boats arrived in Antigua with the Antiguan ancestors.  Slaves were never to show one another up.  Keep each other down and never do more than your job.  Make no decisions which might make you responsible, and when the shit hits the fan, deny, deny, deny.  Now put yourself in the role of a waitress in a local restaurant.  What level of service are you able to provide.  What rewards can service personnel expect.   Tips, not usually, unless the customer is an American.  Recognition, no. Promotion, not likely.  And the owner who is also Antiguan, will pay you as little as possible.  Often workers are used and abused by their Antiguan counterparts who have “made it”, or have attained some degree of power or influence, or are “owners” of something like a business.  The highest paying jobs have traditionally been jobs with “white” bosses, such as Mr. Alan Stanford.  Note he has discontinued most of his activities on the island because of the way he was treated!  I believe one government leader said, “we don’t need no white man to come and tell us what to do”!

So you may now see how all this “ATTITUDE” developed.  The sad part is many foreigners leave the island after a couple of years of being treated with abuse.  This includes students at the medical universities, retired folks, professionals of all types who are hired to fill jobs Antiguans are not qualified for, such as in the teaching and health professions.

As these folks leave the island two things happen.  First and foremost they take their money and incomes with them, moving on to another country where they can pay taxes and be productive members of society.  And secondly, they tell as many people as possible.  A friend recently wrote to me telling me she was offered a position in Antigua.  I reminded her of her past experiences when she worked there on a temporary basis.  I also informed her about the current complete breakdown in law enforcement.  That coupled with the new “taxes”, nasty attitude of government workers, hassles with immigration and everything else an outsider must face upon setting up house keeping in Antigua, she opted out.

Antigua has almost no agriculture, and no industry. Most people live below the poverty level and are not employed full time.  Women are left to tend to as many children as they can biologically produce, by fathers who give little or no support.  Antiguans are usually found seeking help from the “white” folks. That takes the form of hustling taxi rides, promoting tourism, taking aid from Canada, European Union, and the U.S., and suggesting outsiders should come and invest in their country.   All this and what do they give in return?  You can count on it, “ATTITUDE”.  No thanks!

Acceptance is not compliance.  Nor is it agreement.  It is simply acceptance and not resistance to what is.  I accept what I found in Antigua.  I do not agree with it, and now what can I do about it.  One thing is to shine some light on what is.  Thank God for the internet, and thanks to a few others like the med student who recently posted an article about Antigua on  an international website for med students.  My guess is his truth cost the school and the islands people a signifiant loss in revenue.  Potential students may have decided to go elsewhere after hearing this students truth.

What I have described is a reality for many.  It exists because the Antiguan people live it and are hopelessly buried in their own ego. It makes no difference which of the two parties are in power.  The things I have described are systemic to the Antiguan culture and history. I love the island and in spite of what I’ve written, I have many close Antiguan friends.  (Or at least I did before this post).  Mokenman being a truth teller, felt this account needed to go to press.  Honestly,  I do hope change will come. I’m not holding my breath.

The truth shall set you free.

In January Mokenman posted an article on the effects of Bush’s war, the price of oil, and U.S. economic mismanagement, on the poor people of the world.

Note the IMF and World Bank have released statements only this week outlining the crisis of rising prices and food shortages throughout the world, but in particular in poor countries like Haiti.

I attribute the delay of four months, between the Mokenman post to present media attention, to the “gap” between reality experienced by the people of the world, and the political cloud where the politicians and media hang out.

One writer for Rolling Stone magazine said in a recent interview, most reporters are Ivy league types who just spit back the information they are given by government spin artists. In fact words like surge, moving forward, and many other official adjectives are created by the special interest group or government office, with the specific task in mind of turning the truth into something different and perhaps more palatable. NO THINK, NO QUESTION, AND NO FOLLOW UP, are the bywords for todays average media reporter.

Now when things get so severe, (pain being the mother of invention), as in Haiti, and a long list of other developing nations where food shortages have caused riots, media is forced to report on the situation. Therein lies the apparent “gap”. The same “gap” is present between most government functions and the people they are intended to benefit. The result is one reality at ground zero, and a total disconnect up the ladder in some corporate or bureaucratic office!

Back to origins of the current crisis. Not withstanding mutual and simultaneous situations, such as use of bio-fuels, climate effects (droughts), and the outstanding growth in consumption by China and India, the largest contributer to the current problem is the policies of the Bush Administration in the U.S.. This includes a do-nothing Congress, do-nothing populous, and a general disregard by the Americans for the health and well being of anyone outside their immediate borders. Bye and large the Americans seem punitive, highly ego centric, vindictive, angry, aggressive, opinionated, judgmental, greedy, and war like, not to mention self righteous! If this is your neighbor what do you expect, if not chaos, disharmony, economic instability, and constant war? Let’s call it the way it is, not the way we thought or believed it was, or is supposed to be. Not the way the politicians would like us to see it. Not the way we were raised to believe it was!

Complicated, maybe one can string that case out. But simple, in this sense. War by the Americans has turned the world on its sides! America and Iraq are major players. Oil is a major source of cost for everything manufactured and shipped! When the economy of the world is shocked by mismanagement of the huge U.S. economy, hundreds of billions of dollars are spent on credit for war materials, and the few who benefit from war, and those dollars are not invested in infra structure, health, education, or any of the normal nation building arenas, it will and has had a tremendous negative effect on inflation, the falling value of the dollar, and the price of oil! Add to this the dishonesty allowed by non regulated bankers who have stolen all they can from the credit system, by issuing bogus loans with faulty and disguised worthiness certificates, to greedy bankers around the world, and now who pays? I can tell you it is not the perps!

The U.S. has given billions of dollars in cash to the Iraqi people, groups representing all factions in Iraq, colluded in secret arms deals, including buying rifles from Russia to arm the Shiites, and used inordinate amounts of oil and natural resources to maintain a presence in Iraq, and at the same time diminished the ability of the #2 supplier of oil to the U.S., to even produce oil in amounts and at prices near prewar standards! OPEC is telling much truth when they says it is not the world demand, nor production causing the economic crisis, but the mismanagement by the U.S. administration of their own economic house!

You simply cannot spend money you do not have in these astronomical amounts and in these ways, and not see the world go into an economic downturn with huge price increases for everything, a dollar worth next to nothing and falling, failure of basic infrastructure, and failures in a banking industry based on greed and corruption! This is the simplicity which allows me to tell you four months ago what is happening NOW! It is a matter of telling the truth!

Unfortunately there is no mechanism in place to correct this situation in a timely manner. There is essentially no U.S. election, and even if there were, no one can take power from the Neocons who took control years ago in a coup, and have a firm hand on control at present. Integrity and truth are missing from U.S. industry and government. It is not “profitable” to take responsibility for our mistakes, nor do we get promoted or elected by being honest and responsible. The game is about blame, and ego promotion, bending and distorting truth for self interest or the interest of a group you are affiliated with. Absolute power has corrupted absolutely.

So do not look at the source for taking responsibility for this global damage, nor to do anything significant to correct the mistakes of the past which caused all of this hunger and pain. Sorry but you have seen only the tip of the iceberg!

Pain is beginning to dictate behavior in the impoverished countries, like many in the Caribbean. What few countries are capable of producing food, are not equipped to supply the many islands who cannot grow their own. This lack of foresight, unwillingness to make significant investment in agriculture, (such as Dominica, St. Lucia, Guyana et. al.), is creating the situation today where most food consumed by populations on non-food producing islands (Antigua, St. Maarten, Anguilla, The Virgin Islands and many more) must be imported through grocery store channels from the U.S., Canada, and the European Union. The costs of those foods is fast becoming prohibitive for most islanders,  who live in poverty. It is not possible for the Caribbean food producing countries to catch up on production in time.

The outlook is bleak,  I am sorry to say. Until I can see some change in current policies, attitudes, honesty, and a shift to value humanity, brotherhood, freedom, and world health, things will get worse before they get better.

The truth shall set you free!

 As promised, The Mokenman will post reviews on companies deemed to need some “exposure” about their business practices. 

     The first of these is Global Internet Solutions, a company based in California who provides Internet hosting for your URL. In fairness to GISOL,  who hosted a site of mine over a few years, I must say, from a technological standpoint, they did well. The few glitches which arose were taken care of promptly, via trouble tickets. 

     Would I use GISOL again? Absolutely not!  Why? Because no one works there! Try to contact anyone at the GISOL phone number (if you can find it). This is one of those companies who has apparently hired some offshore phone answering company to handle their calls. An actual company number, given to me reluctantly by the “offshore” person, was never answered, left unattended to ring out day after day.  The “offshore” person had just one rehearsed line. He kept saying the only way to contact anyone at the company was via email.  I explained to him repeatedly this was the problem. I had sent previous emails which were ignored and unanswered!  He didn’t get it!

     The problem for resolution was, I was terminating my service, with advance notice, so my service would not be renewed on its annual date, therefore I would no longer be billed. Although I sent several notices in advance, I was billed through my old credit card anyway!

      What this company had done was to bury a rule they created, in the fine print of one of their web pages, automate everything, and bury their few human heads in the sand.  The rule was,  you could not terminate unless you went to an official form they could provide on-line, fill it out, and terminate in that fashion only.  The problem occurs because it is next to impossible to find this “rule”, or a form.  Any reasonable person would terminate service via an email, form email, or phone call.  GISOL does not allow any of these, and will continue to take your money if you use any of those methods.  No doubt any court in the land would rule against GISOL if the matter went to court.

     GISOL has apparently had so much difficulty with this lame business practice, they have included warnings on their discontinuation instruction page, telling the customer not to ask for a refund through the credit card issuer, and not to contact “your bank”.  That of course is the practical solution when one runs into a situation like this.  It is a matter of filing a complaint with the credit card issuing bank, refuting the charges by submission of proof, which in fact I did.

     Customer service is NOT one of GISOL’s attributes.  In fact they represent the evolution of business in 2008, that being, cut costs by eliminating human beings to deal with human beings (who happen to be your customers), take as much money as you can, anyway you can, and do all you can to prevent customers from cancelling service,  threaten them with “your rules”, in spite of the fact your rules are not fair, reasonable, or legally binding.  If you loose one, another sucker will be along shortly!

     Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

     The truth will set you free! 

**(see these sites for more on GISOL):

http://www.report-gisol.com/polls/ 

http://www.epinions.com/cmsw-ISP-All-gisol_com/display_~reviews