PLUTOCRACY: NEW WORLD ORDER

Western Intelligence, Oriental Despotism; Redux? Democratic Occident, Fascist Orient, & Vice Versed?

Obama just  nominated Commerce Secretary the billionaire heiress who discovered him, and introduced him to the Rubin-Summers-Goldman-Sachs-Citigroup conspiracy. Penny Priztker was condemned to pay a 460 million dollar fine by the Federal government in 2001, for financial malfeasance. 460 million, that’s more than Mitt Romney’s fortune, that made small rank and file democrats huff and puff, in indignation, a few months ago, just like their mighty masters told them to do.

Now, if the 460 million dollars fine felon becomes chief, that’s fine, as long as the masters of the people don’t ask the People to huff and puff about the fine. The finer the fine, the finer the master, say the little People, and they bleat, satisfied. As Obama put it:”Priztker is one of the most eminent personalities of our country“. When Pluto reigns, down is up.

When Common Decency Is A Hindrance

Plutocracy is the New World Order. The New World Thinking. The New World Emoting.

To get some perspective on this, it’s good to have a retrospective look at the greatest plutocratic realms of the past, and ponder why extremely wealthy fascism rose, increasingly, in the Orient, while clever democracy rose, occasionally, in the West. And sometimes fell, disastrously, for reasons related.

It turns out that, when Rome became fascist and plutocratic, it turned to Oriental despotism, and criminals, indeed, came to command and control.

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PERSIA REIGNED WITH ALL CRAFTS; YET NOT SMART ENOUGH:

Establishing  giant, metastatic empires in the Orient is nothing new: the Hittites tried it, they proceeded to invade Lebanon and the rich valleys behind, Egyptian territory. However young Pharaoh Ramses II, defeated them at Qadesh, next to present day Damascus. Through courageous combat in that battle which defined his long rule, Ramses rescued victory from the jaws of defeat, somewhat miraculously.

Ramses lost ground, though, and later made a loving peace with his enemies. Then, the Hittites having been destroyed by the mysterious coalition of the Peoples of the Sea, the Assyrians tried to impose their own giant metastatic empire, using the harshest methods. That brought them so many enemies that they got invaded from all quarters, annihilated as a nation first, and an army, later.

Then the union of Medes and Persians, thanks to three remarkable leaders, established a giant fascist empire, from Ethiopia to Central Asia, Libya to India. The third emperor, Darius, besides being excellent at sword-play in the dark, and a great general, proved capable of using a free market economy, switching to so called Keynesianism, and then a command and control economy, as needed. Darius established a giant “Royal” road network (ancestral to the one the Romans would build, four centuries later).

A Persian Pony Express, with posts every five miles, would bring news from distant corners of the empire in a week. Darius went on to invade the Scythians, land of the Amazons, present day Ukraine.

Darius’ Persia was the greatest empire, so far, larger than the present day continental USA. It became so, thanks to a great variety of methods of socio-economic governance. Some of these methods would later be used by the West, massively. Not just the communication network, the free market, the command and control, but also a crafty diplomacy of seduction, cooptation and local autonomy (that’s how the Ionian Greeks and Phoenicians became collaborators of Persia; whereas Alexander would annihilate Tyr).

However, unbelievably, tiny Athens broke the Persian empire, inaugurating the next great event, still on-going, the rise of the West. Again and again, minuscule Greek armies routed the juggernauts of professional giant armies. Again and again, small democracies proved superior to large fascist foes. I claimed that mental superiority entailed military superiority.

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FREE IN THE WEST, SLAVES IN THE EAST

Herodotus explained the Greeks’ military superiority: free men are more motivated in battle, as they fight for themselves, he said. But it’s not clear that elite Persian soldiers did not feel free.

So I hold something slightly different: free men are, living in an “open society” are not just more motivated, but, simply, more intelligent. Yes, intelligent.

Yet how come that the free men tended to be in the West, and the subjugated ones, in the East? And this for 4,000 years, defining the “West” as anything west of Mount Lebanon. Why did so much of the Mediterranean turn out propitious to freedom and individual initiative? What of the enormous Celto-German forests, from Spain to the Baltics?

Two factors played a role:

1) Trade, with the big man, the leader being the ship owner-captain (Tyr, Phoenicia, Crete, Athens, Carthage, etc.). This required to excel at technology and adaptative intelligence, confronting nature.

2) Small owner-peasants. The West’s agricultural system did better thanks to small, free owner-peasants.  The owner peasant was captain of his own plot of land, and found himself in a situation roughly similar to the ship captain. Such people worked hard, and thought hard about outwitting nature. All of Germany was this way, until the military encroachment of Rome in the beginning of its plutocratic phase, brought, by reaction, a militarization of German society (this is what archeology shows).

A demographic core of owner-peasants was the core of the success of the Roman republic, and its successors, the Imperium Francorum, and France, or anything working along French lines (most of Europe). When enjoying this basic culture, of free, independent peasants, the West did very well. Why so? Because thinking by oneself, for oneself, makes one more intelligent.

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WHY THE ORIENT IS DUMBER:

The Orient did better when the peasants could cultivate. That meant, when they had water. That was not obvious in the increasingly parched lands, from the Maghreb to India. First, there, one needed to bring water to agricultural lands. Whereas in the West, both water and arable land were in the same place, not so in the East. In the East water was on rocky mountains, arable lands in parts of plains at the bottom of said mountains. To bring the former to the latter, one needed great hydraulic works. Underground canalizations, sometimes fifty feet deep, could extend dozens of miles.

Such extensive works meant armies of workers and maintenance people. And also standing armies to establish and protect the necessary order. Plus a field army to roam around the empire, and keep the static defenses obedient.

In other words, food on the carpet in the parched, basin and range Orient meant a large fascist system to make it possible, and everybody enslaved to it, in a military organization (Christianity and Islam, both oriental religions, kept much of this essential psychological character: fascist god on top, giving absolute, even capricious  orders to its slaves below).

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ALL TOGETHER NOW, DOWN THE ROMAN ROAD TO HELL?

What consequences today? Western countries do not depend upon small owner-peasants anymore, but upon giant farms, or agribusinesses, for food procurement. Even trade has become unbalanced: production on one end of the Earth, increasing unemployment, at the other end.

Giant agribusinesses, and unbalanced trade became facts of empire in Rome, and lasted centuries. It was a deliberate plot of Roman plutocracy. At some point, six senatorial families owned most of North Africa. Seneca, Nero’s tutor, the plutocratic philosopher of note, used to boast that he had no idea how many giant properties he owned on the various continents.

That delocalization and globalization made Rome, and Italy into an empty shell of its former self. As those who had the power, the senatorial families, wished. What they feared first, was a proud, potent, empowered People.

(Part of) Italy would resurrect as independent republics, more than a millennium later. 

What’s the morality of the story? Men have a strong instinct for doing things right. In a plutocratic system, though, men who do things wrong get rewarded, and this goes on, until the situation exponentiates and breaks down. Thus plutocratic systems are intrinsically pathological: they reward criminals. Not just criminal according to the laws of men, but criminals according to the laws of nature.

In the Orient, life is harder, less natural, militarization exploits part of the Dark Side, because human beings, by living there, live in a less optimal situation. In the West, the rise of plutocracy did not have these excuses.

The Romans knew this well. The Roman republic was the product of a revolution against Tarquinus Superbus, the king of Rome, of Etruscan origin. So the founding act of five centuries of Roman republic was an anti-plutocratic revolt. Same for Athens (several times, during the same centuries). 

The Romans passed a strong anti-plutocratic law. That law limited, by force the size of a family’s fortune; it fixed an upper bound on how much one could own. The Second Punic war saw the death, on the battlefield, of too many of the best leading Romans. Meanwhile the conspirators of wealth, back behind the walls of the fortified cities, as Hannibal was roaming the countryside, established a New World order of rents.

When Carthage got defeated, those men of greed kept on pushing, and tried to grab control of the state. After several wars of distraction against Macedonia, Carthage, Numantia, Corinth, etc. it became clear that was what was going on to thousands of the best Romans, led by top nobles (in mind and ancestry), the Gracchi.

The Gracchis mostly tried to impose the wealth limitation law. They also succeeded to impose a land redistribution (an unthinkable socialist measure in the post Thatcher-Reagan world!). Yet, the Gracchi and their supporters lost a civil war. All got killed, by the private armies of the plutocrats. By 100 BCE, when Caesar was born, the dice had long been thrown. Only extreme measures could address the situation (extreme measures that Caesar and Cicero, on the good side, would try).

Now what? Losing democracy, means, ultimately, that we will lose not just freedom, but intelligence itself. It is difficult to imagine how the Americans will pull out of their present death spiral into furthering the wealth of the .1%. When bandits are called “philanthropists”, all values have been inverted in a country: gangsters are in control, the mafia has got metastatic. It will go on, all inverted, until it explodes, or get trampled over. The commerce chief will be a certified felon.

The situation in Europe is not as desperate: conditions for a revolt exist. Although Goldman Sachs has its servants in place all over, the Italians threw out one of them, a Goldman Sachs partner, Mario Monti, at the first chance they got.

Some may sneer, as they notice that, once again I used “Orient” and “Occident” according to old Greco-Roman semantics. What of the true Orient, the far-out East, China and company? Well, I will hide behind my usual observation: it’s Western culture that conquered the world. Present day China’s ideology has very little that is specifically Chinese, besides what the West and China had in common, such as the more or less free market. The idea of “People” (Populus) and “Republic” (Respublica) are Roman. So the very title of China, the “People Republic of China” is, well, (Greco-)Roman.

The dangers threatening China, accordingly, like those threatening us, are those that devastated the Roman republic. For the reasons exposed above, the development in the West, of a more advanced civilization was first, thus why everybody adopted it later.  Rome was first to rise as high as it did. But, the greater the rise, the greater the fall. By 700 CE, the fall of Rome had been so great, that China had risen higher, on many indicators. The West, invaded by hordes of savages for more than six hundred years (beyond even 400 CE to 1000 CE) was fighting for survival.

Plutocracy as a New World Order is not just the end of many things. In the fullness of time, plutocracy is the end of everything.

Even the Will to Power. Slave masters are not so masterful. After all, they are enslaved to their slaves.

When Rome went down, Roman plutocrats whined that the “world was getting old“. By this they meant that resources were being exhausted, and that, in its stupidity plutocratic civilization could not find a technology out.

Right now, the world is not getting old, it’s getting killed. And that’s worst.

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Patrice Ayme

Raid Treasure Islands, Finally?

Abstract: The plutocrats, plutophiles, and hired guns who dominate the planet have brought a Greater Depression. A punier crisis in the 1930s brought political fascism all over. To avoid a repeat, representative democracies need heavy corrective measures, now. Here is the latest outrage.

Cyprus has invested many times its GDP. In Russia alone. Year after year, for years. Cyprus is a money laundering scheme. One of the many pirate islands around the planet, whose main enterprise is organized crime. Initial violent reactions in Moscow from president Putin and his prime minister Medvedev show that they were party to this conspiracy.

That set-up allowed plutocratic mobsters to buy more and more of Russia. It has also enabled them to purchase a large part of the West. Criminal money, satanic minds, all over, what could go wrong?
Enough has been seen, it’s time to use force.

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Pompeius: Magnus Accomplice to Pirates?

ROME, OR WHY ONE SHOULD KILL PIRACY, NOT PAY IT OFF:

In the late Roman republic, the seas came to be paralyzed by piracy. Roman politicians, busy at each others’ throats, had overlooked the growth of pirate havens. Pirates owned ports, cities, countries. The situation became untenable; international trade was coming to a stop, and Rome depended upon grain from overseas. Pirates were hanging just outside of Rome, Corsica was full of corsairs, very naturally, even a young Julius Caesar was kidnapped against ransom.

Finally the Roman Senate gave full power to a young Gnaeus Pompeius. After a winter preparation, Pompeius sent 13 legates all over. Cicero was enthusiastic: “Pompey made his preparations for the war at the end of the winter, entered upon it at the commencement of spring, and finished it in the middle of the summer.”

Some say that it took just 40 days for Pompeius to re-establish  freedom of navigation. Yet, years later Cicero knew better. He bitterly criticized Pompeius’ work: “we give immunity to pirates and make our allies pay tribute.”

Sounds familiar? If Cicero’s charge is true, it explains a lot of the further deterioration of the Republic. Two reasons to believe it’s true: 1) No anti-plutocratic measure was taken in Rome at this stage.

2) This is exactly what we have been doing since 2008: exacting tribute from the citizens, and paying the pirates. “Quantitative Easing”, that is money given to the very banksters who caused the 2008 crisis was tribute paid by the citizenry, while immunity was given to financial pirates.

The grossest of the gross will claim that we have nothing to learn from Rome. But Rome had a republic, a pretty direct democracy functioning for more than 4 centuries, and that’s still the world’s record in duration. How did the Roman pull that trick?

The Roman republic lived for more than 4 centuries with an explicit limit on the wealth that could be acquired by any given family. It is precisely attempts to break down inchoating plutocracy by application of an existing law enforcing that limit, which brought the civil war that the Gracchi brothers lost. By then the plutocrats had private armies, and they used them to kill the Gracchi and thousands of their supporters.

Conclusion: Crack down on plutocracy, before it cracks you.

So what happened to Rome? Plutocracy kept on going, until by the Late Second Century it devoured the ability to destroy foreign enemies, and then devoured the state. In the Third Century, plutocracy devoured the socio-economy until the military rebuilt society in its image. In the Fourth Century, plutocracy merged with theocracy, and devoured philosophy and the brains. By 400, plutocracy devoured the army itself. The Franks were put in charge of the defense of the North-West corner of the empire.

Next Roman state was replaced by the Frankish state, which was very lean, and Frankish law came to rule. Frankish law enforced equal inheritance in (large) families, and leaders were elected. Plutocracy did not die, but became a shadow of its former self, all the more as brains were re-established under the guise of a church ruled by a secular state, that ordered it to teach secular.

Clearly the Gini Index of the Imperium Francorum and the Renovatio Imperium Romanorum that followed was much lower than that of the Roman empire. Only then could civilization be re-launched. Because there was money to finance progress. Again.

Conclusion: plutocracy is a malignancy, it has to be eliminated ASAP, should one want civilization to go up, instead of down. (And of course nowadays we need more civilization than ever, as the old civilization we enjoyed is running out of resources. Same as what happened to Rome, just way worse, and on a planetary scale.)

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MOOD ABOUT PLUTO CHANGING IN EUROPE:

Injecting 85 billion dollars a month, as USA central bank chief Bernanke announced he was doing, is not enough (although that’s injecting 7% of GDP a year in printed money!). Rats have to be removed from power, prosecuted, fiscal havens have to be exploded, and tax cheat global corporations have to be forced to pay tax where they make sales. Earth’s problem is bigger than just banksters, and oil men.

Such was the hope Obama surfed, before he spent four years flashing his mesmerizing, mile wide, dazzling smile-to-seduce-the-world. And nothing happened.

Fortunately there are inkling that the mood is changing.

The  evidence is coming from Franco-Britannia, the EU, the Eurogroup. Suddenly, laws are passed: Financial Transaction Tax, limiting banksters’ bonuses. Taxing tax eschewing corporations is considered. The latest: telling Russian plutocratic mobsters that they have to pay tax, if they want to go on pumping dirty money through Cyprus.

This turn of civilization against plutocracy, to save itself is slow going. Indeed, the leaders of the West profit of a system rigged by plutocracy. Those elected politicians, supposedly servants of the People, live like kings, in the service of their plutocratic masters. Putting a few in jail, as justice is trying to do in France, may help.

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REVOLUTION BREWING IN FRANCE:

First the good news: the plutophile who was French president a year ago, has been indicted (“mis en examen“). Justice believes there is enough evidence that Sarkozy was “abusing” an old lady, to put him under “examination”. One cannot make that good stuff up: elder abuse is next to Pluto, second only to pedophilia. Meanwhile many prominent politicians are on trial for  what they did in Iraq. French politicians, of course.

Amazingly, the abuser of the elderly, Sarkozy his name, married to a Franco-Italian billionairess, cost French taxpayers 2 million euros a year. The rich is never rich enough, in the mind of the established order of things. The suspected criminal prepares his defense from a 300 square meter office, next to the Élysée! ($250,000 a year in rent, paid by French taxpayers.)

Top Americans politicians cannot be suspected of any wrongdoing; they prey next to god, as they emphasize all the time, and never go on trial (except for the son of Jesse Jackson). Does not matter if they chew down the Fourth Geneva convention for breakfast. In fact Sarkozy is hounded for practices that are perfectly legal in the USA. 

Sarkozy had to hide in the dark, and persuade an old lady it was perfectly OK to give him money. While he was doing what Obama does one thousand times more, just in one day, and while Obama does it for a thousand days, as he buys himself a presidency.

Americans have stricly no problems when they see their president sleeping in a plutocrat’s bed. And if the president sleep in 100 plutocrats’ beds, it’s one hundred times better. Well, in France, it’s illegal, and it’s elder abuse to make the richest lady in Europe believe she is suddenly in Palo Alto, or something, and American law has superseded French law.   

Ex USA presidents cost USA taxpayers at least 4 million dollars a year (without counting their health care cost, and regalian security cost for them and their relatives). Obviously they deserve it: they all are extremely rich multimillionaires, and the richest get subsidies, so that low lives can dream even more.

Meanwhile in Spain more and more people are imitating the king, his family and the PM: they are living outside of the law. In the region of Andalusia, unemployment is at 35%. Low lives have started to seize government property, and cultivate food to survive. I guess austerity has met ingenuity.

French President Francois Hollande confided that “the unthinkable is now becoming possible, in France and many other countries, I know what I want to do, the problem is I do not have much time to succeed”.  By “unthinkable” he means the return of fascism.

Some may scoff: “who cares about France?” But France is the brainy spider in the middle of the European web. The decider on Cyprus was clearly the French finance minister Moscovici (in full accord with his wheelchair bound German colleague). Interestingly, France is also of one mind with Britain, and not just about Mali… But about taxes!

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FRANCE & BRITAIN ASK OECD TO FIND WAYS TO TAX GLOBAL PLUTOS:

It is clear that France and Britain have had enough with mobsters (aka tax cheats). The governments there are on opposite ends of the political spectrum, that makes their alliance all the stronger. Alliance? Were not they trying to eviscerate each others’ budgets recently?

Conservative PM Cameron has realized that austerity alone does not work (as many have pointed to him with relish). British GDP numbers are worse than in the 1930s “Great Depression”. To relaunch the economy, Cameron reduced top tax margin from 505 down to 45%. Yet, Cameron is running a terrible deficit, he has to increase revenue.

Can taxes be augmented in France? The newly elected Socialist French government knows it has taxes as high as they can get without having the Sans Culottes take over. Indeed the Constitutional Court barred the proposed 75% proposed top tax margin rate (throwing the law out, although it had passed!). Then the Council of State followed on March 21 2013 by declaring that the top rate ought to be no more than 66%.

(The USA has neither a Constitutional Court, nor a Council of State, but it has a Supreme Court that plays with the constitution, when plutocracy is at bay, contrarily to, well, the constitution…)

So both the French and British government discovered the only solution: get those who pay no taxes to contribute, by force.

There are two main types of those: 1) multinational plutocrats, 2) multinational corporations.

So Mr. Osborne, the UK finance minister and his French colleague, Mr. Moscovici, sent a check to the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, based, in Paris, France). They asked this economic organization of the 34 most developed countries to find out how to tax multinational corporations.

there for a decade or so, The head a OECD an ex Mexican finance minister, Mr. Gurria partly educated in the USA at Harvard. On Saint Patrick day, march 17, 2013, he flatly declared on Tele5Monde (French speaking world TV): “les multinationales ne paient pas d’impots” (“multinationals do not pay taxes”).  And he added in no uncertain manner that this had got to change. He is very happy with the Franco-British checks. And

So even Osborn is determined to tax an entire category of international plutocrats and corruptocrats. Gurria insisted that it was Osborne the Conservative, and not Moscovici the Socialist, who launched the initiative.

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MAKING AN EXAMPLE OF PLUTOCRAT ASSAD:

For me, plutocracy is, first of all, the rule of the Dark Side without any overwhelming justification from the Light Side.

This being said, Assad’s family is filthy rich in the traditional sense, having stolen We The People more than quite a bit. His shop-alcoholic wife used to support London’s luxury stores, and now she has fled to Moscow, one of Assad’s cornucopian source of weapons (the other being Iran, thanks to Iraq). She and Putin can commiserate of the fate of their funds in Cyprus, I guess.

To make their meaning clear, that the days of arrogant plutocracy are numbered, France and Britain announced they will ship soon to Syrian rebels absolutely lethal French and, or, American anti-aircraft missiles. The Americans do not even have to agree, because the French Mistral are even faster and more deadly than the American Stingers.

The essence of the matter is to make revolutionary secular forces win the war, because otherwise Russian inspired, or Salafist inspired, plutocrats will surely win, and establish their terror, strong as they will be after killing a million or so. Not intervening in the Spanish Civil War had been the fundamental mistake of France, Britain, and the USA in 1936… OK, intruth American plutocrats were fully on the fascist side (with fuel, ammunition, weapons, and Texas oil). At least, this time, those three are no as inert… 
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CYPRUS ULTIMATUM:

Cyprus’ banks invested heavily in Greece, while paying, year after year, interest rates between 5% and 9%, for years. Cyprus’ banks need immediately 17 billion Euros to keep on operating.

The Eurogroup (mostly the finance ministers of France and Germany) agreed to give ten billions, if Cyprus found the rest. As the Greek church is part of the state there, it could easily sell part of itself, and find the money. Another solution is to tax plutocrats. There are 8,000 (mostly Russian) plutocrats in (nominal) residence in Cyprus.

The European Union gave a banking ultimatum to Cyprus. I saw that one coming. Cypriots had a good run. Money from their tax haven. Hush money. Who protects the tax haven from, say, Turkey? Franco-British military force. Do Cypriots pay for the Franco-British military establishment? Now they will.  

Moscovici agreed to lift the limit of reimbursement to 100,000 euros. (I don’t see why, as those accounts made huge money in the last few years!) That means the Plutos will be taxed at an even higher rate. 25% has been suggested.

There can be NO run on the banks, as all accounts have been blocked in Cyprus. Even the smallest ones. Plutocrats are given a choice: be taxed, or go bankrupt.They can’t even escape, because of capital controls. The days of Cyprus as a tax haven are over. Let all other tax havens join them at the bottom of the sea.

The problem with plutocracy is not just the plutocrats themselves, and the institutions that serves them. It’s also the general mentality that crimes pays, and the more criminal, the more paid one is.

That psycho mechanism, that crimes pays best, has to be broken at some point, and the point is now. Otherwise one would down in the sort of catastrophe that affected Germany. Nietzsche screamed in writing, by the 1880s, that Germany’s mood was turning from ugly, to criminal, and even mass criminal. Nietzsche even explicitly accused Kant. Indeed, Eichmann in Jerusalem, tried for the assassination of more than one million people, brandished Kant’s moral system as his justification.

Nietzsche was not listened to by Very Serious Germans. Why? Because Germany was a successful, run-away plutocracy, ever more fascist to fight the socialists. When Bismarck, no shrinking violet, nor fanatical socialist, finally understood a monster was born under his loins, he was thrown out, and Nietzsche’s prophecy, the destruction of Europe by Germany, proceeded.

We now have the same situation, on a world scale.

Plutocracy, fascism and depletion of resources (including climate) are all entangled. if we did like the Romans, and let our civilization go down, we would not have, like the Romans, a plan B. For the Romans, plan B, as it turned out, was the Imperium Francorum. 

What is therefore needed, immediately, is to traumatize plutocracy. In all sorts of ways. Exploding the island tax havens is a good start.

It’s a new paradigm. Common financial commentators in the USA whine to high heavens that trust has been breached, never to be seen again. Quite the opposite, a new trust has been established. It’s all about trust. Put your money in a tax haven, TRUST the European Union to tax it.

Spare nought. Cyprus today, Monaco tomorrow.

Even Monaco Has Got To Go

Of course, it’s traumatic. Voltaire gave a moral order:”Il faut ecraser l’infame!” (“One ought to crush infamy“) Traumatizing infamy comes before crushing it thoroughly. What else?

So it’s very simple: give an ultimatum to every single tax haven. The truth about these havens is that they are a modern form of piracy. Their relationship to the West is even more abusive than that of Rome’s pirates to Rome. Indeed, they are just another face, another interface, of Western plutocracy with the the weak it’s abusing.

The exact charge against Sarkozy is “abus de faiblesse” (“abuse of weakness”). It’s highly symbolic

In the case of Cyprus, it can submit, or be kicked outside of the Eurozone, to join the fishes at the bottom of the sea. Against the Russian mafia, a greater force has to be employed, and examples made. After years of tremendous interest rates, Cyprus’ parliament has stupidly decided to be greedy in the line of fire. Excellent.

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Patrice Ayme

Elite Censorship

Abstract: In the guise of “moderation”, the New York Times decides what is fit to know. Some data threatening established lies crucial to the established order are systematically censored therein. And that’s worse than dumb.

Human beings are knowledge creatures. Manipulate what they know, turn them into pigeons, and they will come eat in your hand. Main Stream Media knows this all too well. Distortion of data is why the clear and present “Greater Depression” is turning into something worse than the “Great Depression” of the 1930s.

The refusal of looking at reality is what enabled the catastrophic, ongoing, austerity drive. In a self reinforcing loop, much of the austerity is now directed towards the cognitive part of the economy.

Austerity Exploding Up

“Europe’s recovery in the real economy has taken hold and is becoming self-sustaining.” (European Commission, 2010.)
In truth, what do we see? What the graph above shows: unemployment in Europe is exploding up. Yet, in truth, providing jobs, is the primary object of economy. An economy does not exist only to make financial capital happy.

Progress has to start with truth, in full, thus reality. That’s why censorship is a bad idea, be it in Pyongyang, Beijing, Moscow, or New York. In states of law, the law ought to be enough. The rule of little chiefs has no place in republics, wherever practice has given institutions a fiduciary role.
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GARBAGE IN, GARBAGE MINDS OUT.
Paul Krugman, main New York Times editorial, Mars 1, 2013:
“We’re just a few weeks away from a milestone I suspect most of Washington would like to forget: the start of the Iraq war. What I remember from that time is the utter impenetrability of the elite prowar consensus. If you tried to point out that the Bush administration was obviously cooking up a bogus case for war, one that didn’t bear even casual scrutiny; if you pointed out that the risks and likely costs of war were huge; well, you were dismissed as ignorant and irresponsible.

It didn’t seem to matter what evidence critics of the rush to war presented: Anyone who opposed the war was, by definition, a foolish hippie. Remarkably, that judgment didn’t change even after everything the war’s critics predicted came true. Those who cheered on this disastrous venture continued to be regarded as “credible” on national security (why is John McCain still a fixture of the Sunday talk shows?), while those who opposed it remained suspect.

And, even more remarkably, a very similar story has played out over the past three years, this time about economic policy.”

In 2010, Olli Rehn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olli_Rehn declared that
“Europe’s recovery in the real economy has taken hold and is becoming self-sustaining.” For a reality check, see the unemployment rate above. It seems to be sort of exponentiating. But the bankers are safe, don’t worry.

The Rehn of economic terror is currently serving as European Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs and the Euro and vice president of the European Commission. Such people are intimately tied to the plutocratic system. Many of these worthies go back and forth with the likes of Goldman Sachs. They never had it so good.

Jack Lew, just named treasury secretary, inventor of the “Sequester” was a great chief at Citigroup where he proceeded to help lose about 50 billion dollars, and was compensated for his troubles by seven figures of taxpayers’ money.

Mario Monti, unelected Italian PM went, with most of his government, to report to his wealthy masters at Davos. It was obviously deliberate: elections were coming, the Italian people were encouraged to acknowledge their masters too, just like their PM. Instead, to general surprise, they voted massively for Beppe Grillo, an outsider critical of the powers that be, once condemned for manslaughter. When going to the slaughterhouse, better to chose an expert.

Back to Krugman’s editorial. The Iraq war has been an unqualified disaster in slow motion. The computation of the neofascists (aka “neoconservatives”) had been that the conquest of Iraq would pay for itself, as the conquest of the West and other parts had.

This did not happen, because the British and American armies were unable to win. Instead they had to give power to the Shiites and agree to leave.

The only positive, for the West, has been that any potential enemy now knows it should not assume that the West would always behave in a civilized, or even in a predictable, manner (that was one the miscomputations of Hitler: he had claimed, loud und klar, that the democracies could never decide anything tough, so he was stunned, literally speechless, after he received the war declarations of Britain and France).

Actually many of the American neofascists explained that such was their computation: make the USA look crazed and dangerous. Recognizing now that the Iraq war was a mistake would be rejecting that last “positive”.

In economic policy, Krugman is rightly indignant of the disaster in Europe (that friends of the wealthy are anxious to duplicate in the USA, see the “Sequester” that started today).

Major economic indicators in some countries, such as Spain or Great Britain, are already worse than in the Great Depression of the 1930s, and are pointing down further (except in tax havens such as Ireland).

UK Flat Line GDP: Greater Depression Today

Britain is doing worse than in 1930s. Cameron is blossoming into a total failure.

I commented on the Krugman editorial. As Krugman had dared to evoke the Iraq war, so did I. Here is what I said:

“Wealth from monopoly and ridiculously low taxes for the plutocrats, austerity for everybody else, is bringing massive cuts in education and science. Having cut to the bone, plutocrats, their servants and sycophants are now sucking the brains out. Hey, if the rabble is stupid enough, it will salute its masters smartly!

Examples of this disaster abound: the European Union elected leaders, led by the right wing, the regressive Cameron and Merkel just cut the EU science budget by 13%! In the name of austerity. In the USA, the sequester promises cuts to science (NSF, NIH) of 5.1%. Over the next 6 months. In the name of austerity.

Cameron, before becoming PM of the UK promised that Britain would regain technological leadership. But Cameron, is, truly, fundamentally a very wealthy heir. Truly, he wants a richer elite, and a poorer plebs. So what did he do? Besides introducing astronomical tuition to British “public” universities, he reduced the science budget of the UK by 7.6%. In the first year.

Austerity is just the latest Trojan Horse of those who brought us run-away banking. It’s just the power of a small class of people who know each other, worldwide, and are preying on the rest of humanity.
No morality stand in their way, not even putting the entire biosphere in danger. The only way we are going to save the planet is through great advances in science and efficient technology. Otherwise mayhem is guaranteed. Among other nefarious consequences.

Donald Rumsfeld used to shake Saddam Hussein’s hand, when the former used to manipulate the latter, in the 1970s. The USA decided a secret war in Afghanistan in 1979, on July 3. See what president Carter’s National Security adviser, Brzezinski, declared:

http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/usa-attack-against-afghanistan/

A consequence was 9/11. Three million Afghans dead, another. Bad actions can have terrible fall-out.”

These observations of mine were censored by the thinkers at the New York Times. Nothing really new here. I have been sending comments to the New York Times for more than a decade, more than 1,000 of my judicious observations were censored. I knew that, by evoking the early history of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, I exposed myself to traditional New York Times censorship. In 2003, overall, the New York Times was for the Iraq war (with the exception of Krugman).

The official line about 9/11 is that the sky was blue over an unsuspecting USA, and suddenly planes jetted in, piloted by very bad men from Afghanistan.

Never mind that 15 out of 19 were Saudi Arabs, and none from Afghanistan! That qualifies as irrelevant details.
Any data contradicting that idyllic picture is indeed viewed as deeply anti-American. Apparently reality has an anti-American bias.

The day following that act of censorship, Krugman wrote a related post about European elites pontificating in 2010 that austerity worked, and the European crisis was over. By then I knew I had been censored, so I re-sent the exact same comment, omitting the last paragraph about Rumsfeld, and Carter’s attack on Afghanistan. It was immediately published.

So what happened to “the truth shall make you free”? Why is the New York Times so authoritarian? Why to censor me systematically when I mentioned that the debt of the USA, according to the government of the USA, the IMF, etc, was 111%?

The NYT’s official line is that the Federal debt is less than 80% because it has decided that the Social Security Fund is NOT a creditor of the government of the USA. In other words the New York Times is part of a vast conspiracy that deliberately masks the fact that more than 5 trillion dollars is owed to CREDITORS, the Social Security Trust Fund and Medicare. Then the establishment turns around and say Social Security is going to get broke!

This is confusing, to say the least. Until one realizes that there is one, and only one elite, and that it is the effective arm of the plutocracy. This is why Obama was so ineffective in the first two years: he had to depend upon a Congress and Senate, let alone a Main Stream Media that was as much part of the same elite as the Koch brothers, the Rockefellers, Bilderberg and Davos conferences circles.

I often read pathetic wishes from small destitute people, for the return of Nancy Pelosi, the professional pseudo-progressive elitist, to head Congress. Drinking Pelosi’s Napa wine, skiing at Pelosi’s Sugar bowl resort (cost: $85!) Something to excite progressives, if elite enough!

In truth, the TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU SMART.

Smarts are what the pseudo left elite fears most. The truth, from smarts. To be found out as those who speak one way, and act just the opposite. And that is why the New York Times has censored me more than 1,000 times, but the Wall Street Journal (where I commented more than 1,000 times) has never censored me. Not once. Nor did “The Economist”, ever.

Official progressives are afraid, because avowed progressivism is their business, whereas in truth they just belong to the elite, and the elite, right now, means the worldwide plutocracy. That’s why massive austerity cuts are implemented when billionaire financiers are taxed less, relatively speaking, than janitors (this is an allusion to so called “carry interest” used by hedge fund managers and the like).

Can one be truly progressive when one is truly afraid of reality? Of course not. Progress comes from the manipulation of reality, and that requires to know what reality is. First. So one can make one’s mind about it, before bringing one’s mind to bear on the problem(s) .

Manipulating histories about hostilities in the Middle East informs energy policies and macro-ethics, looking forward. It also exculpates, as Krugman said, the bad actors of past policies, and, worse, exculpates some cognitive and logical methods used by past, present, and future mass criminality. it is certainly not the way to progress.

If the New York Times wants to keep on pretending it is about reality, its censorship bureau should be put out of business.
***
Patrice Ayme

Where Did Money Go?

Plutocracy Rising

This graph says it all. Yet, I showed it to a PhD in physics, who told me it was not understandable “because the axes are not labelled“. I was floored. After I pointed out that all the information needed was on the graph, my friend got very upset. (Yes, surprisingly, I still have a friend or two.)

Thanks to the clash with that friend, I realized that, although this sort of graphs, where two, or more, data streams are compared for relative change, are common in economics and finance, it’s not the case in physics!

So let me be very explicit for the plebs, educated ot not, out there: the picture above shows that, although productivity, that is, basically, GDP, kept on climbing, since 1980, those producing the augmentation of the GDP, the workers, did not see payments commensurate to that augmentation they caused. Money was produced, but it did not go to the average compensation.

How to interpret this graph then? The graph says that people at the top have been making all the supplementary riches produced ever since president Reagan came to power to implement the notion that the rich created the world. And that they would create some more of the world, if only they got even richer. That is, if only the wealthy got more of the world for themselves to keep, they would make more of it.

Strange mathematics, weird economics. Hey, nobody said that Reagan was an intellectual!

Money circulates, Reagan, his goons and clowns correctly argued. Right. So it had got to come back, somehow, the goons gloated. Right, money comes back. Owned by others. How does it come back?

Well by having the plebs, the rabble, the commons down below, those who serve the Rich and make the world worthy and beautiful for the Rich, BORROW BACK the money who had been stolen from them, when productivity was stolen from them.

Thus, thanks to Mr. Reagan tweaking of society and the tax code, most of the population was forced to borrow money instead of earning it.

An example is education: by making, de facto, public universities private, Reagan and the plutocratic sycophants who succeeded him, forced the student of the USA to borrow ever more. Now the total student debt, in the USA, is around a trillion dollars. An argument I know the Obamas understand (because they lived through it).

But there are other examples: by dismantling the public federal psychiatric system, Reagan decreased public spending, while allowing the crazies to roam the streets (that the plutocrats don’t mind, as they live in gated communities!).
Then, of course, Nixon had already created the Health Maintenance Organization system, a public financing of the for profit health care (something reminiscent of Obamacare).

This is the exact same mechanism that created the European Feudal system. By 600 CE, everybody was a Frank. By 658 CE, the slave trade was outlawed in the Imperium Francorum, slavery became irrelevant. Soon all and any religious establishment was forced to provide all and any child with secular education.

By 800 CE, Charlemagne, who lived very modestly for such a great emperor, pushed further for universal education. Although Charlemagne was the most warring emperor known until then, he was surrounded by top philosophers, some of them even from the British Isles, and that made him one of the most progressive emperors, in 5,000 years of historical civilization. This situation of deliberate progressivism perdured for at least two generations, until the reign of Charles the Bald.

So how come, if the Frankish empire, for centuries strived towards equality, five centuries after Charlemagne, Europe had turned into a monstrous plutocracy, with so called “aristocrats” all over, and the commons, equal in the eyes of the law, often treated worse than dogs?

Borrowing. Massive borrowing.

Frankish Europe had fallen into one conceptual trap, while simultaneously invaded by savages from all over. So Frankish Europe had plenty of excuses. The trap was European disunion. The savages, the Islamist Terrorists, the Vikings and the Mongols (“Avars”) attacked, attracted by the riches of Europe: after 800 CE, per head, Europe was the richest, and, consecutive to over-democratization, was not as well defended as its riches called for.

The reaction was to develop a military-industrial system centered around hyper trained, heavily armored knights, the sort no other country had, the sort that had devastated the fleeing Muslims after Poitiers (732 CE) and crushed light Muslim cavalry at Narbonne (737 CE). Militarily, it worked: Frankish knights were unstoppable: they rolled back the Muslims over the entire Mediterranean, and put an end to Constantinople’s independent Roman power (1204 CE). They were so unstoppable, that even the Huns, after suffering heavy losses in Hungary, decided to leave Francia alone, and made military alliances instead with the Franks in the Middle East (fall of Damascus, and Baghdad).

Thus the rise of plutocracy in the European Middle Ages happened for a very good reason: when one confronts unfathomable evil, as invaded Europe did, invaded on three fronts, one does better with a bigger Pluto on one’s side. Still the Franks of Clovis would have disagreed: although they had consented to give Clovis the powers of a Roman imperator (something crucial to destroy the Goths at the battle of Vouille’, 507 CE, for example), they drew the line of the Gini index (the inequality index) at that point.

Right now, there is no reason to call onto Hades, Pluto, Satan and a satanic organization of society. Historical examples, all the way back to Pharaonic Egypt, Crete, Classical Greece, and Rome, let alone the Franks themselves, show that an equalitarian republic is the most militarily capable society. (So why did the Franks develop an aristocracy centered on heavy cavalry, starting in 732 CE? Well, emergency. Charles Martel knew the Arabs of the Damascus Caliphate were going to be back, and he set up an enormous cavalry in 5 years.)

However, right now the West is militarily dominant (thanks to heavy taxes in a couple of countries, including, first of all, the USA and France). Thus there is no existential excuse for what is going on today.

All what is going today is a pure plutocratic effect, when the rich have got so rich that they can buy the republic. Fortunately, we are still at a point where the plutocratic effect can be rolled back.

Eleven countries of the European Union, following France and including Germany, have just passed a financial transaction tax (all other transactions are taxed, so why not the financial ones? All the more since the financiers are the richest!).

Now, miracle of miracles, Obama seems to have unchained himself. A bit. The Justice department is suing Standard and Poors (the rating agency owned by Warren the big Buffet plutocrat) for fraud in its ratings. OK, it’s only a civil lawsuit, not a criminal one.

When Django got unchained, he fired big bad guns on big, bad guys. Now Obama is unchained, look at him, firing his water pistol. *Sigh*.

So where did all the money go? To the rich, their mansions, their private jets, their guarded communities, their bodyguards. How is it coming back? By paying feudal servitude to the lords, same as 1,000 years ago.

Where is money not going? It is not going to true health, education, science. Some will scoff: nothing new under the sun, plutocracy comes and goes.

Yes, right, plutocracy has come and gone, like an evil tide, in 5,000 years of epistolary civilization. Civilizations rose, degenerated into plutocracy, and other civilizations, younger, cleaner, more democratic, gobbled them up.

However, this time is different. We are in a situation similar to Rome, just way worse.

We desperately need more science to get out of the predicament we are plunging the biosphere into.

Instead this morning I got a message from the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) saying:
“It seems inevitable that there will be reductions in federal spending, but will these cuts be allocated in a way that devastates science research and education, threatens future economic growth, and erodes America’s competitiveness in the world?”

Well, if it were just a question of letting the USA sink, that would be only just desserts. But actually the fate of the biosphere is at stake.

All of this because the wealthiest of the wealthy are splurging, while starving the rest.
***
Patrice Ayme

“Obama” Lost Already?

GIVING CHANGE WITH NO CHANGE GOES ONLY THAT FAR?

Lost Because There Is Not Enough Advocacy For Progress In The USA.

The president of the USA is usually presented as the “most powerful man in the world“. This is disinformation. “Weakest leader in the world” is more like it. The presidency of the USA is a weak office. Why? Because not only is the business of the USA, business, but the government of the USA is business.

I have been making the progressive case against Obama‘s policies. For four years (minus a week). Before he became president, Obama prevented Hank Paulson to force banks to cram down house mortgages. Result:

Obama Inflection Point; Corporate Profits Climb, Salaries Dive To New Lows

Plutocrat Paulson, Bush’s Treasury Secretary, ex-CEO of Goldman Sachs, understood that banks had to give something commensurate in exchange for the enormous public money they were getting. Otherwise, it was theft. Obama did not want to understand that.

Obama spent the next four years singing the praises of bankers, banksters, and financial criminals (latest in 2012; an ode to love for Buffet, famous for destroying Greece, in Newsweek, and Dimon, head of JP Morgan, on “The View”). Not cramming down the mortgages allowed the banks to keep on having “tiers one” capital they did not have, thus keeping on with their derivatives’ casino, starving the real economy, while getting 8,000 billions of “monetary base”, from the Fed (that forced the EU to join the game in 2011).

I am not focusing here on other grave ethical failings, such as worldwide killing by death panel ordered drones, a new high for the devil, a very dangerous precedent for fascist regimes.

That establishment of a “Terminator” like world is comparable, as an ethical jump, to the jump accomplished when extermination camps came to be viewed as a measure of progress.

That many “democrats” agree to killing people by robots without due process reminds me of German Socialists approving of Hitler because Adolf called himself a socialist. Just as Hitler focused on “will” (he was singularly deprived of it after 1942), Obama focused on “navigation” as an overall metaprinciple (now his “navigation without an ethical compass has led him into the shoals of public opinion). Being a full human leader requires to focus on full human ethics, not naked procedures (will, social navigation), as a suitable end to political means. 

I am focusing here on the economic side, and the ethics connected to it. As Matt Stoller puts it:

“Under Bush, economic inequality was bad, as 65 cents of every dollar of income growth went to the top 1 percent. Under Obama, however, that number is 93 cents out of every dollar. That’s right, under Barack Obama there is more economic inequality than under George W. Bush.

Financials Make 40% Of Corporate Profits

[Blue line: corporate profits, red line: main worth USA families, home equity.]

And if you look at the chart above, most of this shift happened in 2009-2010, when Democrats controlled Congress. This was not, in other words, the doing of the mean Republican Congress. And it’s not strictly a result of the financial crisis; after all, corporate profits did crash, like housing values did, but they also recovered, while housing values have not.

This is the shape of the system Obama has designed. It is intentional, it is the modern American order…”

The plutocracy is amplified by the desire of government officials, who are typically in the middle class, to join the 1% (who do not just live much better, but safer, with better… local government and services).

The third debate Obama-Romney was uneventful. After his huge win in the first debate, when Romney presented himself as the candidate with a plan, while Obama sounded like an apologetic butler, seemingly worried about blemishes on the floor, Romney needed just to not make mistakes.

The news though, as far as I am concerned, were made by Obama, when he brazenly announced, in passing, out of the blue, that “sequestration is not going to happen“.

This was an astounding statement. The problem is not just that sequestration is the law. And that it is becoming effective in eight weeks or so. The problem is that:

Sequestration is a liberal’s heaven: it cuts down a huge chunk of the defense budget, and remove the Bush(-Obama) tax cuts for the rich. The deficit and (some of) the inequity disappear overnight.

Why would Obama be against it? If Obama is the “liberal”? (“Liberal” that is left, democratic, in USA semantics, the opposite of European semantics.) Why would Obama want to denigrate a law he helped passed, and that institutes a liberal’s heavens?

Is Obama a double agent?

Is he not a liberal then, and all the hysterical liberals who want us to vote for him just naive sheep rushing behind their shepherd as they enter the slaughterhouse?

So Obama is losing that election. If not in the votes, surely with his head. Surely losing his second term, if any, before he got started. Lost his head in an accident called democracy.

I forecasted as much little bit less than 4 years ago. Surely the old liberal Obama face had lost to the neoconservative Obama reality, immediately after he was elected. How did I know this?

The first thing is that Obama was mesmerized by Larry Summers, the financial derivatives’ enabler. Summers is a notoriously, officially delirious misogynistic bully, who, knowing no advanced science or mathematics, claimed women were genetically inferior at it (there are plenty of top women in science and math, up to the very highest level, for example Emmy Noether, who, sponsored by the mathematical giants Hilbert and Klein was spurned forever at Göttingen. Finally Hilbert had to get angry, and point that: the faculty is not a toilet. Noether’s work was very deep and some ot it is used for the very basics of quantum Field Theory).  

The day after his election as president, Obama went to work in the offices of a hedge fund in Chicago. November 5, 2008. That was an astounding fact. Hedge funds and their financial derivatives were front and central causative in the 2008 financial crisis. It was as if Obama understood nothing, nor did his advisers. Or maybe he wanted to make a blatant wink to the plutocracy, to the greatest sharks of the financial world, that he approved of their world, entirely, front and center, for all to see.

His apparently lobotomized supporters were completely clueless and celebrated all over like nice drunk maniacs. They are still celebrating, four years later. Michelle Obama asks: “Are you in? Tell Barack you are in!”. Simpler than that, no way: politics reduced to sexual allusions, or something equally primitive. We are in? Into what? Masochism? With Michelle as whip yielding dominatrix? OK, she obvioulsy fits the role quite well.

What hope could we have, when Obama embraced evil, and his supporters did high fives all over? With hedge funds’ managers?

So now, here we are, four years later; most of the money went to banks. 8 trillions (mostly from Quantitative Easing, which was used to “reimburse” TARP!). Total deficit added: 4 trillions, most of it from tax cuts (to the rich!), not from investment. The so called Bush tax cuts were legislated religiously by 4 year by the democratic Congress (led by plutocrat Pelosi).

Why don’t progressive call those cuts the Pelosi-Obama tax cuts for the rich? Because we are not rich, and it’s safer not to tell the truth?

Here are two comments of mine that the New York Times had the kindness to designate as “picks” (although most of my comments on Krugman’s blog are censored; I view Krugman’s policies as causative of much of the Obama’s faulty socio-economic program.)

***

The first comment was subsequent to Krugman’s editorial in which he said: “The U.S. economy finally seems to be recovering in earnest…it will still take years to restore full employment — and it has been a very long time coming. Why has the slump been so protracted?

The answer — backed by overwhelming evidence — is that this is what normally happens after a severe financial crisis.”

In other words Krugman still understands too little, too late. I sent this:

Oct. 21, 2012 at 8:46 p.m.

We are in the worst crisis, ever.

There is a fundamental employment crisis. There is an ecological crisis, without precedent in 65 million years, that puts the biosphere in question (and gasoline above $4 a gallon).

What is happening right now is just the beginning of the beginning of said crisis. Obama was called in to deliver change, and, thus stop the steady march behind the same old errors. However, a chorus of sycophants and plutocratic servants insisted nothing much had to be done… And Obama went along.

Right now the USA has a huge, primary deficit (Italy does not have a primary deficit), and the debt to GDP ratio of the Federal government is above 100% (only Italy and Greece, and of course Japan have higher debt to GDP numbers). Many on the pseudo-left say it does not matter. How come it matters anywhere else? And what is the plan to deal with those?

Guess what? The public wants change again, any change, as long as it’s not the same old same old: all the money to the banks, none for commoners.

***

Not surprisingly, Mitt Romney is claiming to be the one to bring change. The worst being is that he may right, frighteningly enough. It’s easier to bring more change than no change.

Krugman and company claims Obamacare will change everything, but I just don’t believe it, as it was written by the sharks themselves, the health care plutocrats, and it does not set-up what they fear and all other advanced countries have: a public health care core.

The markets have broken national sovereignty, all over. Obamacare eschewed that lesson, all too long.

The last case being rolled out this week: Mr. Clean, Close-To-The People, humble Prime Minister of China, the guy with the glasses and the modest white shirt, turns out, according to the New York Times, and not  to my surprise, to have accumulated, through various members of his family, including his elderly mother, a fortune of no less than 2.7 billion dollars.

The dictatorship of the People has turned into the dictatorship of the Plutocrats. The New York Times just got censored in China for pointing out that this supposedly clean PM was a plutocrat hiding behind the rest of his family, a trick massively used in the USA! Ironically the New York Times censors me about denouncing plutocracy, and gets censored in turn, for the same reason! What goes around, comes around, just like hurricane-north-eastener…

***

Krugman again: “Mitt Romney … has a five-point plan to restore prosperity. And some voters, alas, seem to believe what he’s saying. So President Obama has now responded with his own plan, a little blue booklet containing 27 policy proposals. How do these two plans stack up?

Mr. Romney is faking it. His real plan seems to be to foster economic recovery through magic… So, is Mr. Obama offering an inspiring vision for economic recovery? No, he isn’t. His economic agenda is relatively small-bore — a bunch of modest if sensible proposals rather than a big push… The point is that America is still suffering from an overall lack of demand, the result of the severe debt and financial crisis that broke out before Mr. Obama took office.”

I sent the following comment (also a NYT pick, as that august paper seems to be about two minds about me!)

Most probably, Obama’s “plan” is too little, too late. Progressives ought to have protested strongly as soon as Obama had selected his economic team, led by financial derivatives advocate Larry Summers. But they did not.

According to the sycophants of the democratic party a la Obama, there were at least 14 weeks with a supermajority in the Senate and 4 years of majority in Congress (in 2012, the French Socialists have taken enormous decisions in 14 weeks, including 75% tax margin and a financial transaction tax!)

So Obama had, and has nearly no ideas, in any case, very small, that’s why he could not do anything with his supermajority, not even removing Bush’s tax cuts. And the lack of ideas is throughout the progressive establishment. Maybe Romney’s plan is impossible and scary (it sure looks this way). However it does something that allowed Obama to be elected four years ago: it makes people dream of change.

The essay below suggests non trivial ideas of the progressive type:
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2012/10/17/ideas-for-democrats/

The main idea is to push Research and Development massively. Take an example: Infra Red Photo Voltaics. They exist already in the lab, but are extremely inefficient. Having them would augment enormously the efficiency of photovoltaics (I think about 40% of the sun’s energy comes as infrared). Make a crash program. A fundamental, basic research crash program. Not something perverse like Solyandra, Space X, Tesla, Fisker, A123.  

And protect the basic research by extremely fierce protection of Intellectual Property.

***

WILL DO-NOTHING PRESIDENT SNATCH VICTORY FROM JAWS OF DEFEAT?

We don’t know what Obama wanted to do, when he embarked on his exalted adventure. As a candidate, four years ago, he ran in full compatibility with this site. I was happy. However Obama governed, mostly, against this site, breaking my sensitive little heart. I cried a river, and now the seas are rising faster than ever.

So it is with human destinies: one wants to do one thing, and often one ends up doing the opposite. For the best reasons, which turned, in the fullness of time, to be the worst.

Obama’s main metaprinciple, as explained in his best selling memoirs, and re-iterated since, is “navigation“, rather than haughtier principle. However a civilizational leader does not just navigate, but creates. When an elected leader is backed up by serious philosophers, such as Pericles, that gives results (the “open society“) one remembers.

Obama wanted to become a president who did great things. But that was in total contradiction with his navigational metaprinciple. Great leaders don’t just navigate, they force destiny.

What Obama implemented, in practice, was Bush III (except in foreign policy, where, by espousing Franco-Britannia in Libya he has been much smarter, and sharply opposed to the treacherous Bush). we do not want to be naive like Paul Krugman: “Think instead about the 45 million Americans who either will or won’t receive essential health care, depending on who wins on Nov. 6. “

Krugman is rich, he lives in a mansion, he shuttles all the time first class around the world, he is big time. It did not dawn on his teeny tiny brain that soon hundreds of millions of “Americans” will not be able to afford that health care, because, like the captain of the Titanic refused to think about icebergs, the Oblablablists refused to think about cost. the reform that mattered for health care was cost, first: make health care cheaper, then the state could afford for everybody to have it. For that one just had to allow the (three) public health care systems to bargain with private providers, fully (as in other countries).

In “the Progressive Case Against Obama”, Stoller argues, as I long have, that the election of Romney would wake up the opposition to the Bush-Obama-Romney order exemplified by Krugman: 8,000 billions to the banks, and the likes of Elon Musk (Tesla, Space X), 4,000 billions of supplementary debt in 4 years.

It is not a question of being anti-capitalist. Civilization is entangled with capital. No capital, no civilization. That’s why I distinguish between “capitalism” & plutocratic phenomenon

The progressive left got completely anesthetized by their brown guy’s accession to power. It was a case of racist intoxication:”Look Obama is black, he does miracles!” In truth, Obama is not even black, but brownish. The progressive left did not help Obama, the USA or the world by falling asleep, or going crazy in the Oblabla personality cult. Quite the contrary.

Now the den of thieves, Wall Street is getting a foretaste of its own medicine, by threatening to go under water, what it wanted all along, in its secret desire for self destruction. A North Easter is meeting a hurricane. Never happened before.

Obama’s policy, just as that of all his predecessors, and Romney’s is hell bound to make the USA stay on top, as the world’s greatest CO2 polluter (much of China works for the USA). The latest idea from the American hyper exploitation mood, is to export USA coal to China. Washington and New York will keep on going that way, and only them going deep under water will stop them, apparently. Admittedly, the progress of hurricane Sandy is a good sign of the Biblical flooding to come. Probably too complicated for their ethically deprived tiny brains to comprehend.

But there is a much better case to be made than Obama’s ignominious defeat. Unfortunately it would depend upon another “Obama” than the one we got to know, suddenly rising from his ashes.

In that progressive and optimistic case, Obama wins, and then a suddenly liberal Obama comes to his senses, and refuses to negotiate about “sequestration”. By January 1, 2013, a progressive paradise would dawn. The Bush-Obama tax cuts would disappear, and there would be savage cuts in defense. The rich would be taxed a bit more, the deficit would disappear overnight.

Even the hurricane-North-Easter “Frankenstorm” is giving an occasion for Obama to pose as commander in chief. Obama saved by god. The least god could do, after being evoked so many times. Hey, maybe the hurricane could wake up the citizens of the USA to the fact that they have been ecological pigs.

Of all the possibilities, that is what I would prefer. By far. That, and Obama sequestering the right in its own contradictions.

Dream and hope never dies…

***

Patrice Ayme

Obama: Right Of Nixon.

PLUTOCRACY: GLOBAL GIANT, DEMOCRACY: LOCAL MICROBE.

***

Many web sites just scavenge other people’s ideas, or, and, write short and superficial. The danger is that human brains degenerate into those of tweeting birdies: flashy, but all too light. I will appear to do this today, but not really. An article in The New York Times “G.O.P. Shift Moves Center Far to Right” exposes in concise form many of the themes I have rehashed for years. For example that Nixon, compared to Obama, was a leftist. So I will extensively quote the article (who invents the ideas first owns them).

All that article says can be found in essays of mine in the last 8 years, so I am quoting myself in a sense. I am not complaining: I wish the NYT, and the democratic party, had expressed themselves along these lines at the beginning of Obama’s residency.

Krugman had already done so a year ago (while quoting another pundit from the punditocracy, of course!). Krugman and company were all for mild measures when Obama was deciding and implementing such watered down measures, on their advice, while I was screaming that Obama was governing on the right of Nixon! Later, crude men and their kind admitted that they gave the wrong advice to Obama as they claim to have believed that there was time to correct things later… (As if they had never heard of elections, and throwing the incompetents out!)

My interpretation is much more cynical: they gave the wrong advice because they has interest to do so. After all, the chief of the democrats in Congress since 2006, is owner of a ski resort and her family in a famous political dynasty.

Obama has been a terrible disappointment, for an ardent supporter of change such as me. It happened in no small part because all too many were all too happy with the color of his skin, and other shallow, not to say racist, considerations. They forgot to look at what was really going on. If voters decide to throw out who does not matter, Obama, and replace him by someone else, who they may be led to believe (thanks to PACs, Super PACS, C4, etc.) may matter, they will have only themselves to blame.

So here is the business section of the New York Times, September 4, 2012:

To hear Republicans on the campaign trail, the United States could not have elected a more left-wing president than Barack Obama, one more hostile to business or more eager to expand government power. Left-wing Democrats, I’m sure, would disagree. If they had their druthers, they would probably make a more liberal, more pro-big government choice. Somebody, perhaps, like Richard Nixon.

That’s right. The Nixon administration not only supported the Clean Air Act and affirmative action, it also gave us the Environmental Protection Agency, one of the agencies the business community most detests, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to police working conditions. Herbert Stein, chief economic adviser during the administrations of Nixon and Gerald Ford, once remarked: “Probably more new regulation was imposed on the economy during the Nixon administration than in any other presidency since the New Deal.”

Nixon bolstered Social Security benefits. He introduced a minimum tax on the wealthy and championed a guaranteed minimum income for the poor. He even proposed health reform that would require employers to buy health insurance for all their employees and subsidize those who couldn’t afford it. That failed because of Democratic opposition. Today, Republicans would probably shoot it down.

So compare the achievements of Obama with those of Nixon (by the way, I used to dislike and despise Nixon). The New York Times’ Porter pursues:

“The difference between then and now is that Nixon — like most mainstream Republicans — accepted that government had a role to play guaranteeing Americans’ economic well-being. That consensus cracked around the time of Ronald Reagan’s inaugural speech in 1981. “Government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem,” the president intoned. And the country’s political center set off on a long rightward migration.

Interestingly, Americans say their political ideology has changed little since the late 1970s. The share of voters who defined themselves as liberal was 20 percent in 2010, up slightly from 19 percent in 1980, according to polls by The New York Times and CBS News. The conservative share over the same time rose to 35 percent, from 30 percent.

But these polls ignore how much the meanings of the terms have changed. The rightward drift in economic thinking becomes apparent in surveys asking about specific issues. In surveys 25 years ago, 71 percent of Americans believed it was the government’s job to take care of those who couldn’t care for themselves, according the Pew Research Center. This year the share is down to 59 percent. And most of the shift reflects a decline among Republicans.

Republicans’ support for labor unions has fallen sharply since the late 1980s, according to Pew’s research, as has their support for protecting the environment. Their drift fits the position of Congressional Republicans, whose views on the economy have been shifting right for the last quarter-century while Democrats’ views have remained roughly still. And as Republicans have moved to the right, economic policy has followed. “

It’s all of course, about what I call plutocratic propaganda. But Mr. Porter, writing for the business section of the NYT, would not dare say such a thing. Instead he opts for the anything-but-plutocratic propaganda explanation:

Conservatives will say their ideas won simply because they are better. Social scientists have some alternative hypotheses of our great conservative shift.

The big government strategy from the 1940s through the 1970s produced a spectacular improvement in living standards. But many economists now say they believe the focus on full employment and income redistribution at the expense of everything else also contributed to the strategy’s demise, removing the fear of joblessness and encouraging excessive wage increases.

Combined with cheap money printed by the Federal Reserve, it produced a burst of high inflation and high unemployment that bedeviled the 1970s — discrediting government as an economic steward and letting a new belief take hold: the economy should be left to the market, which always knows best. The end of the cold war, which discredited central planning and other left-wing economic theories, probably helped solidify this stance.

I do not claim that what the factors Mr. Porter exhibits did not occur. They did. But the true full picture is much bigger, and not restricted to technicalities. First he forgot the giant waste of the Vietnam war, which exploded the entire economy. One can see that Mr. Porter does not believe that the picture he just drew is dominant, as he abstracts it in a completely different way, in a Freudian slip of sorts:

Economic philosophies could shift again, of course. Just as the big government policies of the New Deal emerged from the Great Depression and World War II, the financial crisis and recession just past might again persuade Americans of the perils of unfettered capitalism and cause the pendulum to swing back.

So, after all, it was all about the perils of unfettered capitalism, and not just the fact that living standards augmented spectacularly… Another problem has been “globalization“:

… a kinder, gentler economy in which American companies faced much less competition than they do today. Eastman Kodak could run a mini-welfare state through much of the 20th century —with profit-sharing, health benefits and pension plans — because it had fat monopoly-type profits. Detroit’s Big Three amounted to a cozy oligopoly.

Globalization and its attendant burst of competition put an end to the fairy tale. Companies squeezed costs to stay in the game, zeroing in on wages and working conditions. Unions, once politically powerful institutions fighting for workers’ share, became weaker and weaker.

Half a century ago, American employers might have accepted a higher minimum wage on the ground that they needed American consumers to be able to afford their products. They might have supported public education on the ground that they needed an educated American work force. They might have accepted financial oversight because they raised money from small investors in American markets.

But globalization freed businesses from the limitations of one nation and the clutches of the nation state. As businesses’ footprints extended around the world, these objectives became less important than assuring low taxes. Free to jump borders, businesses became much more difficult to tax or regulate. And in the current dismal economy, they don’t seem too eager for a return of the big government days.

The United States is in ideological flux. The Great Recession has given us both the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movement, and produced perhaps the most polarized government of the modern era. Liberal-leaning Democrats, often disappointed at the president’s compromises, will pine for a more aggressive champion of workers’ rights. But they may want to count their blessings. Americans today might not elect somebody as liberal as Richard Nixon.

Well, and why would not “Americans today not elect somebody as liberal as Richard Nixon”? Because Americans enjoy the suffering of Americans? Or is it because a herd votes with its hoofs? Wherever the cow boys wants it to go?

Frightened little minds need to be led by masters. Led by the nose. This is how fascism works. Thus, the instinct says, force comes. The oldest instinct of social animals: E Pluribus Unum. Out of the many small frightened ones, one big monster.

Democracy is local, and has become a microbe. Can it become virulent enough to master the global plutocratic giant? Maybe, but that is ever less obvious as the USA succumbs to the Dark Side of secret political financing.

Notice that we have seen that movie before: as the tiny Greek city states kept on fighting with each other, a plutocratic giant rose in the north: Macedonia. Macedonia was led by an oligarchy of wealthy horse owners. Macedonia organized itself as a plutocracy of lords.

Macedonia spoke Greek, and understood many of Greece’s greatest ideas (or at least Aristotle and his student Alexander did). But some of Alexander’s generals, who succeeded him, missed the biggest ethical ideas. Or, at least so did Antipater (who came to crush and rule Greece). In Egypt, it was different as Ptolemy, another senior general of the rebellious Alexander youth, made himself Pharaoh, and went for the promotion of thinking.    

Overall, ethics is there to allow the weakest thing, the mind, to triumph above force, including the force of the multitude.

Obama did not understand that the minds had to be fed. Or, he was unable to feed with what he did not have. More probably, as someone who knew him well 40 years told me: “You know, Barry was just a regular guy.” Regular guys don’t lead the minds of the many up the right road.

And the pathetic comparison with that rabid anti-communist, Nixon, makes it all the clearer.

***

Patrice Ayme

Happy Banking Barack!

I MEAN BIRTHDAY, WHATEVER.

***

Abstract: Obama’s birthday today. What a precocious child, from nothing to president. OK, Senator a few years. “Senator”: the word is from “senior”. The Roman Senate was made of seniors, advising.

Obama: so young, inexperienced, and yet father of the nation, with his young fellow multimillionaires friends from Chicago to talk to! Jamie Dimon, a young plutocrat, third generation, lived there in a 17 rooms mansion. Is not the world wonderful? Obama: even Nobel before noble! What magic! President of the mightiest nation without genuinely friendly family elders for common sense advice?

At least Vladimir Putin got the elders at the KGB for advice, who he knew and trusted since he was a student! With Obama, the elders were there for advice, sure: they were the very greedy plutocrats who caused the crisis.

What did Obama accomplish? Why so admiring of banks and financiers? Is it why he did so little in reforming finance? Because it was the greatest heist that ever was, and is still on-going, in full view, and still nobody sees it? The emperor has no clothes, but dances the twist? Truly a wonder! Fooling all the people, all of the time?

In Great Britain even the right wing conservative government of David Cameron has had enough with the banks. The Tory-Liberal government and The Economist are now saying about banks what I have long repeated. The bank outrage is central to the crisis not just in Great Britain and the USA, but in the entire West.

Just two days ago a crazed financial program went on line and caused at least half a billion dollar loss to its firm, while battering the credibility of the USA’s financial markets. Operators could not even stop it for half an hour. That sort of scandal could easily be avoided with a Financial Transaction Tax. A Financial transaction Tax would automatically impose a speed limit on financial trading to re-establish causality, as I have long advocated. (Also it’s only justice; all other transactions are subject to taxation!)

Why did only France pass a Financial Transaction Tax?

***

GETTING ADVICE FROM CROOKS: DREAMS OF ONE’S FATHER FOR THE CLUELESS:

This is Barack Obama’s birthday. For those outside of the USA, it is hard to fathom the cult the Obama campaign is trying to build around it. Truly pathetic. Those guys are desperate, begging for money. And people ask: what did you give us for our money, Barack? Odes to banks and the world’s richest men? The citizens of the USA are treated as if they were three years old.

As I am slightly more mature than that, I decided to go to the bottom of that childish behavior. I met recently with people who knew Obama pretty well when he was a child, when they, themselves, were already responsible adults with children of their own. I asked them whether they found normal that the kid they knew and befriended is not only now president, but never bothered to ask for their parental advice. It’s not like Obama had living parents. He has not been so endowed, for years.

Those elders thought it had been a mistake for Obama never to talk with them. They were actually shocked by it. Who else could Obama have turned to for friendly trust, guidance and experience?

People such as the plutocrat Eskrine Bowles, advised (or ordered?) Obama to “leave your friends behind, they only cause problems“? Welcome to plutocracy, Obambi!

We, the elders and me, concluded that the inappropriate public dreaming of Obama for figures such as Warren Buffet was an ersatz search for fatherly advice. Instead of finding the latter, with those he could trust, since childhood, Obama went to search for advice in all the wrong places. It will, no doubt turn out well for him financially. If you obey Morgan Stanley as USA president, Morgan Stanley should not forget you, as USA citizen. But the question remains: is that all the wisdom the world can pretend to?

***

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE BESIDES SINGING THE PRAISES OF FINANCIERS?

Tyranosopher: So this is your birthday, Mr. President, and what have you done? [Words on the song of John Lennon, So This Is Christmas]. Answer: When I could, not much. When I could not, well, I begged for much money, for me, The One. Although I did support the war of France against Qaddafi, like you guys wanted.

Tyranosopher: This you did, and that was good. And you also saved the auto industry, and that was excellent. But you saved the auto industry, because it begged for mercy, first, and when only public money could provide it. The banks have not begged for mercy. Ever. Quite the opposite, they, and their agents (Honorable Krugman among them), have been dictating the agenda, up to, and since, 2008. The banks were not allowed to fail, first. So they could not be nationalize for nothing.

The only bank that was not helped, Lehman Brothers, was not helped because the secretary of the treasury, Paulson, ex-football player, not really an intellectual, ex-head of Goldman Sachs, and owner of a large island, hated it with a passion.

Obama: I accomplished my signature achievement, ACA, the Affordable Care Act.

Tyranosopher: You could have expanded Medicare in one minute, and get Congress to pass the whole thing the next day, when you had a super majority in the Senate (60 votes, as Ted Kennedy was still well enough to vote, then). It would have long been effective. That’s change. Change that may happen someday, if you are still around on top, that’s not change.

Instead you bent over backwards to please the plutocrats, so it is taking years to produce that silly, hyper complicated thing, and we ended down in the muck with an ACA, aka Obamacare, aka Romneycare, which pleases nobody. If you lose the election, we can only admire how hard you worked for it. Or how hubristic you were to think you could fool everybody, and get away with it.

Obama: “What’s done is done. We gave a serious thought at what you call Medicare For All, too late. Now ACA is the law.”

Tyranosopher: ACA is the law, as long as you are not beaten in three months. And that hinges on enough of an economic recovery, which is hobbled by the financial plutocracy, which believes it owns all the money in the world, and ought to keep it to itself.

That economic non-disintegration, in turn, depends a lot upon Europe not collapsing in another bout of deep recession in its on-going Greater Depression. Please don’t forget that the present head of the European Central banks was a partner at Goldman Sachs for six years, and even a vice-chairman there. Why would he want to help you? When he can help the real thing, Romney?

*** 

MIGHT IS RIGHT, SO MONEY IS RIGHT:

Ever since the 2008 banking Crisis, the Anglo-Saxon governments, the U.S. Federal Reserve, and their obsequious followers (the ECB Draghi) have known mostly one policy: throwing money, ever more money, at the banks (It’s called under various names, to confuse the herd of bleating sheep).

The self celebrating conscientious liberal Paul Krugman would put it, trying to hide his apparent plutophilia behind semantics, throwing ever more, “monetary base” at the banks.

Obama of course, has been a central part of this celebration of the banks. Obama does even more: he celebrates hyper rich financiers and over-crooks, and sing their praises all over the main stream media. He wrote an ode in Newsweek to the famous Warren Buffet, a rare plutocrat owning the main rating agencies, Goldman Sachs, and going long or short, accordingly, when he is not plotting with the Chinese the demise of Western work, industry, and the global atmosphere.

Indeed China, were Buffet invests so much, is “severely under-reporting its carbon emissions“…“China may be under-reporting its annual carbon emissions by as much as 1.4 billion tonnes a year—roughly the amount that Japan, the world’s fourth-largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2), pumps out each year” (The Economist quoting Nature Climate Change.)

Obama went on TV to sing the praises of Jamie Dimon. Hey, suppose Obama has no job next year, would not it be nice to be invited at Citigroup, or Goldman Sachs, and be n $200,000 for a few minutes’ speech as Larry Summers had been? A man needs to feed his fancy, and cannot live normal, after living so big, that would be cruel and unusual punishment…

OK, back to the banks. I will quote extensively from the most current issue of The Economist (I am a subscriber), and if the Economist disagrees, it can always have its directors in Luxembourg, behind that cheap door, explain to me that I cheated taxpayers. I will address their grievance.

The reason for quoting extensively from The Economist is that this way I cannot be accused to be far out to the left of Marx, all alone. I have company among the fact based community.

***

AS LONG AS BANKS HAVE MONEY, THEY DON’T NEED AN ECONOMY:

The Economist says, in “Money For Nothing“,  that: “Although it should still, in theory, be profitable for banks to lend to small and medium-sized companies, they seem unwilling to do so. The latest figures from the European Central Bank show that bank loans to the private sector were down… Nor is it economic, given the issuing costs, for small companies to borrow money in the bond market.”

So why don’t the democratic governments create PUBLIC banks to finance small and medium companies? (The French Socialist government has said it would create such a bank, but it has been busy changing the fiscal system, with the Financial Transaction Tax, effective since august 1, 2012. Now, of course it went to the sacred August vacation, last savagely interrupted in August, 1914!)

Amusingly, some in the right wing British government are starting to feel so inclined…

***

BRITAIN IS IN A GREATER DEPRESSION, BUT NOT ITS BANKSTERS:

The Financial Times, on August 2nd 2012, announced that “cabinet ministers” have been discussing the nationalization of the Royal Bank of Scotland (The British People already owns 82% of the Royal Bank of Scotland after bailing it out in 2008!) OK, the Financial Times has also its directors behind that same door in Luxembourg: the theme today is collaboration with the enemy, to fight greater evil.

As The Economist put it (before  removing the post later!):

“Fed up with the lack of lending, “senior government figures” are discussing whether to spend £5 billion buying up the 18% of RBS the state doesn’t own.

… the long-toothed Liberal business secretary Vince Cable… is looking for a more radical solution. In a leaked letter to the Prime Minister David Cameron in March, Mr Cable suggests breaking up RBS to create a “British Business Bank with a clean balance sheet and a mandate to expand lending rapidly to sound business“.

The rationale behind it is to lend to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Current government policy on this lies in tatters. In February 2011, those at the top came up with a whizzy idea called Project Merlin. The idea was that British banks would sign a contract agreeing to lend more to businesses and—like magic—there would be growth. The Excalibur of bonus cuts was hinted at.

This didn’t work. Growth flatlined. Lending dried up. Excalibur stayed in its stone…

To Mr Cable, “the banking crisis casts a long shadow”. Some economists place Britain’s flagging productivity and lost output down to the seizing up of credit. To desperate ministers who think the market has failed, letting the state step in seems increasingly a good idea.

…the coalition’s current plan—is to nurse RBS back to health and sell it off for a profit. But the bank is expected to announce losses of about £1.5 billion for the first half of the year…. This gives ministers a political reason to nationalise it.

There would also be trouble from the EU. Letting the state direct credit for a bank with a £1 trillion balance sheet might breach EU state-aid rules. This is not to mention the political difficulty of spending £5 billion (where will the money come from?) on something less likely to make a profit. But in an economy now smaller than when the coalition came into power, these things seem to matter less and less.”

To prevent all this economy stalling circus, money losing bank corporations should have been allowed to fail, until they were bought back (by the government, if nobody else, like a crazed sheik, moved in first), for cents on the euro, pence on the pound, pennies on the dollar.

The correct course would be for the British government to coolly announce that they would stop helping banks such as RBS, and threaten to take away their banking license. After such a menace, loud and clear, the stock prices of the banking corporations would collapse, and the banks could be nationalized cheaply. Meanwhile a PUBLIC bank to lend to SMEs ought to be created (say with the 80 billion pounds brandished to help existing banks).

The same applies everywhere.

Of course, in the USA, the lovers of financiers come around, and like Obama, proclaimed that the USA put its banking house in order, while Europe did not. But Europe did lent trillions, at zero interest (basically) to banks. And what did the banks do? Keep the money to themselves, not recycle it in the economy. That is what is giving many European leaders pause.

In the USA, it has been just the same: the banks kept the money for their own operations and that of their friends. The difference with Europe is that much more money was given (sorry, “lent” at zero interest or so) to them. So indeed, American bankers are more arrogant, as those who are given more often are. 

They know they are the ones who, using leverage, create the money. They abused that privilege, for themselves, so regulators are cracking down, thus cracking down on money creation. The only way out is to create public banks.

Big corporations have no problem getting money, as… they are trusted more than most government: investors know they rule the world (and often do not pay tax, because, thanks to decolonization, they have 100 banana republic to call home, like pirates of old, in the seventeenth century).

Is the state of world finance something to celebrate? Probably not. And now the USA is facing the real possibility that a plutocrat red in fang and claw becomes president. After 4 years of Obama bending over backwards to please plutocrats, voters of the USA may be thinking: if the president thinks plutocrats are so good for us, why not being led by the real thing?

So happy birthday, Mr. President. After all, even Adolf Hitler celebrated his birthday in April 20, 1945, as Soviet shells were exploding all over Berlin. Some people are so much into themselves, they never get out.

***

Patrice Ayme

Why Austerity?

AUSTERITY IS PLUTOCRACY’S BEST FRIEND.

We are in a giant ecological crisis, the collapse of the biosphere. That’s new. We are also in the midst of the silent coup of global plutocracy. That’s nothing new, plutocracy has ravaged many a civilization.

Collapse and plutocracy are entangled, they always have been. The economic crisis is only an appendage of a catastrophe of antediluvian proportions.

Krugman pointed out in “Reagan Was A Keynesian“, that, by the fourth year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, because the economy had faltered, total government spending was augmented 130% more than in the comparable period under Obama. Thus confirming that Obama is to the very far right of Reagan (especially considering that the economy is now in a grave depression, the Greater Depression, not just a Federal reserve engineered recession, as it was under Reagan!)

President Ronald Reagan caused in part, through his military built-up, a built-up in high tech. That was highly profitable, in the end. The ecological and energy crises can be solved by such a technological built-up. They can only be solved by such a much greater built-up. Such a built-up would then prove very profitable. For all of humanity, yet again.

Austerity is the enemy of technology. Superior technology asks for a measure of irrational exhuberance, as does, even more, its fertile ground, new science. Indeed, if we knew how it worked already, it would not really be new.

So why all the austerity now? Why undermining what can save the biosphere, and us?

Because austerity advantages the plutocrats, in the coup they are conducting, silently.

Such a phenomenon, a coup by the richest, under other guises, happened several times in Roman history: the situation was dire, and the plutocrats in control of the Senate tried their best, including sometimes mass assassinations, to reduce spending. In the end, austerity reigned, and reigned so much that plutocracy killed Rome.

Why is austerity favorable to plutocrats? Because, when one has it all, as plutocrats do, the best way to keep it, is to make sure that the others get ever more impotent. And when one has it all there is to be had, one can only get more, if one makes sure that others get less.

***

Here are a few elaborations on the preceding, justifying the aphorisms above:

AUSTERITY IS THE ENEMY OF TECHNOLOGY:

Time and time again, Roman inventors, under the empire, presented drastic inventions, which could have changed the flow of history. They were squashed. Because plutocracy has no interest to change the flow of history, or even to have one. (As imperial Rome did not progress technologically, but the barbarians and the ecological difficulties did, irresistibly. The plutocrats heading the Roman state, cornered, became weirder and weirder, calling ever more to the fascist instinct to enforce a fanatic war against imaginary enemies, while, naturally, ignoring the real ones, namely themselves.)

***

THE BIOSPHERE IS APPROACHING A TIPPING POINT:

An article in 07 June 2012 issue of Nature considers that the entire planetary biosphere may be close to a “tipping point”. Indeed. The two essential observations are that;

a) the biosphere has undergone dramatic “phase shifts” in the past, and

b) that the present stresses on the biosphere are the greatest in at least twenty million years.

In a phase shift, typically the gas content (more or less CO2 or oxygen, O2), or the temperature change abruptly, and for many million years. Such events seem to be associated with ultra-massive volcanic events (core volcanism, for want of a better expression: Dekkan, Siberian Traps), or possible asteroid impacts (Yucatan, Chesapeake Bay, Siberia events).

The article concludes:”It is also necessary to address root causes of how humans are forcing biological changes.” “Root causes” have to be addressed. If they are not, the problems fester. Rome did not address the “root cause” of its problem, so the Roman empire went through a succession of catastrophic tipping points. See below.

***

THE GIANT COUP BY THE LORDS OF FINANCE: has been made possible by its stealthy character. The flies have not seen the spider web in which they are englued.

The civilization sized coup of the Lords of Finance, has been in the making for at least half a millennium, ever since bankers financed Francois I and Charles V, so that they could ostensibly make war against each other (circa 1520 CE). At least, so it looked, officially. War is a reason that gives plutocracy meaning.

Well financed war between France and Spain, for 150 years or so, allowed oligarchies of the splendid, on both sides, to have an excuse to make said war. War was a distraction, that diverted the People from revolution. The exploits of the knight Bayard may still mesmerize the naïve, but when men of war turned their traditional expertise to religious wars, it was distinctly less funny.

The silent coup, has thus unfolded over five centuries. It has consisted of several phases and elements:

a) LEVERAGING THE WAY MONEY IS CREATED PRIVATELY. Money mostly created by credit lines made possible by the fractional reserve system (privately managed, but set-up by the public government).

The fractional reserve system is highly technical and non linear. It allows private individuals, the bankers, to create 99% of the money. The complexity of the fractional reserve system hides it from democratic scrutiny. However, president Jackson, a great, extremely brutal and macho general and duelist, understood enough of fractional reserve and bankers to prevent its establishment in the USA in connivance with the state. Jackson called that his proudest achievement. On his deathbed.

Jackson’s  hostility to the Rothschild was amply justified by fact and theory. The Rothschilds (Red Shield in its original German) were feeding both sides of the so called Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon certainly did not start them: the Rothschild were out there financing wars, even before Napoleon was born. Maybe the Napoleonic wars should be called the Rothschild wars.

Alluding to the fractional reserve system, the Rothschilds had been crowing about their control of nations:

Mayer Amschel Rothschild: “Give me control of a nation’s money and I care not who makes the laws.” 

(In other declarations, Rothschild boasted that he “issued” the nations’ money.)

Tellingly the theoreticians of class struggles of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries missed out that angle entirely. Marx vaguely complained about the banks’ “monopoly”. He forgot to say that it was monopoly in money creation. That private individuals could monopolize money creation would have floored the leaders of countless polities in passed millennia. Leaders, in the past, knew that striking coinage, that is, in practice, Fiat Money, was the prerogative of the state. That state monopoly was backed-up by military force.

However, president Roosevelt was not fooled: he “welcomed the hatred of money changers“.

(“Money changers” was the old derogatory term for financiers used during the Middle Ages’ great age of independent republics and cities: Roosevelt knew history.)

b) THE METASTATIC RISE OF FINANCIAL DERIVATIVES under Clinton and complete deregulation of finance (London’s “Big Bang, etc.) Derivatives were initially a way to insure farmers (say rice farmers in Japan 16C, or corn growers in Illinois 19C). They have their place as a form of insurance for commercial operators. But a distinction ought to be drawn between those and speculators. Moreover, when there is no insurance connected to the bets (as has been the case with CDS), then one obtains A CASINO INSURED BY THE PUBLIC, ALBEIT OWNED  BY SHARKS. Thus a welfare system for plutocrats set-up by the public.

c) MAKING THE STATE SERF TO PLUTOCRACY: The French law of 1973 passed by Rothschild banker Pompidou forbade the state to create money. Instead the state had to ask the richest men for money, and they were free to make as much money as they wanted from this begging. It was generalized to all of Europe by dim witted or treacherous socialists (Delors and his crew).

d) THE BANKERS STOLE THE ECONOMY, GIVE THEM MORE: The crisis of 2008 (Subprime, etc.) was “solved” by throwing trillions of public money (“monetary base”) to (private) banks. The bankers had lost that money, to themselves, and their friends.

That “solution” made private financiers more powerful than ever. The same is done in Europe, with the same result. The 100 billion euros “rescue’ for Spain is more of the same. Breaking up Europe would make the financiers even more powerful, that is why they are trying their best to do so.

***

SUSTAINABLE ENERGY IS UNSUSTAINABLE WITHOUT STORAGE:

Only very much higher technology will solve the present crisis. Sustainable energy, in particular could work, with storage systems… That we do not have: the best are dams, but dams cannot go in every backyard. (Dams allow to recover 80% to 90% of the energy, by working turbines in reverse to bring the water up, when there is excess energy; the method was inaugurated to serve nuclear plants, which never stop producing, night and day, month after month…) -Denmark better start building dams, to stop depending upon coal (as it does now). In the case of Denmark, a flat country, that means elevated lagoons.

More advanced storage are possible. Fuel cells have high efficiency (but they have proven finicky, expensive, and even dangerous). On the island of Corsica a private-public partnership with the local university, is building fuel cell systems connected to the grid.

***

ROMAN PRECEDENTS:

Roman history is very instructive, and deserves much better, to be so instructed, than the parody of it taught right and left (last example: the May 2012 book “Why Nations Fail“).

Rome knew several plutocratic and debt crises. The first one, the rise of plutocracy, put an end to the republic; the next one was solved radically by Tiberius, by massive public refinancing; the following one set the roots for the collapse of the Principate, and even the empire: the plutocrats refused to pay enough taxes to keep the barbarians off the gates… Already under Marcus Aurelius! It got only worse and worse in the following three centuries, or until Roman armies were replaced by Frankish armies… Which were paid by Frankish taxes… Or nationalizations.

The present crisis is a combination of the three Roman financial, economic and social crises.

Europe, always more inventive, has found still another crisis to add to the mix.

***

EUROPE, OR WHEN THE STATE ENTRUSTS THE COUNTERFEITERS WITH CREATING MONEY:

Europe has entrusted the plutocrats with money creation. In ancient Rome, as in any state worth this title, it’s the state that created money. It is still like that in the USA, Japan, China, Britain, Mongolia, or Argentina. But not in Europe’s European Monetary Union.

Part of the problem of Late Third Century Rome was that, precisely because the plutocrats refused to pay taxes, and they had the means to refuse, the Roman empire ran out of money. Diocletian corrected that with an economic command and control system that worked obviously very well, and was sustainable…

Until the Vandals cut the food line between Africa and Rome in the Fifth Century: there had not been enough money to pay a sufficient army, or navy to stop 10,000 or so Vandal warriors!

Thus command and control in the economic realm, had not fixed the fundamental problem, the disconnection of the plutocrats, and the resources they commanded, from the rest of society. The plutocrats could afford (private) armies, precisely because the state could not afford the PUBLIC army. Plutocrats did not care that cities needed walls to protect themselves; they had their own armies to defend themselves.

Present day Europe has hyper linked to that condition of the Later Roman Empire, at warp speed.

***

HOW ROME FELL, SHORT VERSION:

Plutocracy makes stupid, and stupidity was the proximal reason for the fall of Rome. Rome swung from general to general, as a gibbon from branch to branch, and finally the fiercest of them all, Constantine, allied himself with the army of the Christians, a state within the state, resulting in the establishment of full blown theocracy.

Plutocracy, plus theocracy, makes for a doubly stupid leadership, hence really stupidly conducted wars, and the consequence was the successful invasion of the Roman empire by the Goths. In comparison with the Franks, who were deeply romanized, the Goths were savages. It took 130 years for the Franks to beat the Goths, and re-establish a military successful Roman state (the Imperium Francorum, which took officially the title of Imperium Romanum, “Roman empire” only in 800 CE, when both the Pope and the Roman imperial state in Constantinople agreed).

When Rome fell, that means, when the giant Roman socio-economy collapsed, most of the population could not get to food, nor even drinkable water. Most people died. We are even more vulnerable now.

The mushrooms of plutocracy, such as austerity, can appear beautiful, but they are most venenous…

***

Patrice Ayme

Merkler?

IS THE GERMAN CHANCELLOR BECOMING CRAZY AGAIN?

Abstract: Thereafter some inconvenient background for the G8 at Camp David. Who does that Merkler take herself for?

Hitler started his career in 1920 as a pawn of the antijewish plutocrat Henry Ford, and Dr H. Schacht, himself a pawn of JP Morgan. By turning the Peoples of Europe into the serfs of banksters, and of some the world’s richest, and most evil men, Merkel is pursuing a similar project. Thus she is morphing into Hitler, Time magazine Man of the Year of 1938.

Some will scream: “Merkel into Merkler? Not so, are you crazy? Merkel does not hate Jews!” Well, maybe she does not hate Jews, but she sure does act as if she hated the Greeks. To death, literally. And soon, all other Europeans, with the same machine she is killing Greeks with.

Hitler was viewed by most, until 1938, as a saint and a genius. Did not he bring the Volkswagen? VW is doing very well, indeed, and maybe all too well (it now owns Porsche, which founded it, at Hitler’s urging, and some localities in Greece buy more of the most expensive Porsche… Than anywhere else in the world… An indication, among many, that Greece corruption is partly tied in to some Teutonic manipulations).  

The evidence is that Germany profitted most from the present European Monetary Union. So why does it now want those who profitted less to commit socio-economic suicide, after living on their knees?

Things changed with Hitler in 1939, when France’s call to arms against Hitler bore fruit. In any case, the mechanism is exactly the same as in the 1930s: a plutocratic machine of some of the world’s richest men is devouring all in the way, and the German Chancellor finds righteous reason to enforce that disgusting repast.

(Speaking of righteous, Germany did not pay reparations to Greece after WWII commensurate with the devastation and occupation it visited on that country: a few dozen millions, when the reality is more like a trillion.)

***

HITLER LOOKED INNOCUOUS TO MOST BEFORE FRANCE ATTACKED:

Hitler advertized himself as a man of peace. Was not he following the analysis and implied prescriptions of Keynes in “The Economic Consequences Of Peace“? Keynes decried the Versailles Treaty. Keynes had observed in 1919 that France insisted to make Eastern Europe independent of Germany. Thus French obstinacy (re)created the nations of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, etc… This, observed Keynes, was a threat to the great German Reich, and thus to peace. Hitler, comforted by creatures such as H. Schacht, head of the German Central Bank, but, more fundamentally, a pawn of JP Morgan, knew that American industrialists and bankers would support him.  

Hitler, the man of peace, the man who was screaming about peace, was also strongly supported by the Pope Pie XII, and by Gandhi (who tried his best to block the vote to allow India to join Britain and France against Hitler). Most Germans supported Hitler, because they felt it was righteous to recover huge territories to the east that Germany used to possess, or control. When they understood that France would have none of it, and had stiffened the spines of Britain, and then Poland, instead of killing Hitler, as was their moral duty, the Germans persevered in their diabolical error, a hopeless war, fought all the way inside German cities in 1945.

***

THE EXISTING EUROPEAN MONETARY UNION IS A PLUTOCRATIC DEVICE:

So now what? We have an insane system for the European Monetary Union. The problem is not the fact that there is a single currency as all too many American partisans (Krugman, etc.) persisted to claim all too long (in all justice, Krugman has become more subtle recently… some of the time).

The pain of the People is the pleasure of plutocrats. The flaw of the EMU is that sovereign states are supposed to borrow from private bankers. The states are like pigeons, begging for crumbs from Dimon and other daemons… The existing EMU is an institution of plutocracy (rule of wealth) to finance… democracy (which is what Europe is supposed to be!)

The private banks get money at 1% from the ECB, and lend it back at enormous rates to the sovereign states… Which have no choice, but to borrow more as the old debt rolls out.

So the banksters right now charge according to their good pleasure; 1.42% for Germany (ten year), 1.72% for France, and above 5% or 6% for Spain and Italy.
… And up to above 100% for Greece. That is why the Greek debt skyrocketed! Because of the conspiracy of the world’s richest men… Literally. As I said in the preceding essay, the (apparently criminal) Buffet rigged the game, holding and owning all positions of all the main actors. Buffet, of course, is best friend with his admirer Obama and his collaborator and accomplice Bill Gates (whose Foundation feeds Monsanto, etc.) The vultures are not so many, they all know each other.

***

MERKEL IS, AT BEST, MAD:

So who does the leader of Germany accuse for the exploding interest rates? The Greek People today, and tomorrow, obviously, everybody else. Did she learn anything from the Nazis’ gory death?

Did Hitler realize how universally despised and hated a character he had turned into? When did the Germans realize they had elected a monster? When did they realize they had launched abominable policies? 1945?

When Angela Merkel became Chancellor, she extended the policies of her socialist predecessor, Schroeder. Zehr gut. Then she instituted Kurzarbeit, a distinctly socialist policy, infused with central planning and state intervention. She boosted state spending by 10% (an enormous stimulus). With the inner devaluation of lowering charges on companies, and an increased Added Value Tax, she was able to confer an advantage to Germany from the 2008 financial crisis. Zehr gut again.

Having thus injected the German economy with steroids, selling a lot of goods and projects to the European periphery, which could not afford them, was part of the German superiority trick, and the largest private banks in Europe were some of the agents which made it so. Those should be punished. Instead, they are rewarded by the ECB.

Massive bank bankruptcies threatened. The sovereign states stepped in, and are now themselves threatened with bankruptcies. At that point the not so good Kanzler comes finally forward to say “Nein!”. It would be funny, if it were theater.

Now here comes Merkler’s finance minister, from the depth of his wheelchair. “If Greece does not respect her engagements, she will have to get out of the Eurozone!” What a tyrannical clown! Let me remind the minister that he should not talk as if he were in Hitler’s government. He cannot order Greece around.  That was the sort of thing Hitler used to do. Aber Kanzler Hitler is kaput. Precisely because he barked out illigitimate orders. 

Just as the Greek state is deprived of the ability to borrow money from a central bank, Germany is deprived of any legal or constitutional means to order Greece around.

Merkel’s finance minister has the reputation of being very pro-European. He should learn the notion that it’s not because a country is big, that a country is right. If that’s as much of a European as the Merkel government can have, a pity it’s not out yet, to join Sarkozy in the Walhalla of the pro-plutocracy party.

***

CORRUPTION: NOT JUST FROM THE SICILIAN MAFIA:

In a secluded neighborhood I know very well on the French Riviera, villas used to be worth hundreds of thousands of euros. Now a villa is being built, for 40 million euros. By a Belgian banker. He had the construction company and landscaping come from Belgium. Recently the largest Franco-Belgian bank, Dexia went bankrupt, and France and Belgium paid billions to keep its remnants afloat. As presidential candidate Romney just pointed out about JP Morgan losing billions in derivatives recently: it’s all very good, because it’s someone else’s gain.

In other words, French and Belgian taxpayers lost billions, and the money apparently allow Belgian financiers to drive up real estate prices in the plushest areas.

Thus, all over the world.

***

MERKLER, HERE YOU COME:

Does Merkel know she may turn into Merkler? After losing in Germany, even in Germany, nine elections in a row, she does not seem to get the message from the People. She obviously does not want to. Errare Humanum Est, Perseverare Diabolicum.

The Kanzlerin is busy, instead, pushing her own message. Balance budgets, submit to the iron rule of the plutocratically corrupted EMU. Never mind that, when Germany was in economic difficulty a few years back, it was the first to violate the European Monetary Union deficit rules!

Never mind that budgets cannot be balanced, as the largest item are now interest payments, and those are fixed by the thugs who build 40 million dollars villas from taxpayer money.

What is that iron rule of the EMU? That banks ought to rule. Austerity insures that the rule of the PRIVATE banks is sustainable. It’s all about banks.

What does that mean “the rule of the PRIVATE banks”? It means the rule of wealth, plutocracy. To make plutocracy sustainable is what Hitler failed to do. Time for an encore?

The Peoples of Europe are increasingly guessing that there is something wrong in this picture. They incline towards a fundamental rethink. But that does not mean that it will happen. Indeed, few of the leaders are exposing the fundaments. The American left is operating hand in hand with American plutocracy, pushing the vision of destroying Europe, supposedly to fix it.

A democracy is a state, and a state, especially a state of law, is, first of all, a state of force. No force, no law. By not replying in kind with those who want to destroy her, Europe has become accomplice in her own destruction.

Merkel could say, at this point:”I told you so. I apply force on Greece, and that is the law.” Right, Merkel, you are doing that, and an Iron Chancellor, wings dripping with molten iron, just passed by. You just forgot you have no democratic mandate to do so. Actually the mandate you are trying to enforce is distinctly plutocratic.

***

STATES ARE ABOUT POWER, HENCE CONTROL THEIR CURRENCY:

What’s a state? It’s, first of all, a military fact. An army controls an area. The army defines the state. Or then states with large military power collide, and small fragmentary states are in between (small states without armies are either in the middle of nowhere, or collaborate with larger states, such as the numerous states which helped Hitler: Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Holland-Belgium (prior to May 10, 1940), etc.).

Money is a device to transmit power from its ruler to rest of the house the state inhabits. Money is not necessary to transmit power, bullets can do fine. Just ask Stalin. However, money is the easiest, and most efficient way to use stick and carrot throughout society, because it appeals to the full panoply of fear and greed.

Stalin was mostly interested to decimate his own country, so that the haggard, terrorized survivors would obey with more enthusiasm to him than the Nazis did to Hitler… Decimation was a method well known of the Roman generals.

In particular, money can empower the free market. Whereas an army is necessary to define a state, the free market is a luxury, a dispensable tool of the state.

The European Union was led by French socialists who, during the 1980s, were anxious to show that they were appreciative of bankers and Germans. They established a European Monetary Union in which  money was controlled by private bankers. That pleased to no end the City of London and Wall $treet (let alone the sponsors of the late French president Pompidou).

This is of course all wrong. The democratic chain of implication: People > State > Money was broken, because, in the EU, Money > State. This was also the implication under Hitler. This is the implication Merkler finds natural.

Simple people do not have to be punished because giant banks invested with their friends, and all the money was lost… to their friends. (OK, not really lost, as Rommney unwittingly pointed out, just transferred from the People, to his friends.)

***   

WHAT TO DO?

One has to change the way the EMU works, right away. Sovereign states ought to have access to money to make their economies functional, as needed.

Sovereign states cannot beg plutocrats for crumbs, as if they were pigeons, as they do with the present EMU. Indeed, that very act of begging contradicts the notion of sovereignty. Germany should be warned that it is, once again, standing in the way of peace and prosperity in Europe. And that this time one will not wait 20 years to strike back.

Germany could of course say:”Oh, well, if you take it like that, we Germans will deal with Putin, who has been very friendly to us.” Once again, that’s nothing new. Friendship and business with Russia’s old demons was the route taken by Germany in the 1920s and 1930s. Germany had a discrete, but deep alliance, including a military alliance with Stalin,  until 1939, when it became loud, clear, and abominably efficient.

Let me remind the crazy Kanzlerin that the old ways did not work too well: ten percent of Germany got killed, and much German territory is forever gone. Time for a bit more imagination, and artistic creativity.

History threatens to repeat itself. Time to interrupt it. Rudely. I hope that essay was rude enough. But, if not, I can do better.

***

Patrice Ayme

***

The Axis occupation of Greece killed between 5% and 12% of the population (as Americans and British instituted a civil war against Greece after 1945, the records have been hard to keep).

The Greek National Council for Reparations from Germany reports the following casualties during the Axis occupation of Greece during World War II. Military dead: 35,077 including, 13,327 killed in the Greco-Italian War of 1940–41; 1,100 with the Greek Forces in the Mid East and 20,650 partisan deaths. Civilian Deaths: 771,845 including: 56,225 executed by Axis forces; 105,000 dead in German concentration camps (including Jews); 7,120 deaths due to bombing, 3,500 merchant marine dead, and 600,000 war related famine deaths. Greek Jews assassinated, with their property stolen, totaled 69,500.

Lady Chatterley’s Hater

PLUTOCRACY DEVOURS HEARTS AND MINDS, NOT JUST JUSTICE:

Abstract: “Plutocracy” is not just the rule of wealth. It is the rule of Pluto. As Jesus Christ himself pointed out. 

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” Matthew 19:23-24. Jesus does not explain why. To try to understand that, an example, however fictional, may help.  

The 1955 French film Lady Chatterley’s Lover, is first about her husband, and then, secondarily,  how she reacts to his plutocratic madness. Lady Chatterley finally rejects his occupation of her mind with plutocratic poison.

Indeed, Lord Chatterley, her husband, under his polished and dignified mien, teased out by externalities, reveals himself to be a most determined Hater. He relentlessly struggles, from the depth of his wheelchair, with boars, coal, miners, the ecology, his determination to keep plutocracy established, and finally his progressively enlightened wife (who reveres her husband in the beginning, but finds out, in the fullness of facts, that he is evil personified, and then does several things about it.)  

That the British economic establishment revolved psychologically around  the exploitation doctrine, and cold hatred against the working class, is the most disturbing message of Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

These are not just pretty words. The central bank of the USA (the “Fed”) conspired with the British central bank (the “Bank of England”) to make a very loose expansion of the monetary base during the 1920s. The idea was to give lots of money to plutocrats, so that their Lordships would have lots of money to do lots of things with (fall a forest, dig a new mine in the case of Chatterley). This (gravely) erroneous idea has been masquerading as “economic stimulus” in the last few decades, with increasing vigor.

That policy of showering the rich with money led directly to a considerable heating of the economy, and thus the Great Depression.  That policy is called nowadays “Quantitative Easing“, and is the main economic policy since 1996 (when the indicators were as bad as in 1929). Greenspan, under the Intern in Chief Clinton, decided to do the opposite of what the Fed did in 1929.

However to turn left where a mad man turned right does not make one any less crazy. In the 1930s, president Roosevelt switched instead to a command economy targetting jobs, which went on steroids in 1942, to feed the war machine.

Lady Chatterley’s anti-plutocratic message did not escape astute Anglo-Saxon censors. This is why the book, and a French film about it, were banned in Britain and the USA until the 1960s. Of little acts of censorships like that, here, there, and everywhere, is constructed the great admiration of the Anglo-Saxon middle class, or what’s left of it, for Reagan, Thatcher, wealth in general, and the filthy rich they call: “philanthropists“.   

Chatterley does not claim to be a philanthropist. But he feels himself to be crucial in the sense that he provides work for the working class. Contemporary American philanthropists  are the exact opposite sort; they extract power away from government, hence the People and the working class. Recently it came to the fore that the greatest “philanthropists” of them all, Bill Gates was a Trojan Horse for the American Monsanto to sell dangerous products to Africans; French media talked about it, and the French government is prosecuting Monsanto. However, there was not a peep in the USA about that. From what one could see on TV, it looked as if Obama has put Lady Gates in charge of education!

The Steve Job widow, who, with her husband, never paid a cent for the billions of dollars of Apple stock he, and she, got through the years as CEO of Apple was staying next to the first Lady at the State of the Union speech. No doubt she gave plenty of that money of her political friends. When you have billions, you can fork over a few millions for your friend the president, if that’s the only “tax” you will ever pay.

Yet truth is hard to repress. Short of putting civilization in full reverse, as the Christian Roman emperors did after 310 CE. That of course brought a near collapse of civilization, and several civil wars with the atheist Franks, until these noble savages for the north took control of the miserable Greco-Roman theocratic fascists.  

Jesus said plutocrats are hopeless. Lady Chatterley points out to something seriously worse. Plutocrats are mad. It’s as simple as that. Truth shall make simple. They are mad in the sense that their mental condition is so unbalanced relative to normal psychology that it deserves this qualificative. The plutocratic condition is not natural to man. Neither to perpetrator, nor victim. Man was born, and evolved, free. For millions of years. But now the plutocrats have come, to rule over lesser beings.

Indeed, plutocrats can control countries, or even empires, for centuries. The entire twentieth century was a case in point. Plutocrats deliberately engineered World War One (the French and German socialist parties considered this obvious in 1914, they should refresh their memories).  

Then plutocrats deliberately engineered the Nazification of Germany, the fascization of Italy and Spain,  and the Great Depression. Now, since 2008, plutocrats are engineering a Greater Depression. That so far, has been highly profitable to them. In the USA, plutocrats do not even bother anymore to hide their control of politics. The president can spend entire days, days after days, going around with his huge plane and personal army, as beggar in chief, going from plutocrats to plutocrats, and they make him checks of the order of the median family income, and all Americans watched that as cows do watch trains. Unconcerned for the most part.

Where does plutocratic madness comes from? Well, there is a psychobiological component, and then there is a historical component. History is not on our side, and the deep nature of Homo makes it all worse.

What we have now is a dictatorship of the financial actors, immensely leveraged, backed up by the mightiest politicians who they feed like pigeons. One can only presume that those actors, like Lord Chatterley, are just as they appear, namely completely mad. The way the leadership deals with the energy problem is a case in point.

***

*** 

WHY WAS “LADY CHATTERLEY” CENSORED?

I generally prefer to feed philosophy with hard facts, such as those provided by science or history. The small philosophical  fry out there stick to literature, greater philosophers, to the world. Wisdom ought to rise from reality, not the gossip of literary criticism.  Moreover, individuals basking in the global cultural inheritance have to do triage among stories, worldwide. It’s more illuminative, as a child, to learn about Japan’s famous “40 Ronins” than about Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The former shows better how crazy cultures can become.

Yet, Lady Chatterley Lover (LCL) is most enlightening for students of the present plutocratic mind, a matter of survival for all. Feudal Japan is not as directly relevant. I will cover here not just LCL, but also its cover-up, aspects of the censorship against the LCL story.

Lady Chatterley Lover gives a detailed example of the baseness of the plutocratic mind. While showing how it is the backbone of the Anglo-Saxon socio-economy.

The books makes plain that the Anglo-Saxon economical system holds that the exploitation principle if the highest principle there is. It is the meta organizer of the entire society. Worth is established by exploiting people, the ecology, the underground, and even by exploiting one’s own humanity, with unrelenting thoroughness. And if people die on the way, it is only power for the course. Anything else is a weakening of what passes for civilization in the exploiting mood, the highest mood there is.

It’s easier to multitask with a movie for 90 minutes than to converge both eyes on pages for hours about how mediocre people do mediocre things. So I watched the 1955 French movie version, of Lady Chatterley. That movie was fiercely banned in the good old USA to protect American chicken from the terribly contagious disease of European ideas. (Warning: there is a more recent French movie on LLC, devoid of any content. Apparently French movie makers thought better in the 1950s than the 2000s!) 

On the face of it, the Lady Chatterley’s Lover’s story is not much to talk about.

1) Lord Chatterley is paralyzed from the waist down in World War One. He takes it like a champ, as behooves his superior class.

2) His young and beautiful wife Constance welcomes him back, makes him feel very comfortable, and accommodates herself of the situation, which, in particular, means she becomes a babysitter to him, and will have no child. She has perfectly adapted to the situation.

3) A deadly accident, caused to adventurous method to find more coal, occurs in his Lordship’s coal mine. His Lordship overhears some of his miners regretting that he did not die down there.

4) Lord Chatterley informs his wife that his employees behave that way, because he has no heir. If he did have a heir, the miners would know that one other Chatterley would rise: the Chatterley is dead, Long Live the Chatterley. Only then would the miners’ desire to change the order of things be hopeless.

5) Thus, deduces Lord Chatterley, he needs an heir. Apparently,  clamping down on the working class seems to be a notion central to his heart. He orders his wife to make what is necessary with some gentleman, say in Venice.

6) Lady Chatterley misunderstands her instructions, and sleeps with the game warden, who belongs to the lower class. He was an officer in the war, having risen from the rank (that means he is not of the class real officers are from, those who, from their class background, went to the correct schools, and came out officers; instead his prowess in combat allowed him to rise above his class).

7) Scandal: the entire village speaks of it, the Lady is pregnant from the game warden. Lord Chatterley fires the warden. 

8) After a bout of rage, Lord Chatterley is more determined than ever to have his way: “Never mind, I will make that son into a Chatterley! I will do what it takes!” (He is so sure of himself, he takes for granted that a son is coming.)

9) Lady Chatterley coldly and definitively states a matter of fact:”No you will not, because you will never see him!”

10) She leaves with her lower class lover, arm to arm, down the coal city’s main street.

***

LET THE PEOPLE BE MORAL, SO LEADERS CAN EXPLOIT THEM BETTER:

The 1955 French movie was banned in the USA. The American People has to be protected against dangerous French subversion. Always. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court.  

The book itself had been written by a British gentleman, Lawrence, and published in Italy in 1928. The publisher Penguin Books found itself in court after trying to publish it in Great Britain in 1960. British censors claimed to be revolted by two short words, somewhere inside. American censors claimed the French movie advocated adultery

Several notorious adulterers had been president of the USA just before that. Maybe they watched too many French movies?  American plutocrats would jump in bed with all pretty teenagers coming within reach. As president JFK did exactly that at the White House, just as his dad did before at home.

At second sight, it’s not hilarious, but clearly a pattern of deception.

As the Washington Post puts it: “Why do we need more salacious details about Kennedy’s sex life? Beyond the prurience, it once again raises legitimate questions about the character of our leaders. “If presidents represent the best of America, then there’s quite a gap between that and their behavior,” historian Robert Dallek [ a Kennedy specialist] told us Monday. “Presidents — all of them — hide things.”

Well, what they hide is rather major, namely that there are two moral systems; one for the little people, and another for plutocrats and their agents. Thus at the slaughter house, there is a moral system for cattle, and one for management.

This was pointed earlier by Nietzsche. Nietzsche explained that Christianity was a “slave morality“, excellent at enchaining the masses. The masters followed a different, higher moral system, Beyond Good and Evil, the moral system of the Lords, the cult of the Will to Power.   

Instead of dwelling in Nietzsche’s literary sources, all the way back to ancient Greece, I have put that in the proper historical context. That of the empire of the Franks. The Imperium Francorum rose, precisely, because it was anti-Christian. Precisely because it followed a higher moral system than Christianity. Nietzsche is just a small vague commentary on what was the empire of the West practiced for centuries (Imperium Romanum, Pars Occidentalis).

That was demonstrated when the self described “Europeans” nationalized the Catholic Church, so they would distribute the church’s riches to the largest professional army since the best days of Rome. At the time, the best professional soldiers were family men, and those families had to be taken care of, at home. Hence the hefty salaries. That army was used to annihilate the superstitious, rabid Syrian Caliphate and its Berber allies.

“Within days of her arrival, the beautiful young blonde was invited to join the president for an afternoon swim — and later that day, lost her virginity to him in the first lady’s bedroom…” I heard the ex-19 year old description of what happened, and she said the president used “force“, but with great expertise. In other words, he raped her. Oh there were drugs too, and enforced sex acts under watchful presidential supervision, with aides.

Now, of course, this is all very quaint as plutocrats can screw the entire world, making the poor pay taxes for the rich until they die off.

***

TOO MUCH WILL TO POWER BRINGS MADNESS:

In the French 1955 movie, the raciest scene is of the two lovers fully dressed, kissing, standing up. Nothing worse than in “Gone With The Wind”. American censors claimed the movie glorified adultery, but what was truly glorified was truth about the masters of Britain:

a) Lord Chatterley is driven by the Will to Power to a ridiculous extent: he has to give the signal to kill a boar at bay, however inconvenient it is to bring him by car, put him in his wheel chair, and give him the French horn to sound off. Only then can the boar die.

b) Chatterley ravages a forest that he himself loved as a child because he wants to build a “forest of steel” inside which a new mine will grow down to make him even richer, as his Lady observes contemptuously. But, she adds, it will not make him more potent where it really counts. (In the heart, and somewhere else.)

c) His motivation for having a child is first to put the workers back in place, and then somehow extends the Chatterley rule, apparently that sheer greed for power ought to rule the universe.

Do people have children for power? No doubt that was a motivation, through prehistoric and Neolithic culture. A European peasant would get more land if he had more children capable of working the field (in the communal agricultural system of the Middle Ages). But it was not the only motivation in taking care of a child. However, Chatterley talks only as if having a young man his son to crack down on the workers was his only motivation.

The problem with being only under the control of the will to power is that it is only a fraction of what ought to drive a fully balanced mind, as evolution meant it to be. Look for example to the god of Abraham: although rabidly devoured by the will to power, he has other motivations too. The Qur’an reminds us every few lines that “Allah is wise, merciful“.

***

THE WILL TO SURVIVE, AND THE WILL TO DESTROY BOTH DOMINATE THE WILL TO POWER:

That, by the way, is Nietzsche’s classic mistake. Nietzsche claimed the “Will To Power” ruled, but, truly, the prime motivation of human beings, in an extremely dangerous world, was not so much power (over others, or the universe) as it was the sheer will to survive. That the will to survive, not the will to power, dominates, is rendered obvious by evolution as survival of the fittest, and is, no doubt, the reason why  Nietzsche detested Darwin.

Another aspect of the established order which is decried: Lord Chatterley’s paternalistic sexism, which, in the end, is rendered impotent by Lady Chatterley superbly elevated point of view: she knows love moves the heavens, and greed and evil move only hell. And that’s fine with her: after all, she chose heavens.

Here is another way in which Nietzsche’s Will To Power is limited. To exert power, one needs an object to exert it onto. However Homo’s will To Vice, includes an outright Will To Destruction. A time honored atavism. I must acknowledge that the god of Abraham understood this perfectly well.  And it is made blatant in the homicidal and submission rage pervading the Old, New and Quranic testaments.

***

HOW DID THE SITUATION CHANGE IN A CENTURY? SEXISM HAS DIMINISHED & TECHNOLOGY HAS IMPROVED:

We are nearly a century after Lady Chatterley’s Lover was written, and one can compare what happened versus what was decried then. The feminine condition has enormously improved: now women vote, work much more in high value jobs, and are much more independent.

So little need to fret about “The Second Sex“. There is much progress to still make, but at least momentum is pointing in the right direction.

Also there is no doubt that the average lives of average people has improved considerably. Most of that is attributable to progress in science and technology. The rest has to do with the welfare state, and the fact that the world war of 1914-1945, after killing more than 5% of the world population (120 million dead, at least), is still perceived as a great warning… And the Light Side won the war. Moreover, differently from 1919, the victors, stayed in control of world military might, nuclear weapons, and the United Nations Security Council. Nobody doubt the resolve and might of France, Britain and the USA (in this order!), when united.

***

HOWEVER THE ENERGY SITUATION IS GETTING HOPELESS:

The economic background of the LCL book was the slow death of the coal industry. At the time, coal was still, by far, the most important energy source, although oil usage was rising quickly for transportation. 

Oil was an important factor in World War Two: Hitler wanted Polish, Romanian and Caucasian oil for his armies (as it was he had to do much of the war on synthetic oil, according to processes developed secretly by an alliance of American and German plutocrats).

The intervention of the foremost democracies, France and Britain, derailed Hitler’s plans: he was forced into a war he could not win.

Japan, submitted to an American oil embargo, decided to grab Indonesian oil, and that required to neutralize the U.S. Pacific fleet (or so the stupid Japanese command thought; in truth, the USA had no intent to go to war in 1942!)

Nowadays, fossil fuels are the number one energy source. However, we are well passed Peak Cheap Oil. Crude oil is reaching 120 dollars a barrel, even though there is no war, although the world economy is in recession. 

[See: http://hawaiinewsdaily.com/2012/01/peak-cheap-oil-passed/]

Ten of the last eleven world recessions were preceded by an oil price spike. At this point , the USA and the EU import for one billion dollar a day of oil. Chronically high fossil fuels guarantee a chronic recession (aka “depression”). Why? Because the economy is ultimately an energy processing machine.  

A really growing economy corresponds to a growing efficient energy usage. The easiest way to augment that is to augment overall energy usage, but one cannot do this anymore if there is no more energy to use. Worse, said energy is going down, both in absolute value (because no more oil is found, and fracking is a flash in the pan) and relatively (because of the rise of the ex-Third World). In any case, if we do not develop more energy source, or augment efficiency, the economy will simply not grow anymore. But as the population is growing, this means an indefinite depression.  Indeed, we cannot switch to a new energy source as happened in the time of Lord Chatterley from coal to oil… because we have no replacement (as a new cheap energy, although solar is coming in fast for the south).  

Conservation, energy austerity, can help. Yet European efforts in that direction are undermined by the rest of the world, led by the USA. See the USA leading an anti-European coalition joined by Russia and China, to prevent Europe to tax air travel’s fossil fuels (those, so far, go tax free).

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PLUTOCRACY HAS MUTATED INTO AN EXTREMELY MALIGNANT CANCER:

The plutocratic situation, if anything, has deteriorated considerably since 1928. Plutocracy, the Dark Side,  caused two Great Depressions, and major wars (including World War II). The second great depression, the Greater Depression, is unfolding, because the (conservative) governments of the West have entrusted those who caused the crisis, the plutocratic financiers, with even more power. Some of the decreases of GDP are comparable to the 1930s. After 5 years of recession, Greece is expected to be down 40% in GDP soon. In the USA, in a scenario reminiscent of the fall of the USSR, lifespan is decreasing.

Meanwhile the president is rising a billion from his friends the plutocrats, to further his glory and government. Many Roman emperors did exactly the same before him; rising considerable sums among plutocratic friends, socializing together, all this to further imperial rule.

Giant amounts of money (“monetary base”) have been wasted replenishing the plutocrats who sucked dried the banks they managed. They were wasted, because no strings were attached. In the USA money manipulators (hedge fund managers) meet constantly with politicians and lawmakers to conspire together. This sort of information can be gleaned from reading the famous “anti-capitalist” newspaper, Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal. 

Overall, plutocracy is stronger than ever. Lord Chatterley’s mind is an ode to Pluto. However he puts his capital at work in the service of the People. It’s tough love, mixed with contempt, but he views himself as a Roman style general, with the right of life and death on his troops. Ultimately, he provides his troops with livelihood, as he points out. 

The hedge fund managers and big bankers are not like that. They don’t claim to bring jobs. Silicon Valley Titans have found tricks to pay no taxes whatsoever. Then Obama comes visit them, kiss them on the cheek, sleep at their home, and they give him enormous amounts of money (but tiny relative to the taxes they would have to pay, if they paid taxes). I saw two years olds give 38,500 dollars to the president. Yes, that’s not far from the median family income in the USA. These two year olds do not possess nobility titles yet, but it’s just the same.

Nowadays, the connections between finance and economy has been broken, so the situation is worse than under Lord Chatterley. Nowadays, the biggest banks (including the likes of Goldman Sachs, which are truly only banks, or conspiracy outfits, for the hyper wealthy) get free money from the American and European central banks.  

The result is that the economy has stopped growing just when efforts ought to be redoubled, because the energy utilizing machine which is the world economy is getting strangled, and poisoned by fossil fuels.

An immediately deployable replacements exist in parts: solar energy produced locally. Producing energy locally is key, as huge losses occur in transportation, and various inefficiencies (losses are, overall around an astounding 90%, worldwide!). Tide and current machines, wind, and electricity producing pastures are the way out. Especially when efficient, ubiquitous energy storage is invented. All these would bring millions of local jobs, in the European Union alone. And, a fortiori the USA.

However the first thing needed is the deconstruction of the nasty mood which rules so far, the mood of plutocracy. As long as the plutocrats rule, no significant positive change will happen, because plutocrats thrive in hell (hence their names).

In the times of Lord Chatterley, not enough was done in a timely manner by the thinking class (OK, some of that was all too close to plutocracy!). All too much of the British and American upper classes were pro-Nazi. Their ideologies of class and privilege had a lot in common with Nazism, indeed. American, English, and of course German plutocrats collaborated to put in power fascist regimes all over. From Lenin and Stalin’s to Mussolini’s, Franco’s and Hitler’s. (As Lenin himself observed.)

Intelligent observations are key. Here is one: As long as there are more plutocrats than there are representatives of the democracy, the former will be able to buy, or otherwise capture, the latter.  

Everything will be all right, if people become aware enough, soon enough, that Wall Street and its ilk have occupied their minds, so as to trample on the human condition, with a desire of utmost destruction.  However incredible that may sound, this is what plutocracy is all about. Those who don’t want to understand that, will be condemned to repeat history, just worse. Way worse.

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Patrice Ayme