Plutocratization, Deindustrialization, Demilitarization: From Rome to US.

The proximal cause of the fall of the Roman state was military: in August 379 CE, in a stunning catastrophe, a rogue army of Goths who had been admitted as refugees inside the empire, destroyed the Oriental Roman field army. The fault was emperor Valens’ vainglory: he had rejected the advice of the Frankish chief of staff of the Occidental field army to wait for the latter, it was only a couple of days away. 27 years later, on Christmass day, German nations galloped through the frozen Rhine and a curtain of surprised Franks, who under treaty (“foedus”) had been put in charge of defending the borders of Germania and Gallia… In a matter of months, Western Roman plutocracy would lose much of its tax base, and the Roman state would be unable to pay its armies (Rome had more than 600,000 soldiers on its payroll). 

Now the Roman imperial state in the Fourth Century had little in common with the “Restituted Republic” of Augustus… Which itself was a parody of the Roman Republic that existed when Caesar was Consul in 59 BCE (Caesar passed his land redistribution law, by going directly to the National Assembly and its tribunes, ignoring the Senate… Augustus would terminate the Tribunate, hence the Assembly… At that point the tyrannical worm was in the Roman fruit…) 

Ancient Rome lived through, and died from, the same process of deindustrialization and de-energizing as part of plutocratization that the West has been experiencing today. That’s the basic cause of the Fall of Rome. The decay of the Republic started immediately after the Second Punic war. One difficulty was that the Republic had become imperial, but it had no fast communication means…that was solvable: in 1791, the Frenchman Claude Chappe developed the optical telegraph, a succession of towers with mechanical arms, and a message would go at 1380 kmh (supersonic). France had a network of 556 stations stretching a total distance of 4,800 kilometers (3,000 mi). Le système Chappe was used for military and national communications until the 1850s.. Now of course, the French had telescopes… But Rome had exquisite glass making and could have developed glasses and then telescopes. The European Middle Ages developed glasses because the precision work of older artisans was appreciated.. 

And actually the Ancient Greek had developed a very complex optical-hydraulic optical telegraph which depended upon torches…. It’s shown on Trajan’s column…

The truth is, the ravenous, rapacious elite had no interest in saving the Republic, so blocked the development of any science and tech which would have enabled it to do so. 

How did we get there? 

The morally correct elite, infused with the old Roman Republican traditions had been killed in battle, fighting Carthage and its allies. Just at the battle of Cannae, Among the Roman dead were 28 of 40 tribunes, up to 80 Romans of Senatorial or high magistrate rank, and at least 200 knights (Romans of equestrian rank). It was estimated that 20 percent of Roman fighting men between the ages of 18 and 50 died at Cannae… And Cannae was just one of three tremendous defeats…

… While the greedy landlords of fortified Roman cities thrived and small peasants’ farms got ravaged….

Being a Republic, Rome could draft armies, whereas Carthage, at the time much more of an oligarchic plutocracy, depended upon mercenaries. This, plus the genius of Scipio Africanus, enabled Scipio to land in Africa and defeat Hannibal there… 

HOWEVER, after that hard won victory, 17 years of total war, small farms got bought by the exploiters of war, the rich and giant slave driven latifundia, technically illegal, covered the land. (Interestingly this did not happen in Gaul, which kept its small farms; so Gaul ultimately didn’t collapse demographically or economically… differently from Italy; that made Gaul the natural new power center, as became clear in the 6th century…)

The fundamental reason for this socio-economic devastation of the core of Rome is that plutocrats want to evade the laws of the republic, and make deals with distant dictators which they enable in turn. Thus the plebs are rendered powerless, and in turn made unable to resist the elite of rapacious exploiters. After the victory over Carthage and its allies, including no less than Macedonia, slave markets were flooded with supply and the wealthiest bought enough to man the giant farms, the “latifundia”. Technically owning much of these giant agribusinesses broke the law: there was an absolute limit on wealth in the Roman Republic (and also laws against luxury! By contrast, the world’s wealthiest man in 2023, a Frenchman sold luxury goods…). The Tribune Tiberius Gracchus proposed and had the Populus (people voted directly!) vote a law to effect redistribution of these riches. Over the next generation, the “Optimates” would do their best to assassinate the thousands of individuals who were in position to help implement that law.

The latifundia ruined the plebian smallholders who had produced the essential of the agricultural supply of Rome. They had grown wheat, barley, beans, peas, chickpeas, olives… Pressed between long military duties, and having to manage their farms at a distance (through their wives and employees or trusted slaves), small Roman farmers were reduced to destitution. Tiberius Gracchus wrote that the lives of Roman soldiers were worse than that of wild beasts, who, at least, had dens they called home.

The exact same mechanism of emptying the core is at work today. It’s crucially helped by an ideology of “free trade”… which only Europe respects, thus explaining that the relative socio-economic collapse is greatest there... 

“Free Trade” pretends that all the economic policy that is needed is no trade barriers and everything will go for the best. That is in contradiction with millennia of economic history. When the Republic of Florence in the middle of the Middle Ages decided to exist, it had to pay for an army, and it did that by issuing bonds. Later, especially in the Seventeenth Century, France and England, Europe’s superpowers engage in state sponsored economics: mostly America and tobacco for England, a bit of everything else for France. The state sponsored glass maker famous for Versailles is still one of the world’s largest glass makers, four centuries later, employing 170,000 people in 75 countries. For centuries top European countries, and the US, followed the economic thought known as “mercantilism”…. The USA still does, and always did, but with Trump-Biden, mercantilism is back in force. Biden just brought up tariffs on Chinese goods, including electronics and electric cars by up to 100% (May 2024). Most of Chinese trade is with supine Europe, though…

When the Roman “Optimates” (the “Best”) tried to take power in Rome they disingenuously pretended that the leaders of their opponents from the “Populares”, the “Populists” wanted to make themselves “kings”. The epithet was hurled at the Gracchi, Marius and his nephew Caesar… Nowadays, it is hinted that Trump wants to become a king… But, more directly, “Populist” itself has become an insult… Whereas the assassins of Caesar disingenuously claimed that they acted in the name of the People, something they found the same day, and thereafter, to be completely false… In the present time, “People” has become an insult outright… While the so-called “democratic” leaders claim they are heading democracies, that is People-Powers. Even Roman optimates did not sink that low in contradiction in adjecto…

After a very timid start under Obama helping out SpaceX and Tesla (for reasons of sheer greed as US politicians invested in these, making fortunes as the laws they passed were so biased in favor of these boondoggles, that normal investors took them seriously only too late…), reindustrialization got in high gear under Trump… Biden then extended Trump’s work. In Europe, France, come 2024, which has been most affected by deindustrialization, talks the loudest about reindustrializing… But the road will be harder in Europe… Although Putin should be helping… After all, he is succeeding in his weaponization….

After winning the Cold War against the Soviets, the West relaxed and phased out its Defense Industrial Base (US President Ike’s MIC, the Military Industrial Complex), Professors with as little knowledge of wisdom, history and human nature proclaimed the “End of History”.,, As they considered we had achieved a perfect democratization to go along with our perfect civilization. This was obviously erroneous: the CO2 crisis was real and had no solution, as civilization depended crucially on fossil fuels and the fossil fuelists had paid the ecologists to focus on destroying nuclear energy, that is, the only alternative significant fuel source.

An analogy in Rome was the mining crisis. Rome depended crucially upon metals, for coinage, weapons and architecture. At the peak, Roman annual production of metals was close to 200,000 metric tons. Also total Roman silver was ten times that of the Caliphate in 800 CE… Silver was important for coinage: the Franks got theirs in Eastern Europe. China finally got enough silver for making coins from Potosi, Bolivia, thanks to the Conquistadores (beats carrying around bulky copper.) In the Seventh Century, the metal crisis got so acute that the metallic roofs of Rome were stripped to make weapons against the Arabs.    

But Rome had other ecological crises and pandemics: the Roman climate optimum finished just as smallpox appeared…There was also a demographic crisis, perhaps caused by the diminution of democracy. The Barbarians may have been barbaric, but they may have enjoyed more of a perverse form of democracy conducive to a higher birth rate, and certainly better living conditions out there in tents, rather than dense insalubrious conurbations…

After the destruction of the Occidental Roman army in 394 CE at the hand of Theodosius and his Goths, the West was thereafter defenseless. Perceiving weakness, the Barbarians charged in over the frozen Rhine.

The Barbarian tribes were small in numbers: a draft could have created armies of millions of Romans (they would have had to be armed!)… But the will of the Roman plutocrats was to stay in power, and thus make deals with the invaders whenever possible…. Better to associate the Barbarians as warriors… didn’t Augustus have German bodyguards?

There was a great replacement of population, synchronously with the rise of the fascist empire. Nowadays, the same is occurring: in most European countries, onerous taxes and decreased services make it difficult for the natives to have children: the money is redistributed to give immigrants, poor and somewhat illegal at some point a very good time, proportional to the number of children they have….

When you see the world’s wealthiest man, a Frenchman, at the presidential palace, with his family, one of the many top potentates going there, you know where such ideas come from: the European higher class fear a revolution… which would be instigated easily by looking at the tax code… critically… It advantages the wealthiest…

The same situation holds in the USA… But it’s somehow not as degenerated as yet. Reconstituting the Defense Industrial Base is proving difficult: a flood of money can’t replace competence. And competence comes from education, that takes time. In some European countries, and France there again is the poster girl, a society of consumers has been created: all they want is panem et circenses… All they can want is that: they have no other competence. 

And the plutocrats know just one thing: competent Westerners may mean their denial. No wonder they were so fond of Putin… But then Putin proved to be his own man… And broke the spell…

In the demise of Rome, the slow rise of crises was a factor: the Roman leaders could argue there was no crisis, just a plague, just some lucky Barbarians, until the system broke, for all to see, between emperor Philip The Arab (who ruled 5 years) and Aurelianus, a generation later….

Now we are facing at the very least, for all to see, nuclear Armageddon (from Putin, and if not him, others arming themselves to the nuclear teeth…), terminal ecological crisis (from half a dozen crises, and pieces of oceans are dying here and there…), and a democratic crisis: dictatorship are appearing all over… Potentially nuclear armed, it’s not a matter of sending a gunship to put in place more amenable types…

Rome could have engaged in an industrial revolution by fostering innovation deliberately and intensely as a government policy. We have this encouragement to innovation now… At least in the USA. We saw it in the 1960s, and now again under Trump, followed by Biden… Europe had state encouragement of innovation for centuries… That was launched by the Franks: a Merovingian queen like Brunehilde made a writer such as Fortunatus in Italy a proposal he couldn’t refuse, and he went to her court in Francia.

The European tech singularity was greatly caused by Bathilde’s outlawing of slavery and the sale of children… In the Seventh Century… It was well worth executing a few bishops (bishops loved armies of slaves).

The European pro-innovation, pro-progress tradition has now been considerably weakened by “woke”. “Woke” has been keen to accuse Europe of having invaded the world… although a closer examination shows that Europeans, with their more advanced tech, made to the Natives proposal they couldn’t refuse: the conquest of the Aztecs by 1,500 Conquistadores and an army of 100,000 Natives is exemplary that way… Amusingly the exception is the USA where a genocide happened. Indeed, the Neolithic occupants were outright destroyed by English speaking colonists… while the French were much more respectful of the Natives (and this ios why the French lost, and why the Spaniards outright stopped the Conquista in the 16 C for ethical reasons…)

The sort of poisonous thinking known under various names according to its various aspects: wokism, “French Theory”, “decolonization”… a current of thought which started to fester especially in France after the bitter victory of World War One, and which the Kremlin and Washington have found profitable to encourage…

The present situation is far from desperate: logically, Europeans should realize their civilization is facing imminent destruction. Differently from Rome in 406 CE, the situation is still recoverable…. But, just like Rome in Fourth Century, it’s a military situation… First and proximal. And just as Rome did not do in the Fourth Century, augmenting democracy would help considerably the military angle.

Good democracy, good military: the Greek city-states, and Republican Rome demonstrated this in ample fashion. Putin is the most militaristic plutocrat, and probably the most satanic… But he arose from his peers, or as plutocrat Lavrov, his foreign minister, says:”our colleagues“… We need to rearm in more than one way…

Patrice Ayme  

Superior generalship of Hannibal, and excellent Celtic mercenaries in his center, enabled Hannibal to envelop the Roman army at Cannae and compress it… Under a rain of ballistics (from slingers and archers). Roughly the same scenario happened at Hadrianopolis in 379 CE, six centuries later.

The losses at Cannae had been nearly double those at Adrianopolis… However by the time of Adrianopolis, Rome was a plutocracy and Theodosius would replace the Roman army elite by… the Goths… who had won at Adrianopolis… Whereas after Cannae, Trasimene, etc. even after giant losses, Rome was able to draft more Roman legions… Interestingly the Roman state of 379 CE had ten times more people, hence potentially could have drafted millions…

Financial Parasite Jim Simons And His Pet Biden

Jim Simons was a financial manipulator. Differently from the capitalists whom Marx or Lenin knew, Simons created no value whatsoever. Simons, a genuine mathematician (a student of the Chinese turned US differential geometer SS Chern, famous for the Chern-Simons differential form) got the idea of becoming a pure financial parasite. So doing he made friends in high places who enabled him in turn to keep on parasiting, as all became wealthy in the process:

The picture has it all: the professional invader of Iraq, the financial parasite, and the plutocratic university manioulated by them both. Jim Simons, the financial parasitr, right, giving the accolade to whom he financed, and whom enabled Simons, in return to be what he could be… a financial parasite who should have been unlawful… Biden was elected Senator of Delaware, the world’s number one tax haven… While Biden could not yet serve as Senator, he was not 30 yet…

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Here is the WSJ about chain-smoker Simons:

“Jim Simons, a mathematician who became one of the most successful investors in modern financial history, has died at age 86.

A cutting-edge code breaker and geometer, Simons helped pioneer a revolution in trading, embracing a computer-oriented, quantitative style in the 1980s well ahead of the Wall Street crowd. He and his team employed trading algorithms and artificial intelligence to outperform the market—and the likes of Warren Buffett and George Soros. Later, Simons became a political donor and an influential philanthropist in the worlds of science, health and education.

Simons, the son of a Boston shoe-factory executive, developed an early passion for mathematics and ignored the advice of the family physician who urged him to steer clear of the field because he wouldn’t make a living. The warning proved misplaced.“

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Simons and his fellow “Quants” found ways to extract profits from the Brownian motions of the markets. That sounds admirable until one realizes that it’s like an infinite motion machine… And a sheer impossibility… except if one somehow manipulates the markets by running the very trends one profits from, which is feasible if one has a huge amount of money. And indeed Simons made his money all of a sudden. The tempting explanation is that, once a sufficient size was obtained, Renaissance, from its sheer bulk, manipulated the markets it traded on. 

Another worry is that ultra fast trading led by AI may well trade with itself the markets into oblivion. Instantaneous trading ruins causality. To reintroduce causality a speed limit should be imposed. That is, the speed of trading.

As originally conceived, stock markets allowed investors to finance companies and control their fate. However Quants just make money, they are not interested in what companies do, or financing them. Ultimately, where does the Quants money come from? From conventional investors and companies. But there is only so much profit one can extract from a market. Once the Quants, who have no interest in how wealth is created, have taken all the wealth, the rest of society is ruined. .. and unmotivated. One should not be able to make money for oneself in all and any manner. Quants should be much more tightly regulated, and the speed of their trading bounded.  Otherwise, among other things, the markets imploding in a financial blackhole is not excluded.

A high powered lawyer in London objected:

Jay Krause said: “Nope…read Zukerman’s book. The Medallion fund has been kept small so that it doesn’t manipulate markets.“

Answer from PA-Tyranosopher: The Medallion fund was known to be at least 165 billion US dollars in April 2021, which is enormously gigantic, and the largest managed fund in 2021. I don’t need to read a propaganda book, one number is enough, and speaks more volumes. And the fact is, there are cases known where RT manipulated the markets (as in the potato case exposed in the WSJ).

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Real technologists such as Elon Musk are one thing. “Quants” are the exact opposite. Jim Simons, like other Quants, who tend to support Democrats, their pupetts the political operatives, call themselves “lovers of man” philanthropists, because the notion of loving people is so special to them… Direct democracy would not have such manipulators around…

Patrice Ayme

Hurling Fascist And Judicial Charges At The Opposition Is Not Democratic

Europe is becoming a rudder without a ship. It’s useful to beat people to a pulp, but little else besides.

The so-called “right” is, at last, progressing everywhere. And it should: all the other parties are little else but plutocratic devices, designed by the same “elite” which brought Putin, inflation, deindustrialization impoverishment, and constant accusations that everybody else is a fascist. Europe is falling behind all its peers, including Australia, USA, Canada, Korea, China and India… Yes, I know, shocking… Even Putin’s tyranny is growing faster than decebrated Europe. Now to this Europe’s politicians have tended to reply: we prefer to degrow. Degrowing civilization are nothing new: Rome spent three century degrowing before military catastrophe. As Vladimir would say, this time it’s going to happen faster… Hey, Vlad wants to help: he has proposed to insure the defense of Europe, all of it… Already twenty years ago… European ingrates have spurned him…

In Italy blonde Georgia Meloni is governing very well. She used to be mocked because she barely finished high school. But she is obviously smart in a creative way instead of just being a knowledgeable parrot. Various insults were hurled at her: she was a fascist aspiring to Vladimir’s bed, she hated homosexuals, etc. The homosexual thingie was a falsification: some mild measures were taken to reinforce a law against having a woman carry a baby for money… But the law was as old as 2004 and exists in most European countries, for example France.

Giorgia Meloni, above, has been successful, so far, in great part because she took the plutocratic establishment by surprise. Also she is focusing on projects the plutocratic establishment finds hard to attack, such as limiting torrid African illegal administration by empowering African governments to do so. The plutocratic establishment has been using the massive illegal African hamster like immigration wave as a way to divide the population, arguing that Africans have terrible African governments and countries because of the African slave trade three centuries ago, etc… As if slavery was a European invention when in truth African slaves getting to Europe were immediately freed, even in fascist Medieval Spain… Bathilde had made slavery unlawful in 657 CE.

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The core of France’s Rassemblement National is made of workers and individuals who themselves and often by family tradition, voted on the left. Latest polls in France show that more than 45% of manual “workers” (“ouvriers”) intend to vote for Marine Le Pen’s party. For many decades, Marine’s party was represented as “fascist”. However her father had been the youngest member of Parliament. For decades, the establishment prosecuted father and daughter, who were both members of the European Parliament, not just the French Assembly, under the charge of employing employees to do something else than what they were paid to do. 

For years, the loud left wing accused them of criminality because of these far-fetched charges. However now the same charge is used against opposition newspapers owners and editorialists. 

The point? Accusing the opposition to be fascist and using the “justice” system against it is actually anti-democratic. 

All over Europe, authoritarian methods are now used, especially in matters relative to transportations and inhabitation. “Socialist” France is making it very difficult to inhabit a home and drive a car. One can’t even pay for rent in advance. Illegal too renting a non super ecological place. A small double panned apartment may cost thousands of dollars in electricity. Healthcare? Forget it. All the doctors have fled to expensive enclaves, like Switzerland. Somehow, doctors feel entitled to have a home and drive a car (the car better have self-driving features to avoid the automatic radars keen to catch speedsters, when speed varies from block to block… Without that fancy AI tech, fines will pile up and they depend exponentially upon time… and points will be withdrawn…)  

Europe is in a terrible crisis, and increasingly voters feel that any change will be better than this enfolding disaster. This time the plutocratic establishment is finding it hard to explain why the “right”, those who like to have a car, a house, reasonable heating and food bills, and not being harassed by laws, decrees, regulations and administrations, should not have the right to vote for people the plutocratic establishment profess to hate…. for “racist” reasons… the establishment howls… while not daring to try to explain why this obsession with racism is not itself racist…

In July, horror of horrors, Victor Orban and Hungary will assume the presidency of Europe… Hungary has been much hated because it pushed the winning theme, through the last three elections, that Hungary should make Hungarians happy…

The present state of Europe is best depicted by the following tragedy. An Afghan refugee in France. He had the political refugee status… Although he was an Islamist fanatic. During Ramadan, he sees two Algerian tourists. Algerians from Algeria are drinking alcohol in Bordeaux. So the Afghan goes to the presumably Muslim Algerians and order them to stop drinking. The Algerians tell him to mind his own business. The Afghan stabs both Algerians grieviously, killing one of the two.

Now things are changing slowly: France just expelled her second Islamist violence and mayhem preacher… in five months, thanks to a new law. The fact is, many and presumably most, flee from Muslim countries because they flee Islamist terror. Europe should make sure it can’t implant itself… As in Gaza! This, and finding money to build an instant Defense Industrial Basis, DIB, for Ukraine… After all, even Vladimir could build himself a DIB in two years… Ah, but Vladimir believes in growth, even malignant growth…

Patrice Ayme

Can Economics Be Made Into An Exact Science? If So, How?

AWE 2024

Money is the measure of economics. However money is not objective, but eminently subjective. So can money be made objective? [1]

Money gives power. Power is energy by unit of time. Energy is the driving principle of the universe. One could actually base money on energy alone. This is called AWE: Absolute Worth Energy.

If one does that, economics can now become an exact science. With AI, the AWE of each object, product, or… person… could be determined.

The basic idea of AWE is to compute how much energy one has to put to make a piece of steel, or a doctor’s diploma possible. It requires large computational power and refined observations of how much energy is spent even on secondary or tertiary tasks…

Money, as presently used in economics, is mostly created by banks… which lend preferably to the wealthy. Thus money is  a measure of how much hope… or greedy computation, is put into various individuals or projects. This makes money a great enabler of plutocracy, the power of evil and money (Pluto was the god of both). 

Thus money, as it is, is not objective. However AWE is only about physics, it’s objective..That’s why economics using AWE will become objective, thus fairer.

AWE: ENERGY IS THE FUNDAMENTAL UNIT OF ECONOMICS.

Everything has an AWE… not just skyscrapers, even flowers!

Patrice Ayme

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[1] We use the concept of “measure” as found in mathematics. The concept of a measure is a generalization and formalization of geometrical measures (length, area, volume) and other common notions… AWE makes economics into a measurable space…

Wannabe Dictator Trumps Democracy

Is the Iraq invasion, a war crime promoted by Senior Senator Biden for more than a decade before it happened, and condemned by Trump in 2003, behind the entire vilification of Trump from way back?

It’s not “any candidate”. It’s not “any crime”. It’s the “Main Opponent”. By criminalizing its Main Opponent, who is supported by roughly 1/2 of the population, and accusing him of espionage, 400 years in prison, the state criminalized democracy, and turned to farcical dictatorship. Trump used to be commander in chief, now Biden has promoted Trump into the spy in chief (and himself in wanabe dictator). 

The judgment of history will be pitiless… and the pandora box is open. What should never have happened, just happened. Don’t like the Main Opponent? Just charge him criminally. Senegal just did this, and one must fear that democracy will not survive there, either. There is no case in history where a democracy survived the criminalization of the main opponent. Moreover, in 26 centuries of combined French, English and US history, not one leader was ever accused of espionage. Such facts may not even be seen as relevant to those who have not studied history in depth. But history has studied history in depth.

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Nicholas Kristof is one of the NYT’s most famous journalists, leaning left and devoted to third world pain… But always interesting. Like the rest of establsihment, he has jumped on the anti-Trump bandwagon, and is afraid of only one thing more than any other: that Trump gets re-elected… And governs behind bars. (That’s unlikely as the president has the power to pardon himself…)

Nicholas Kristof replied to my comment above:

@Patrice Ayme Thanks for your comment, but I would just note that it wasn’t President Biden who criminalized his opponent, as you put it. It was Donald Trump who allegedly criminalized himself by, according to the indictment, committing 37 felonies. It’s all very well to say that a president shouldn’t persecute an opponent, but what happens if a presidential candidate does commit felonies? Are you arguing that candidates should enjoy impunity and be above the law?

***

I wrote in turn:

@Nicholas Kristof “According to the indictment”… an indictment which came from Biden (through 2 subordinates). 31 of the 37 counts –  stem from the Espionage Act. 

It looks as if Biden would have accused Trump of witchcraft… if that had been in the US penal code. 

Trump is not just a candidate. History shows that, each time a Main Opponent has been criminally accused, the democracy or the republic so afflicted thereafter collapsed. Moreover, Trump is not just a Main Opponent, he is an ex-president. In the Roman Republic ex-Consuls, called Proconsuls, had special powers and prerogatives. It was understood that attacking a Proconsul was attacking the Republic, and lictors protected them, as the secret service protects ex-presidents. 

Demonizing (“31 felonies”) a Main Opponent is how the Roman Republic went down. And yet Tiberius Gracchus was only verbally charged, not formally criminally charged, and the Centuriate Assembly voted for the redistribution law the Tribune was accused of. 

Tiberius was hysterically accused of being a tyrant, by the wealthy who then, as now, manipulated the media. Ultimately the spirit of debate was itself criminalized, and the “Optimates” (the best) started to criminally charge their opponents.. 

Successors of Tiberius such as Marius, who saved Rome from the Germans, and his nephew Caesar, a Consul, were formally criminally charged. Like Trump. That launched devastating civil wars, and Roman society exploded in factions. Even after Marius was condemned to death, and fled for his life, he was re-elected Consul (for the 7th time)… (Marius died of pneumonia while preparing for war against a general who became Rome’s first illegal dictator).

Major (war) crimes such as the invasion of Iraq were not prosecuted (the war authorization was recently withdrawn). Such grave crimes should be prosecuted. The Iraq war was launched under trumped up charges… And one of the main artisans of these trumped charges now charged Trump with… criminal behavior. 

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Trump is persecuted because he accused the authors of the Iraq war to have lied and to have lied knowingly so. Those authors are now in power.

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Vince, New Jersey

@Patrice Ayme so be it then. Our laws are to be upheld and enforced, regardless of what may or may not happen in the future. If the country fractures, so be it.

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Vince: What about prosecuting the invasion of Iraq? How come the country didn’t fracture after killing dozens of thousands of Iraqis, or more? How come those elected politicians who lied about Iraq, and knew they lied, were not prosecuted? One cares about boxes, but not about Iraqis? Aren’t war crimes against US laws? Isn’t making war under false pretense a grave crime?

In case you don’t know, Biden pressed for the invasion of Iraq for 15 years, or so… And was crucial in the war authorization…  withdrawn a few weeks ago… 

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Xoxarle, Tampa

So if you are the Main Opponent, you get to break laws with impunity? No consequences at all? Holding lawbreakers accountable isn’t a sign of a banana republic, it’s the lack of holding them accountable.

@Xoxarle: Banana republics follow their interpretations of their laws. Opponents are never jailed illegally. The laws are contrived to suit the (imaginary) crimes. 

These formal charges about boxes, threatening the Main Opponent with 400 years in prison for holding secret boxes, are trumped up charges. And the proof is that the government recovered the boxes. And several others have held secret boxes for years, and were not prosecuted.

The charges are nearly as ridiculous as if Trump had been charged with not using the pedestrian crosswalk. Yes, that’s a crime too. But as someone who walks or runs in the streets, I don’t feel such “crimes” should be prosecuted.

The threat to democracy the formal charges against the Main Opponent and ex-president convey is not commensurate with the alleged crime.

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Anthony Washington State

@Patrice Ayme “Half the population” doesn’t support Trump. It’s much lower. Trump can’t win in a general election. Trump leaves chaos in his wake, and most Americans aren’t interested in enabling Trump’s sole campaign plank: retribution against his perceived “political enemies. Most Americans understand that Trump doesn’t care about anyone but Trump. They also understand that DeSantis is unelectable in a general election. Want a Republican in the White House? Tim Scott or Nikki Haley are safer bets. Want to return to the Party of Reagan? Chris Christie is your best corporate Republican. Want a good and decent man? Probably Romney, though he has the same big business philosophy as Christie. But Trump? Nah. We’re on to that grifting, dictator wannabee.

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@Anthony Maybe to all, but irrelevant. The Main Opponent has been criminally charged, as if we were in Putin’s Russia. Main Opponents are well-known demons… from the wannabe dictators’ point of view.   

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Matthew Salt Lake City

Presumably, Ms. Ayme believes that, at some point, we would arrive at a criminal line that cannot be crossed by a president or, as she puts it, the “main opponent.” I wonder what that line is, if not a refusal to obey federal law, wanton disregard for the nation’s military secrets, and an effort to obstruct justice. These are the crimes as alleged, and the former president will get his day in court, as any American accused of a crime. If he should be exempt from this treatment, pray tell what is the line that couldn’t be crossed? May the “main opponent” shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue?

@Matthew Well, Biden got away with being one of the main architects of the Iraq invasion, and certainly the earliest… Nobody, especially not so-called Democrats, seems to have noticed… So the bar is pretty high….

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John Probably Colorado Springs

@Patrice Ayme You’re correct that our democracy may not survive, but you are perfectly incorrect about the reason. Pay attention to your sources and try again.

@John Probably: Being petulant is not being informative. My sources are myself and I, and I pay attention to them. You did not make explicit “the reason” why I am wrong… so we can’t advance in this debate. 

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MJB Brooklyn

@Patrice Ayme I’m confused as to why we brought up espionage charges. Nothing in this indictment accuses Trump of espionage, so while you are correct that it hasn’t happened before – it still hasn’t happened. As for convicting former presidents and prime ministers on various charges, France has done it. Twice. History should be studied in depth, indeed.

@MJB I never liked ex-president Sarkozy. But he was not accused of espionage. However the charges against him are deeply offensive to democracy, basic liberties and the separation of powers. Sarkozy’s conversations with his lawyers were spied on, and he committed no crime. The judges said he intended to commit crimes. 

If the French Supreme Court equivalent (“Cassation”) does not break the conviction against Sarkozy, there is no doubt the European Supreme Court will do it.

It will be deeply humiliating for France, and will call attention to the fact that the French judicial establishment is highly partisan.

The Fillon story is not much better. Fillon looked as if he could be the main opponent, and he had committed a real crime (paying his wife a tiny measly salary to do nothing).  So Macron got elected.  By the way a similar tactic was used against Marine Le Pen… And her parliamentary immunity was removed for a while… but she is herself a lawyer… and she survived.

***

Eric Vanderhoff, Burke, VA

It was the special prosecutor, a career prosecutor, not a political appointee, who charged Trump. And a grand jury that indicted him. “But history has studied history in depth”. What in the world does that mean?

PA to @Eric Vanderhoff That means that history will look only at the biggest picture: the sitting president criminally prosecuted his predecessor, and Main Opponent. 

That Garland, appointed by Biden, in turn appointed a fellow Democrat prosecutor, etc…  All these specious details will be nothing to history.

***

Peer Gynt, US

@Patrice Ayme The former president has not been accused of espionage. He has been accused of violating the espionage act, which defines a multitude of crimes. The charge is that he took documents, he knew it, he knew they were classified, and he knew he shouldn’t have them. When asked to return them, he refused. He fought a subpoena. He tried to cover up his actions. And finally a search warrant was issued.

PA to @Peer Gynt Trump had the power and right to declassify any document whatsoever. Probably Trump kicked a cat too, the Biden prosecutor should have looked more carefully. History wants even more charges, so it will look even more ridiculous and a source of hilarity in centuries to come, twinged with the sadness of what may happen next…

***

AM Greensboro, North Carolina

@Patrice Ayme “It’s not “any candidate”. it’s not “any crime”. It’s the “Main Opponent”. By criminalizing its Main Opponent, supported by roughly 1/2 of the population, and accusing him of espionage, 400 years in prison, the state criminalized democracy, and turned to farcical dictatorship.” 

That really is simplistic thinking that essentially would make Trump, or any other candidate, immune to prosecution for any crime which is something that should never happen in a country with a strong rule of law. If Trump is convicted it will be after a grand jury agreed to charge him based on evidence, he got a trial, and a jury of citizens voted that he was guilty. This is far from a case of arbitrary detention. If anything, prosecutors have been exceptionally deferential to him.

Patrice Ayme, Berkeley to @AM The appointed Garland engineered the whole thing…

***

The blindness, criminality and gullibility of average Democrats is astounding. But, in the end, they approved of the Iraq invasion. By excoriating Trump, they excoriate one rare celebrity in the USA who opposed the Iraq invasion while it happened, in 2003. By attacking Trump as morality uncouth, they imply that Biden, the main architect, in the fullness of time, of the invasion of Iraq, was morally upright, so the invasion of Iraq was morally correct… So supporters of the invasion of Iraq are ethically splendid, in the end… So attacking Trump is self-serving.

Too bad democracy has to be flushed down the toilet, but so it was in 2003…

In an interview with Charlie Rose on March 20, 2003, the day after the start of the war, Rose asked about Biden’s comment that the war was the biggest roll of the dice by a president he had seen during his 30 years in the Senate. Biden said that comment referred to “the willingness to go without any real consensus in the world community… I think there’s a payoff at the end and that is Saddam Hussein being separated from weapons of mass destruction and enforcing a U.N. commitment made by Saddam about those weapons,” Biden said (Biden knew there were no weapons of mass destruction).

“I all along, Charlie, believed the right decision is to separate him from his weapons and/or separate him from power,” Biden said. “If the U.N. didn’t do it, do it?” Rose interjected.

“Yes, you’ve gotta do it,” Biden said. “Now, it’s not the time to argue it, but I am disturbed at the lost opportunities we had to bring the rest of the world along with us to this point. … And I think we have an opportunity in the aftermath of this war to repair those kinds of breaches and end up where we should be anyway, which is having made the right decision to take him down, and having not fractured in any permanent way alliances and opportunities that we’re going to need available to us, Charlie, to deal with other major problems facing us in the world, from the Korean peninsula to South Asia, to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Biden continued to make similar comments in the months after the war started.

For example, in a Brookings Institution address on July 31, 2003, Biden again defended his vote to authorize the use of military force in Iraq.

The Bush administration was “right to confront the challenge posed by Saddam thumbing his nose at the world and refusing — refusing — to alter his conduct,” Biden said. “Contrary to what some in my party might think, Iraq was a problem that had to be dealt with sooner, rather than later. So I commend the president.“

Biden had urged to put “boots on the ground in Iraq, guys like you in the desert to take him down. We shouldn’t kid ourselves… he has concluded he can absorb air strikes….” in the 1990s. Five years before the invasion, at a 1998 Senate hearing he chaired, Biden argued that “taking this son of a bitch, taking Saddam down” was the only way to guarantee Iraq’s disarmament.

But, hey, Trump had the boxes… Proving the whole thing?

Patrice Ayme

Flaunting Wealth Is A Plutocratic Trick

 It is reported that Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court enjoys being a pet of billionaire Harlan Crow. Nothing surprising here: so-called “Justices”gaily frolick with the wealthy and mighty, and some of them are suspiciously rich.

Thomas enjoyed vacations on Harlan’s gigantic superyacht. Worldwide there are around 6,000 superyachts (more than 30 meters long). That’s more than ever, and their numbers are growing rapidly. Superyacht cost a huge amount of money to purchase, maintain and operate, they are a more spectacular symbol of wealth than private jets. Private jets are one percent of US CO2 emissions. They are government subsidized, in several ways, and typically cost nothing to those who use them, because of tax tricks. When this is pointed out, the standard retort is that the private jet industry employs more than one million US citizens. (Well, the slave industry used to employ even more… And got cancelled, although it was not in the business of killing the planet…)

Private aviation added 37 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere in 2016, more than the annual emissions of Hong Kong or Ireland. Since then emissions have multiplied. In Western Europe alone in 2022 the carbon dioxide from private jets was more than Uganda – a country of some 46 million people – produces in a year. Private jets should be banned, just as private slaves are banned, because they poison the biosphere, thus poison us all, something arguably more toxic than private slavery and Greenpeace agrees (finally!) 

In a typical show of contempt for We The People, influencer Kylie Jenner took a 17-minute flight between two regional airports in California. One Twitter user wrote, “kylie jenner is out here taking 3 minute flights with her private jet, but I’m the one who has to use paper straws.” Many plutocrats engage in such public narcistic energy consumption: it’s free advertizing of their unjust power, hence foster their allure, all the more with a zest of sulfur, and taxpayers pay for it [1].

***

Why would powerful individuals want to flaunt their wealth? To become even more powerful! Flaunting power attracts followers! Power attracts power! The syndrome goes back to Rome when the wealthy organized ultra-expensive games, complete with tigers, elephants and pricey gladiators: game and fame financiers became loved by the rabble, thus influential.

Who are today’s wealthy trying to impress? Those they are trying to influence, and transform psychologically into begging pigeons! Not so much the average voter, with whom they don’t intersect. Instead the public of those who flaunt ultra wealth is the intermediate corps of influencers, journalists, politicians, regulators, judges, lawyers, professors, etc., all of those who make society go where the wealthiest want them to go. They all meet in parties and other social occasions, including vacations and fancy conferences… Those who do really well will be invited on the jets, the superyachts, or the grandly named “World Economic Forum”.

We are in an extreme wealth concentration, surpassing the so-called Gilded Age, when the US West was economically developed, through the immigration of millions. Differently from the Gilded Age, oligarchs now are much more powerful. They are full blown plutocrats, with the full power of evil: in the 1930s, and 1940s, they financed and directly invested with fascist dictators (Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler, Hirohito, Franco, etc…), before switching on them. Nowadays Western politics, propelled by oligarch influence, has been to finance and directly invest with nuclear armed superpowers (Russia, China).

***

Private planes and yachts are extremely damaging to the environment. Some of these creatures fly private jets just a few minutes, instead of using ground transportation for a few miles. Ludicrous damage to the environment for fun is not a flaw as far as plutocrats are concerned, but a quality: it demonstrates their worth, and that the world is ruled by terrifying plutocrats ready to sacrifice all of the biosphere on the altar of (their own) evil glorified. 

The US became a middle class society after 1945, because 16 million young men had been armed physically and psychologically, and trained to kill in the name of liberty from oppression. It would have been dangerous to treat them unjustly. The GI Bill made sure that it won’t happen.

A lot of the erroneous policies followed by the planet, such as non-decarbonification or empowering dictators by making them provide all what democracies need, originate with this evil, the enormous influence of plutocrats… and for the good reason that they are the prime beneficiaries of it… Plutocrats, being evil, do best with their most evil colleagues, the tyrants. Be it only because they set the agenda. Recently Biden said the ultra rich paid only 3% tax on income. What does he propose to do about it? Persecute the middle class with adding 87,000 agents to the IRS as US president Biden proposed to do? Most of the billionaire tax evasion is perfectly legal: the billionaires paid the legislators to make it so. 

What to do? The ultra wealthy often borrow to buy themselves everything. So I proposed that: tax borrowing for personal use should be taxed as income above, say 20 million dollars.   

***

DECAPITATE PLUTOCRACY:

For centuries, the Roman Republic had a 100% wealth tax above around 50 million dollars of total wealth. Because of globalization that Roman Republican anti-plutocratic tax failed after the Second Punic war: possessions overseas were not taxed by Rome! Plutocrats then grabbed land from the empoverished middle class.

In an epic struggle against corruption, tribune Tiberius Gracchus passed a law in 133 BCE to make sure the old redistribution law outlawing hyper wealth was enforced. Plutocrats (calling themselves “the best”, “Optimates”) reacted with fury, assassinating Tiberius, delaying the implementation of the law, and then having killed the Gracchi, also assassinated their fellow-travelers, and more than 5,000 of the partisans of land reform, the lex agraria. A similar law was imposed just once by Consul Caesar in 59 BCE, over the Senate’s enraged resistance, and the Senate hated Caesar thereafter. In a quick succession of massacres and civil war, much of the population of Rome was killed, and finally Augustus, Caesar’s grand nephew and adoptive son, established his military dictatorship masquerading as a decaying republic. 

Rome died as a republic over the next few centuries… The blow in the Occident was the religious war battle of Frigidus in 394 CE, when the Occidental Roman army was destroyed, enabling the Barbarian invasions. Then, all over after 540 CE, emperor Justinian inebriated by the recovery of North Africa, but then enfeebled by volcanism and the plague, thoroughly destroyed Rome, thanks to delirious war conducted by his general Belisarius…

But then part of the spirit of the Roman Republic was revived… And now has gone urbi et orbi… Although the direct descendants (France, Europe, Anglo-Saxons) are more faithful to the best of the republic than ersatzes such as the Putinodrome, or People Republic Of China… The problem remains, and it is the core of how civilizations collapse most often, plutocracy survived in command, even though representative democracy grew back… And now plutocracy is more powerful than ever.

Rome collapsed… Until she was “renovated” as the Franks put it. And here we are! A plutocracy chain reaction, unbound, is what brought Rome down. Since then we have been experiencing controlled plutocracy… Until now, when, clearly, the evil-power os out off bonds and threatening not just civilization, humanity but also the biosphere itself!

And, since it is the plutocracy which is control and empowered for example, strongman Xi or tyrant Putin, it is the plutocracy which is culprit, and should charged and executed…. supposing, all too optimistically, that We the People can find enough residual power, somewhere, to do so.

Some may object that, should plutocracy be made illegal, we would not have around business geniuses such as Elon Musk… Well, not really: Musk’s businesses grew mostly from government subsidies and other people’s money. His personal wealth got leveraged just once in the growing of SpaceX until around 2009 (and then a NASA contract saved SpaceX). I do not propose to do away with adventurous capitalism, and not even of the subsidized sort… As long as public control can be exerted. For example, the US government (“We The People”) could bankrupt SpaceX overnight, simply by withdrawing financial support and, or, closing down various authorizations (like the one of launching rockets).

Closing down the world plutocratic influential web is something else, a good thing. Shutting down entrepreneurs would be a bad thing. The worldwide plutocratic web is ubiquitous, all over all minds, and extremely insidious.

As all formidable tasks, shutting down plutocracy must be done one step at a time. The first step is that plutocrats can’t enjoy yachts and private jets anymore. That should be easy, with the appropriate legislation on how much personal CO2 one can emit. Thereafter, limit non-business personal borrowing….

Patrice Ayme

***

[1] The case of strict business flying, as when Elon Musk shuttles between distant businesses during the day, could be made, but under strict and drastic supervision, with thorough justifications which could be automated by, say, AI.

Trumped Charges Against Trump, Banana Republic Style

Trump was charged of 34 “felonies” (the worst sort of crime). Trump was charged 34 times criminally… but in a convoluted way: his tax accountant did not declare explicitly 34 times that a porn star was paid to end a sex extortion scheme, but, instead, simply listed the 130,000 dollars payment to the porn star as “legal expense”.

Erroneous bookkeeping is at most a “misdemeanor” with a statute of limitation of 2 years. Hillary Clinton had a similar problem with the Steele dossier (a bunch of lies from a UK agent which she used criminally). She was ordered to pay a fine, although her action was a clear crime disqualifying her as president (by the way, I had been pro-Hillary in the 1990s and 2000s, advising Obama to select her as VP) [1].

Statute of limitation? Therein the rub, Statute of Limitations for a Misdemeanor under NY Law. Under New York law, CPL § 30.10(2)(a), a “prosecution for a misdemeanor must be commenced within two years after the commission thereof.”

So how did Bragg, New York DA, turn around that? By inventing an unnamed Federal crime.

Bragg charges that the euphemism employed by the accountant (usual for an NDA) covered up an (unnamed) Federal crime. And this misrepresentation covering up that mystery, unnamed, Federal crime, presumably having to do with violation of campaign financing, that bookkeeping error, happened 34 times. Never mind that Federal authorities, including the Biden administration and the Federal Electoral Commission, found no violation, let alone a Federal crime, precisely in this porn star matter [2]. 

The allegation by Trump haters was that the payment was a campaign contribution done wrong (by individuals not Trump!) That allegation was found to be incorrect by all Federal authorities.

This flimsiest and most convoluted judicial masquerade, where the main opponent is charged on sex related matters is typical of democracies breaking down.

In Malaysia the present Prime Minister received 9 and then 5 years in prison for “sodomy”. That prevented him from becoming PM for two decades when he was the leading opposition figure.

The present president of Brazil, Lula, after two mandates as Brazilian president, was accused of “corruption” and spent 580 days in prison.

The charge against Lula was that he had a nice apartment (worth a couple million dollars) which only corruption money could have financed (as Lula had just been an union worker before getting into politics as a socialist)..   

Both Malaysia and Brazil corrected the wrong of sending the main opposition figure to prison on trumped up charges, by finally reelecting said main opposition figure, and have thus re-established their democratic credentials. The US may have to do the same, the same way. 

Patrice Ayme

[1] Hillary Clinton hired Fusion GPS to fabricate accusations against Mr. Trump as a Russian agent and peddle them to the FBI—and her campaign covered up the expenditure as “legal expenses” in direct contravention of federal election laws requiring the clear disclosure of the ultimate beneficiary of such payments. After six years, the Federal Election Commission fined Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee $113,000 for these civil violations. Don’t expect any indictments, because much of the judicial system at this point is part of the oligarchic-Democratic machine…. Even though the Steele dossier set off a pointless $32 million special-counsel investigation and tied up the country for years in knots about the president being a Russian agent, until it finally came out that the whole affair was manufactured by the Clinton campaign to start with.

***

[2] To recap and make a parody of the convoluted charges: According to DA Bragg, more than 7 years ago, Trump’s accountant dropped the equivalent of a banana peel, a misdemeanor. Mislabelling that banana dropped peel sex crime enabled Trump to hide that he may have encountered a porn star, and this misrepresentation enabled Trump to become US president, a violation of Fed law, hence of NY law, says Bragg… whose electoral campaign slogan was to “get Trump”!

***

Hours after former President Donald Trump was indicted in relation to a payment made to Stormy Daniels, the adult film star and extortion artist was ordered by the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals to pay more than $121,000 for Trump’s legal fees in another (extortion) case. 

The fees are owed for work by several lawyers at two law firms, Harder LLP and Dhillon Law Group.

P/S: The technical aforesaid aspects (that Lula of Brazil and Anwar Ibrahim of Malysia war right now elected and ruling, after spending years in prison on trumped up charges) were censored in comments sent to the New York Times, propaganda media. Such trumped charges are facts, byt the NYT doesn’t want its readers to be aware of them…

Evil In Guise Of Good

Evil In Guise Of Good Hiding In Plain Sight, All Over… And Evil Masquerading As Good Can Collapse Civilization:

I have never been to the famous Berkeley restaurant Chez Panisse, and never will be, although I passed by it thousands of times. Chez Panisse embodied, in the USA, for decades the principle of Political Correctness… And Political Correctness contravenes my personal Philosophical Correctness! (Ever since Socrates we know that political, let alone judicial, correctness can be at odds with philosophical correctness!)

I didn’t go to this fake French restaurant because it would have violated many of my deep principles, from the political to the culinary, including the principle of being a professional party pooper, much unappreciated, as deserved… Besides, I probably cook better and healthier…

Chez Panisse looked to me as a tasteless example of evil in the guise of good.

Friend John Michael Gartland agreed:

I have been there. It is nice in theory but it is self congratulatory, over political, over sanctimonious, just too woke. Dining should be a respite from politics. Diners are treated as lucky and blessed to snag a table at this sacred temple of food. A warm sincere welcome would have been nice. At the same time, there is integrity to the mission/vision of Alice Waters. She didn’t invent the farm to table movement but she sure knew how to promote and monetize it. If even half of what the praise she gets is true she is quite accomplished. As a diner in her food factory of a restaurant I just didn’t get a sense of what all the hype was all about.

Yes. I have never been to Chez Panisse, but I have interviewed and grilled individuals who did, and went there more than once, and even before the restaurant became famous because Clinton, while president, ate there.

At least one person who ate at Chez Panisse also ate regularly at Chez Patrice… And found the food better and more correct with the latter. So here is the slogan for the day: Chez Patrice, not Chez Panisse!

Just an example of what’s wrong with glorifying in Chez Panisse: How can it be philosophically correct, knowing all we learened in the last 50 years to serve expensive wines? Wine is a luxury the planet doesn’t need and a healthy brain can’t risk. Right, the ancient Greeks celebrated Dionysos, god of wine among other things. But clouded thinking brought them under the Roman boot!

***

Meanwhile Elon Musk has to walk around the worst part of downtown San Francisco, where Twitter is located. He wrote: “You could literally film a Walking Dead episode unedited in downtown SF. This is where San Francisco politics leads and Twitter was exporting this self-destructive mind virus to the world. With some exceptions, other tech companies are still doing so.

Evil in guise of good.”

[There is an elite Franco-American school nearby where my daughter could have gone; but my spouse who for business used to go there all the time, vetoed it, for safety concerns caused by the walking dead Musk talks about.]

***

WOKE INSTEAD OF WORK:

Mitterand, who got the highest fascist medal in WW2, from the hands of the fascist leader himself (later condemned to death), lowered the French retirement age from 65 to 60. This lowering of work, is, fundamentally, the same idea as Roman emperors creating unemployment (and then rescuing the unemployed with gold distribution, turning them into crumb hungry pigeons…)

All of this under the cover of woke and inverted logic, not to say values…

***

Woke Is The Product Of A Way Back Machine: Not Just From Marx, Or Saint Just, But Theodosius I!

How did evil in guise of good start? Much of PC is not Politically Correct but Perfectly Cretinous. Woke, in its most recent version, in my opinion was invented in France, especially in the power circles and areas in a one mile distance from Saint Germain (tellingly, the most expensive part of Paris). See the picture!

We have to go back to the “socialism” of the 1920s and 1930s. And even earlier, the rise of Marx against Lasalle (founder of German SPD, co-founder of German universal healthcare) and Marx against Proudhon (French constitutional MP, anarchist). Marx loved the idea of evil in the guise of good. Marx loved the idea of dictatorship. His mental following, to this day, is immense (includes Putin and Xi).

By the 1930s, most European intellectuals were either pro-Nazi or pro-Stalin. Relatively decent people like Rosa Luxembourg had been eliminated. For example Albert Camus was in the Algerian Communist Party when he was as young as 22.

Maybe that self-destructive mentality emanated from the butchery of World War One where French and British nationalism got immolated in the trenches. So, instead of embracing the democratic ideal of meritocracy and progress, the “positivism” of Auguste Comte, instead then of embracing what made Europe good, steering away from dictatorship, all too many European intellectuals embraced the idea inherited from resentful a failed Bourgeois Allemand, Marx: evil in guise of good became  the new European ideology. It spilled in the US as “woke”.

Evil in guise of good was the seduction of propaganda blatant with Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Japanese fascism (bellicose Hirohito), Hitler, Franco, etc.Even Hitler knew this, and explained it well in his writings. To seduce those who wanted to do good, the socialist minded, a liberal amount of red in the Nazi flag would help, so Hitler conceived it thus.

How woke became dominant in France and even malignant is a long story, including the defeat of 1940, and the rise of the fascist Mitterand, which started… in 1940 (and ended socialist president of France in 1981). Now the defeat of 1940 was an indirect consequence of the rise of the… USA: FDR refused to help France with Hitler, as early as 1933. That made French politicians incapable of doing what needed to be done, namely go to war with Nazi Germany early. That could have won the war, but the danger was that France would have been considered an aggressor nation victimizing Germans. 

Evil in the guise of good is an inversion of all values, and (much of) French intellectualism embraced that route after 1945. The end result is that even dactylographic pedophiles became honored guests at the presidential palace, received a state stipend, and even state provided lodging in the most expensive part of expensive Paris… Under several French presidents!

The dark logic of the establishment may escape the unsubtle: when values get inverted, the inversion of all values itself becomes a value, and celebrating the most outrageous outrages, such as literary pedophilia who would send anyone in prison, even in France, being a particularly outrageous outrage, had to be embraced, as an ultimate violation, and because so it was. 

Even the New York Times finally agitated its antennas on that revelation: 

A Pedophile Writer Is on Trial. So Are the French Elites.

For decades, Gabriel Matzneff wrote openly of his pedophilia, protected by powerful people in publishing, journalism, politics and business. Now cast out, he attacks their “cowardice” in a rare interview. [Norimitsu Onishi, Feb. 11, 2020.]

PARIS — Gabriel Matzneff, the French writer under investigation for his promotion of pedophilia, was holed up this month inside a luxury hotel room on the Italian Riviera, unable to relax, unable to sleep, unable to write.

He was alone and in hiding, abandoned by the same powerful people in publishing, journalism, politics and business who had protected him weeks earlier. He went outside only for solitary walks behind dark sunglasses, and was startled when I tracked him down in a cafe mentioned in his books…

Hiding is new for Mr. Matzneff. For decades, he was celebrated for writing and talking openly about stalking teenage girls outside schools in Paris and having sexual contact with 8-year-old boys in the Philippines.

He was invited to the Élysée Palace by President François Mitterrand and socialized with the far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen. He benefited from the largess of the fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent and his partner, the business tycoon Pierre Bergé.

But Mr. Matzneff has been summoned to appear in a Paris court on Wednesday, accused of actively promoting pedophilia through his books. Mr. Matzneff could face up to five years in prison, yet the case is also an implicit indictment of an elite that furthered his career and swatted away isolated voices calling for his arrest.

In a widening investigation, prosecutors announced Tuesday morning that the police would start seeking witnesses to find other possible victims of Mr. Matzneff.

***

Evil In Guise Of Good Can Run Amok:

Roman Civilization collapsed because evil disguised as good, the Roman Catholic imperial terror, was imposed over the entire Roman polity. Serious: between emperor Theodosius I terror edict of 381 CE and catastrophic religious war of 394 CE, only 13 years! (What the establishment doesn’t want you to know!)

***

French intellectuals are often gifted and France, being at the core, if not the core, of Western civilization since the Fifth Century is still extremely influential. So it is important to prevent French thought from becoming gangrenous… as much of it has already become, generations ago. And the proof of this is the growth of “woke”… which is a monkey style parody of being awake and enlightened. Monkey style can go only that far because causing a backlash. (And a backlash is not the worse that can happen, as when the Christian apes took control, and destroyed Roman civilization…)

Woke? Hence the streets of San Francisco…

Which go hand in hand with hyper luxury a few miles away, where the world is decided by evil characters masquerading as good. because woke creates delapidation, itself a distraction, followed by condemnation and appreciation of plutocratization… All the more as the most evil characters behind all of this then advertized themselves as “lovers of man” (philanthropia)…. 

Patrice Ayme  

Pedophile Matzneff, right, in Paris in 1990 with the French business tycoon Pierre Bergé, center, and Harlem Désir, founder of SOS Racisme, Socialist Party leader, European MP, etc….As recently as 2013, Matzneff was feted by a wide cross-section of the French literary establishment. He won the prestigious Renaudot Prize for a collection of essays. Matzneff promoted sex with under-age teenagers, “Les Moins de Seize Ans” (“The Under-16s”), all over the TV, radio, all media… I am focusing on him but he is just one bacterium in a vast gangrene.

The preceding is not an attack against Bergé as an individual. Bergé had good controversial ideas (bit like Musk). In March 2016, at age 87, Bergé expressed his position on “modest fashion” saying, “I am scandalized. Creators should have nothing to do with Islamic fashion. Designers are there to make women more beautiful, to give them their freedom, not to collaborate with this dictatorship which imposes this abominable thing by which we hide women and make them live a hidden life... In one way they are complicit, and all this to make money. Principles should come before money.”

Bush NOT YET Indicted For Monstruous Crimes In Iraq, BUT US Senate Finally Repeals Iraq Invasion Authorization. Vatican In Turn Repudiates Its Own Invasion Authorization, 5 Centuries Later, A Part Of US Law. Trump Indicted For Hushing.

Abstract: The US Senate implicitly recognized, on March 29, 2023, 20 years too late, that authorizing the invasion of Iraq was a crime, and repealed it. However, Bush Junior and his accomplices, who lied extensively to get that Senatorial authorization, and ended up killing hundreds of thousands of people, are NOT yet indicted. The damage the Bush gang inflicted on the Middle East and the concept of democracy has been historical, as they not only invaded Iraq illegally, but they also dismantled the Iraqi government, army, adminstration, police  and rule of law, all of which are war crimes which destroyed much of civilization in Iraq [1]. But Trump is indicted for hushing a sex claim by a sex entertainer.

Perhaps encouraged by the US Senate’s bold recognition of error, nearly 500 years after papal decrees authorized Europe’s expropriation of the Natives all over the world, the Vatican repudiated those three decrees on Thursday, March 30, 2023, saying the “Doctrine of Discovery” that was used to justify snuffing out Indigenous people’s culture and livelihoods is not part of the Catholic faith. The Doctrine Of Discovery also helped to kill everybody non-white.

The Vatican’s infamous decrees were made into US law in 1823. US law recognized that when a European, or American white, discovered some land or gold, it was his, and the Natives could go to hell.

Much of US racism originated as simple greed, no holds barred. White Anglo Saxon judges in America, in the late seventeenth century decided that non-white color of the skin demonstrated that the bearer of said colored skin was an alien, and thus couldn’t own property. When is “American” Justice going to recognize that fundamental crime? It would help to condemn the criminals who organized the invasion of Iraq mostly for making fracking profitable in the USA…

***

Bush attacks Bagdhad, after enormous lies: not a crime, not even a war crime, say Democrat prosecutors, nothing to see, and Biden approved it, anyway.

Trump Derangement Syndrome Alive And Well:

Trump belongs to the establishment, but always hated it (for having been discriminated against while young, as a non-member of the Manhattan elite, the way his family saw it). That made him popular, and led him to embrace a number of policies… which Biden pursued with even more gusto (waking up to China, re-industrializing, strong defense, leading Europe by the nose, same immigration policy, etc.).

The establishment also discovered that Trump bashing was an excellent distraction to focus away from issues which could threaten the establishment.

*** 

Trump was indicted by a partisan “Grand Jury” for having made a NDA, a Non Disclosure Agreement with an entertainer, and claiming that this NDA interfered with US elections. NDA are an old tradition, completely legal, and are often described as “hush money”. Whatever it is, an NDA is completely routine, and generally not a crime. I personally know very well several people with NDAs. one can get into a NDA precisely because one has done nothing wrong, but precisely because another party has done something wrong, and, after compensating for the damage they caused get in exchange a promise not to disclose. 

This is a seven-year-old case that federal prosecutors of the Biden administration declined to act on.

Democrats have “done the unthinkable,” Trump said, “indicting a completely innocent person in an act of blatant Election Interference.”… while Trump is officially running for president… and leading the opposition to Biden.

***

Prosecuting and persecuting the main opponents for sex and, or corruption is a tradition of non-democracies. Example of Malaysia:

In Malaysia the former Deputy PM was prosecuted for “sodomy”, a serious crime in this Muslim majority country. The Anwar Ibrahim sodomy trials were an entertaining circus, but also a monstrous attack against human rights. The first trial was held in 1998, and resulted in former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim being convicted, and given a nine-year prison sentence. Never mind that he had five daughters and a son… 

In 2008, as Anwar was making a political comeback. The  police claimed that Anwar had forcibly sodomized a 24-year-old man. When it was pointed out that a 61-year-old man is unlikely to physically overpower such a young opponent, the complaint was changed to “homosexual conduct by persuasion”. Sodomy, even if consensual, is punishable by up to 20 years’ imprisonment and whipping under Section 377B of the Malaysian Penal Code. 

The Federal Court five judges then condemned the 67 year old main opponent to five years in jail for sodomy. Then for good measure, his daughter, a MP, was arrested for talking against the conviction.

The king pardoned Anwar in 2018.

Anwar bin Ibrahim has served as the 10th Prime Minister of Malaysia since November 2022.

However, 

 

SOME US PRESIDENTS, IN THE LAST CENTURY, HAVE COMMITTED SERIOUS CRIMES. The worst cases were:

Banana Republic US presidents working for United Fruits and its ilk. As decried by USMC general Smedley Butler: “War is a racket”.

In War is a Racket, Butler wrote: “In the World War [One] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War….How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle?….The general public shoulders the bill. And what is this bill? …Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds…For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.” 

Butler died at the age of 59 in 1940.One can presume that all the presidents he served under, including FDR, were war criminals engaging in the Banana Republics enforcement that Butler described. Butler was the most decorated Marine in US history.

Even before 1931, Butler spoke out against Fascism and for Italy’s tyrant Benito Mussolini. Butler was punished for telling the truth about Mussolini, and avoided court-martial by accepting a reprimand. Because of his rank, he wrote his own reprimand.

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PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT, FDR: was a war criminal for not intervening against the fascist regimes in a timely manner, and, instead, weaponizing them: FDR was fully informed, but he preferred to dislike the French and aspire to grab their empire rather than to do anything against the Nazis (as the French implored him to do as early as 1933). At the same time, FDR knew war was coming, as he ordered the building of 24 large “fleet” aircraft carriers as early as 1933, a truly enormous number, larger than all other world navies put together. So the French government persuaded FDR that war was coming, and FDR decided to make an enormous profit out of it by taking out Europe, grabbing all its empires, and establishing a post world war world led by the USA. That was an enormously cynical approach, as critters such as Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Hirohito became as many knives to stab the existing world order with.

 

It goes without saying that this view of history is not admitted by the establishment which FDR established. However it is partly used by tyrants Putin and Xi, and it works, because it is fundamentally correct. 

 

If he had been driven by morality in the most humane sense, FDR should have intervened, or at least stop supporting, or put an end to the collaboration of US businesses with the Soviet Union (oil, FDI and other business development, massive war support, gift of half of Europe at Yalta), Japan (oil), Mussolini (oil and all sorts of FDI), Nazi Germany (massive FDI, oil, failure to honor military guarantees to France), and Franco (oil, massive FDI, US credit). USSR

FDR bait and switch with fascism is an enormous story hiding in plain sight. 

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Truman: no obvious war crime. Nuclear bombs saved lives. Truman was no friend of Stalin, differently from FDR, who also befriended Saudi founder and super hero Ibn Saud in his dying days.

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PRESIDENT EISENHOWER Pursued FDR’s Policies: Stalin friendly, Einsehower had already written to Stalin during WW2 to convey his love, or at least that he, Eisenhower, would not let Patton get to Berlin before the Soviets did. This outrageous meddling of an active US general into world politics is (wrongly) ignored. Initially Eisenhower derided the Democrats’ obsession with Iranian oil, but after a few months in the presidency, he agreed with them.

In March 1953, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles directed the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which was headed by his younger brother lawyer Allen Dulles, to draft plans to overthrow Iranian PM Mossadegh. The two Dulles had represented around a thousand Nazi companies when the Reich was great and very profitable. 

The anti-Iranian plan was enacted by exciting and using the ayatollahs against Mossadegh. That was certainly a war of aggression which Iran has to live with, even seventy years later: Eisenhower and the Dulles launched a thousand ayatollahs. 

. In 1956, as Kruschev (USSR strongman who had been top commander at Stalingrad, and top Stalin henchman) threatened to nuke London and Paris, and invaded Hungary, killing 40,000, Ike organized a UN vote condemning France, Israel and the UK.

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JFK: no obvious crimes. The invasion of Cuba had been organized by the CIA under Ike. When it faltered, JFK immediately backed off. Many believed that abortion of invasion resulted in JFK’s assassination as many powerful interests in the US were exasperated by JFK and his brother Bobby. JFK had been involved in Vietnam, but the US involvement there started under FDR as an anti-French maneuver…

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Nixon: However exasperating and keen to bomb people at Christmas, to foster negotiations, Nixon actually finished the war with North Vietnam and opened the US to Mao. So no major war crime.

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Ford: No war crime.

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Carter: The war crime was to launch a civil war in Afghanistan by exciting Muslim Fundamentalists. A repeat of what had been done by the CIA and Einsenhower against Iran in the 1950s. .

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Reagan: invaded Grenada, Panama, chasing dictators: not really a crime it turned out in the fullness of time. However, Iran-Contra was definitely a serious crime… None of the participants could remember anything, though, so the prosecution faded away… 

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Bush Senior: His administration may have organized a bait and switch with Saddam Hussein, who was dumb enough to fall into it. Not a war crime, though.

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Clinton: Blockade of Iraq went too far, children died from lack of medications.

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Bush Junior: The invasion of Iraq under false pretense was definitely a major war crime.

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Obama: Followed the French in getting rid of mass murdering Libyan dictator, definitely absolutely not a war crime: I advocated for a military intervention stridently. BHL then followed me, then Sarkozy, etc. Another intervention, this time against Assad in Syria for using nerve gas, killing thousands of civilians was aborted by Obama when the French pilots were already in their planes. The result was that Putin intervened to save mass murderer Assad. So Obama was a big chicken, and that was his main crime, arguably, I must admit, even worse than a war crime. 

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Trump: No war crime. Sent real weapons to Ukraine, including Javelins.

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Biden: Dropped the ball in Afghanistan, condemning more than twenty million females to servitude. Not a war crime, and not abominable like FDR’s Machiavelian weaponization of fascism in the 1930s and 1940s… Behaved well in Ukraine after initial confusion.

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It’s important to punish the crimes of politicians. But first one has to define what criminality is. Considering the state of US society, focusing on the main political opponent’s payment to a sex entertainer with a big loud mouth is beyond absurd: it means that this sort of absurd focus on non-problems is the desired effect, or, worse, that this is actually an an atempt to intefere in the next presidential election. Then Nancy Pelosi, in case we don’t get the outrage, grandly declared that Trump was free to “prove his innocence“. One can thus verify that Nancy, daughter of a Congressman and mayor, didn’t go to law school, just debutante school. Yes, we are free to try to prove we should be free. But, the way things are going, not for long…

If a US president can be hounded that bad, what of common folks?

Patrice Ayme

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[1] That the Iraq invasion by Bush in 2003 was fundamentally initially UN-illegal, and now, as it has turned out in 2023, US illegal, was the fundamental flaw which condemned the attempt to turn Iraq into something better, and a symbol of progressing democracy. “Fatal decisions” by the occupying Bush forces made Iraq into a bush war, but not only:

In the years since, many western writers and journalists have argued that Bremer’s first two fatal decisions – the disbanding of the Iraqi army and all security apparatuses, and the banning of members of the Ba’ath party from public jobs, both of which left hundreds of thousands of men without pension or salary – helped instigate the insurgency that would consume the country. These western pontificators lamented the stupidity of Bush and the neocons. If only, they said, they had done their homework and planned for the post-invasion Iraq, things could have been so different. But the truth is that the occupation was bound to collapse and fail, because a nation can’t be bombed, humiliated and sanctioned, then bombed again, and then told to instantly become a democracy. No amount of planning could have turned an illegal occupation into a liberation.

The war that was based on a lie not only destroyed Iraq and unleashed a sectarian war that would engulf the region, but it permanently crippled democracy in the Middle East. So, democracy was another victim of the criminally incompetent administration. “You want democracy? Didn’t you see what democracy did to Iraq?” became the repeated refrain of dictators and potentates throughout the region.

PUTIN, PLUTOCRACY & The WEST (Standard)

Putin played the West. But first the West played Putin. Or more exactly the powers that be in the West played Putin [1].  This deliberate instrumentalization of Putin by the West became obvious early on. 

A number of events, perpetrators and witnesses revealed that Putin an the secret service he used to lead, the Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, lit. ‘Committee for State Security, FSB/KGB the Russian/Soviet secret security political police, had orchestrated the bombing of appartment building blocks in Russia.

Why?

The KGB/FSB had constrained (elected) Russian president Yeltsin to choose and nominate Putin as Prime Minister, first. Then Yeltsin made Putin President. The KGB/FSB had made Yeltsin an offer he couldn’t refuse, obviously. 

However elections had to be conducted soon and Putin was pulling only 2%. One factor that had humiliated and weakened Yeltsin was the first war with Chechnya, which Russia had lost, giving that Muslim country de facto independence. Putin accused Chechnya to have done these multiple apartment building attacks, which killed hundreds of Russians, and viewing this as a casus belli, Putin attacked Chechnya with maximal force…. Conveniently discarding all rules about civilized warfare… in the grand old tradition of Russian wars, especially those conducted in the Caucasus mountains. 

One Chechnen out of six was killed, the capital, Grozny was leveled, and Putin won totally over his imaginary enemy. Putin became wildly popular and got elected Russian president in a landslide. Considering how he got elected, though, we should not view him as a legitimate president.

Western intelligence knew all of this, and it was obvious Putin had orchestrated it, as Chechnya had no interest whatsoever to disrupt the status quo… whereas Putin had. 

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The West kept on shaking Putin’s hand, because the West knew the evil Putin did in Chechnya, and how he got in power, leveraging that. Knowing that he knew they knew, Western leaders thought Putin was their man, who would do their thing, namely a cheap energy policy. But minds, and, in particular evil, have an inertia of their own. So Putin kept on doing evil, what he did best, and the West kept hoping he was their man, providing cheap fossil fuel energy.

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Then Putin became the darling of the West. A genocidal mass murderer became central to world energy policy. At first sight, this is counterintuitive and paradoxal: how could a tyrannical murderous evil monster become the friend of representative democracies?

Well, what if these representative democracies are mostly only democratic in name, and mostly represent global plutocrats?

There is nothing new in this strategy: in the 1930s, the Western plutocrats did the same with Mussolini, Franco, Hitler, and, less well-known, Stalin. Hirohito got oil to invade China from US plutocrats. Plutocracy means evil-power. It was evil to enable these evil-doesr, but most profitable to Western plutocrats.

Plutocrats love evil tyrants: their kind, writ large.

The Putin problem is a plutocratic problem. It’s global plutocracy which played us, and Putin was one of its pawns, as Hitler and Stalin were. 

Patrice Ayme

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[1] (The French secret services were ordered in the 1990s, by elected leaders, not to have anything to do with Russia anymore; source the “25 years in the secret services” of “Pierre Siramy”, a top DGSE operative, who thought in 2010 that the policy of ignoring Russia was the gravest mistake; it is likely the same order was given to their US and UK colleagues.)

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P/S 1: The essence of this comment, that many of the world’s tyrants, in the last century, were instruments of global plutocracy, was censored by the plutocratic New York Times. Hundreds of innocuous comments were allowed, though.

I then sent another comment, not directly accusing global plutocracy, the one in italics underlined above. It was immediately published.

One has to understand that the descendants of those who crucially helped Stalin and  Hitler to get or stay in power, are themselves in power… And act through countless schemes, foundations, universities, think tanks, corporate boards, etc… All this held by anonymous corporations… 

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P/S 2: Many naive and ill-informed left leaning individuals, following sheepishly the propaganda they are submitted to by their minders in the Kremlin, believe that Putin is an opponent of the “West”… because that’s what he says. Hitler also pretended to be a defender of minorities, and just like Putin, was an instrument of global plutocracy. Hitler knew this, and told confidantes he was exasperated with making nice talk with plutocrats… For example before a dinner in Italy he told Rommel he resented having to sit next to some extremely wealthy Italian aristocrat…

Naive leftists have then made a weapon of global plutocracy, Putin, into their hero. 

Just as Hitler, or Mao, or Hirohito, Putin, forgetting that he is where he is because of Western plutocracy, has gone rogue.

Amusingly the French secret services (DGSE) knew very well that, in the 1990s, Western ecologists were paid by Putin and his ilk, the Russian intelligence services. So follow this: Putin and his ilk are put in power by Western fossil fuel plutocrats, and then, on their (apparent) own, feed ecologists, who, not by coincidence, demolish nuclear industry and nuclear research (for better nuclear industry)… With the final effect of ostering fossil fuels domination by Western plutocracy and its proxies (say ARAMCO)….

Putin did this in Chechnya, here is Grozny, 23 years ago. Then he did it in Aleppo an ancient metropolis in Syria, then in many places over Ukraine. The point is that Western leaders knew very well about Chechnya… and it excited them… Western elected politicians are selected, then elected, becuase they are most qualified to represent eil power. In Putin, they seriously saw their man, and kept shaking his hand. And this is not just a case of the big bad evil US governing classes… German and French leadership obviously look at the Warsaw-Kyiv axis with a jaundiced eye. Those who know history well know that, for centuries, Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania were the same imperial power. Hence the diatribe of the French leader against the Polishone, and unfounded accusation of corruption against Ukraine on French “service public” TV… While the blatant corruption in France (how come the hyper wealthy pays no tax, and thus kept getting wealtheir and more influenctial?) is carefully not adressed…