Sarko In Sarcophagi!

ONE PLUTOPHILE DOWN? MORE TO GO!

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Abstract: Hysteria against French socialism by plutophiles is exposed. The last, and by far most important section of the essay, shows that an economy rests on three superposed turtles. But the mightiest one, the only fundamental one, is the state. A state without a free market is a choice, a free market without a state is no choice. A free market has laws, and that means a state. Therein the error of Europe.  

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HOLLANDE: FROM HOLLAND, THE ECONOMIST, FROM PINOCHET:

The French presidential election’s last stage is a confrontation between the plutophile Sarkozy and Mr. Hollande, for eleven years the head of the Socialist party, MP, mayor, and president of a region (the equivalent of an American state). The magazine The Economist got hysterical about the prospect of Hollande leading France, calling him “rather dangerous“. (The “rather” being added to sound British, somewhat detached, above the fray, a cover-up for hysteria.)

Verily, The Economist, like Milton Friedman, used to love Pinochet. That was not “rather criminal”, but definitively criminal. I have never dug up their utterances in Hitler’s times, but I am sure unsurprising surprises lay thereabout.

A lot of the British upper class, up to 1936, was pro-Hitler. After signing a shameful military-economic treaty with the Nazis in 1935, and, after seeing Hitler and Mussolini attack the Spanish republic, propelled by Texas oil, equipped by American plutocrats, Britain operated a U-turn (rather than having to operate U-boats later). If The Economist supported the business side then, it would have supported Mr. Hitler.

Many were afraid, including yours truly, that Mr. Hollande would be rather boring, but, apparently he can defend himself. I hope he bites Obama next week, or, at least signify to him haughtily that he was just elected on a clear mandate: get out of Afghanistan’s Islamist state.

One of Hollande’s dangerous suggestions is to foster the European Investment Bank (a PUBLIC bank, twice the size of the World Bank). The EIB can leverage itself enormously, to build infrastructure (and may have much more impact, that way, than, say, Citigroup, which 7 times the assets.)

Verily, what could be more dangerous than to make normal banking plutocrats irrelevant?

A London banker confided to me that bankers don’t lend to normal people and companies anymore. No need. Profits are with non society directed activities (as provided by Quantitative Easing and hedge funds). I asked him: why then banks should not be nationalized? He told me that, indeed, nationalization is what should be done, if one wanted to return to a normal economy.

Meanwhile The Economist claims that: “The Socialist who is likely to be the next French president would be bad for his country and Europe.” And why is that? The Economist presents a jumble of facts disconnected from sense:

“FRANCE IS half of the Franco-German motor that drives the European Union. It has been the swing country in the euro crisis, poised between a prudent north and spendthrift south, and between creditors and debtors. And it is big. If France were the next euro-zone country to get into trouble, the single currency’s very survival would be in doubt.”

And a jumble disconnected from plausible emotions. Imagining the anti-European plutophiles at The Economist waking up in the middle of the night screaming about the Euro, would not happen because they worry about its survival, but because they worry that the euro has swallowed the pound. As it will, someday.

I personally want France to DEFAULT on her debt. Actually I want all states to default, because the present financial system  is a gangrene, and like all good gangrenes, it has to be amputated.

(The financial transaction tax Hollande wants to implement would go a long way towards destroying much of the financial gangrene.) See:

http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2011/09/14/to-save-the-world-please-default/

However, I am fanatically pro-European, and I think deeper in socio-economic matters than The Economist. In truth the busy propagandists at The Economist know very well that the banking crisis has nothing to do with the principle of a single currency, but everything to do with the fact it was conceived as a SLAVE TO PLUTOCRACY.

Accusing the principle of a single currency, the euro, is a classical case of blaming the victim. But the economists at The Economist won’t say: their salaries depend upon not saying that.

In general, Western democracy is under attack from the fact the Western socio-economy has been made slave to plutocracy… Just as happened when the Roman republic got in trouble. Rome failed because the socialist policies proposed by the Gracchi were not adopted. The plutocrats killed the Gracchi and their supporters. Thousands of them.

Mr. Hollande is a chance to start the arduous task of extirpating the plutocratic gangrene. OK, Obama talked change too. But Obama’s change was about “change you can believe”. Indeed: none. Hollande proposes:”Le changement, c’est maintenant.” (“Change Now”.)  Hollande has 60 specific proposals, and several of the early ones are definitively anti-plutocratic.

Whereas Obama became quickly an extremely rich man, even before he wrote his first book, a typical “golden boy” story (or should I say black boy?), Hollande, seven years Obama’s senior, is no millionaire. Hollande has what he earned from salary, and not from fabulous book advances, American pre-payment style… The mark of huge money, very young, from nowhere, that’s the mark of Pluto. It’s all over those around Sarkozy (like his immensely rich and New York influential brother; I wonder if it has anything to do with a Sofitel hotel in New York…)

Hollande was a student at top rated ENA (where one enters only through a competitive examination, not through “legacy“, that means plutocracy, as one does at Harvard, this parody of an academic institution).

The Economist: “one thing seems certain: a French president [Hollande] so hostile to change would undermine Europe’s willingness to pursue the painful reforms it must eventually embrace for the euro to survive. That makes him a rather dangerous man.”

What seems certain to the crocodile, does not have to be so, for higher forms. The sort of euro that The Economist wants to survive, the plutocrats’euro, is the sort democrats ought to discontinue.

***

HOLLANDE CHANGE, SARKOZY, PLUTOCRACY:

Contrarily to what The Economist asserts, vague familiarity with the candidates’ programs shows that it is Sarkozy who wants to change nothing. And that it is Hollande, who proposes change. So the entire analysis of The Economist is built on a false premise. And why Sarko, a weak mind, belongs to his sarcophagi.

To this, a reader from Brazil, Felipe Coelho replied to Tyranosopher May 5th:

“Yes, Sarko did not change anything, breaking his electoral promises of leading France out of the State Capitalism model and releasing the energies of her society. Almost certainly Hollande can do a better job, even tiny steps will be better than nothing.

The problem is that both French Right and French Left love State Capitalism, for distinct reasons. In Brazil we have the same sort of consensus, selling Petrobras (the largest oil company) or Banco do Brazil (the largest bank), selling railways, ports or airports, ending the gigantic bureaucracy, all this is unthinkable. Instead of Louis XIV and Napoleon one has here the heritage of the State monopolies of the House of Avis XV century kings. The consequence for Brazil is the same, our growth during the last decade was ridiculous, equal to the average of Latin America. Brazil is the eternal country of the future. Cardoso made slight changes in that consensus and sold some mining, telephonic and electrical companies, but Lula did not dare/wish doing anything like that. Perhaps Hollande will, forced by circumstances, be more akin to Cardoso than to Lula. Let’s hope!”

My answer: Brazilian growth has actually been excellent. After going up by 50% in 15 years before 2006, it seems to be averaging 5% a year since. The first problem with Louis XIV and Napoleon, is that they were tyrants. (True they used French economic power, until they ruined it, but that’s besides the point.)  

Brazil has been mimicking not brainless, let’s throw money at the rabble, Keynesianism, but deliberate, let government intervene in free market, Colbertism. (China does the same.) See:

http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/colbert-good-keynes-not-so-smart/

More recently, Merkel practiced a sophisticated form of Colbertism. See:

http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2012/01/28/welfare-state-fares-well/

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AN ECONOMY RESTS ON STATE, & FORCE; MONEY IS A LUXURY:

I do not believe that Sarkozy loves state capitalism. And the love of France for state capitalism is much exaggerated as an exclusively French passion. For example the French Post office is privatized, not so the American one.

In the USA many giant “private” companies are little more than wards of the state. Northrop is an example: it was able to sell subsonic bombers at two billion dollars apiece. Yes, two billions. Yes, subsonic: easy to catch. OK, they call those bombers ”stealth“: a marketing ploy. All combat aircraft are “stealth“. The truth is that the Northrop B2 was a subsidy program.

Same for the Raptor, F22, at 200 million dollars apiece: it was never engaged in combat. Not once in ten years. It can’t take the rain, or something. One was shot down by an old French Mirage, in mock combat. More humiliating than that, hard to do, and a question: how come the tremendous waste of taxpayer money? Is not the same done again with the F35? On an even larger scale?

Many of the private companies trying to make money out of space access, are heavily subsidized.

The entire “private” healthcare industry is ward of the state. At least half of its business is with the state (most with Medicare).

Sarkozy’s failure was trickle down economy. Be nice to the rich, the rich shall reward you well, say the naive, and they twitch.

Now Sarkozy insists that it was a “lie” and a “calumny” to say that it’s all what his policy amounted to. Not satisfied with the previous invectives, he called Hollande a “little calumniator” for suggesting as much.

The way I look at it:

1) the “free” market, private capitalism, is a playground set, regulated, protected by the state. It furthers economic activity by exciting the profit motive (having more than the other guy).

If the hormonal situation is such that having more is dwarfed by other motives, the free market is irrelevant. This is what happens in case of very serious, invasive, war. Brazil, to my knowledge, just as the USA, has never known such a war.

France, per her location at the crossroads of three major trade routes, in the middle of Western Europe, has known many such invasions. Even before the Huns, monstrously crushed in 451 CE. The invasions have modified the national character. When French children learn French history, they learn that, the state is not just the lender, but the savior of last resort.

2) State capitalism insures the safety of the state. It was always strong in France, following the greatest Roman tradition. The argument can easily be made that, because of a plutocratically induced collapse of the tax base, Rome got invaded so badly that the economy imploded. The Roman state collapsed first, and was unable to defend the People. Plutocracy is not just infamous, it is lethal: if it does not kill you outright, it will make sure to die with you.

The USA has also an enormous state capitalism. The weapon-making part of the American military-industrial complex is nominally private, but it’s the equivalent of Roman weapon manufacturing. Practically, the crucial state industry.

The free market is a luxury. State capitalism, the real thing.

3) There is even a higher, ultimate system. Economy is managing a house. Bottom line, an economy has nothing to do with money. Money, too, is a luxury.

Barter and mandates can do it all. Some of the greatest civilizations worked that way. Sparta showed the way. It refused to use a currency beyond iron. That idealistic society then helped Athens re-establish democracy (510 BCE).

Barter and mandates is how Athens built a fleet capable of resisting Persia, how the Roman republic rose, how Diocletian re-established the Roman empire. Barter and mandates is how the Inca empire functioned, it’s how president FDR stabilized the economy of the USA in the 1930s, and how the war effort, after 1941, re-established it.

Those who believe in money first could have looked at FDR’s budget in December 1941, and say that the USA could not afford one more aircraft carrier. Instead, the USA’s command economy built dozens of such carriers, and thousands of other ships, let alone more than 400,000 aircraft.

Right now the problem is that the state has been captured by banksters, and their servants. The solution is not to get out of that nightmare, with better dreams. It is to wake up, and use force to roll back that plutocratic tsunami. Starting with destroying its ideology is how it will be done. Hollande’s 75% taxation above one million euro income is a good start to strike terror in those who believe too much in the Golden Calf.

Right now the problem is not too much state, it’s not enough democratic state.

***

Patrice Ayme

Civilisation Sénégalaise

AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY CAN BE SUPERIOR IN IMPORTANT WAYS

Abstract: The republic of Senegal demonstrates that many of the conventional wisdoms are as wrong as wrong can be. Sénégal is a country with a very old civilization, even its own secular civilization (some of it disguised as the local Sufi Islam).  

That Senegalese civilization,  is more advanced, on many important markers, than the Euro-American block. So say Senegalese philosophers, including yours not so humble servant (now flaunting his African hat).

The West ought to support and defend Sénégal, because it’s about supporting and defending the essence of the West’s civilization. Much can be done, at little cost, while bringing enormous gain. The first of which being to gain great African wisdom.

Oh, and did I mention my dad led the team which found lots of very thick oil off Casamance? It was too expensive to extract at the time, but will be profitable some day. That ought to interest the West’s plutocrats.

Last, but not least. Readers may think I am “Islamophobic”, but, besides being afraid of nought, what I truly despise is the myth of Abraham: tying up a child, telling him one will cut his throat, just to please the “jealous” boSS, who glorifies in his “jealousy” (see the Second Commandment in the Bible).

As it turns out, not only I do not have a problem with Islam, Senegalese style, but I even approve of it, as it has great social virtues. (I also fear that Saudi Wahhabism, propelled by oil money, and the feudal conspiracy born out of world plutocracy will succeed to kill Senegalese Islam, which has been gaining adepts throughout the world.)

African philosophy has two main advantages:

1) It is closer to the original main philosophical operating system Homo Sapiens operated by, and evolved under. In full. It has not be led astray, constrained, mutilated, put into a box.

2) People raised in Africa have, close at hand, a cultural jump that spanned 3,000 years of history. So they can not just compare diverse cultures, but diverse places in history.

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Sénégal is bounded on the north and east by the river with that name. To the west lays the Atlantic ocean. Three quarters of the country is in the Sahel zone, which has been heating up, and drying. The country had only one significant resource: fishing. However international trawler fleets have been devastating the ocean, ruining the diet of the Senegalese.

A country such as France would send gun boats (as she did against foreign fishers in the last ten years). But now Sénégal is independent… Of France.

Sénégal did not ask for independence from France, France just wanted to make economies, as one of the ministers involved admitted… 40 years later: it was too expensive to maintain a full hospital every 100 kilometers, so France threw independence at much of black Africa, to get rid of it ASAP (and open Africa to plutocrats).

Some have said it’s better to die standing up, rather than to live on one’s knees. But, if Sénégal runs completely out of fish, Senegalese will not been able to do either, as they will lay in the dirt, dying of hunger, or, at least lack of proteins.

Reading this, armies of vegetarians will utter that one can survive with plants alone. It is true that West Africa has its own rice, evolved there, and it is grown in southern Sénégal. However neither beans, nor potatoes can be grown in lowland equatorial Africa (too warm). And milk is not a possibility either: local cattle gives meat, not milk (nor has cattle a realistic future as the country is strangled by a slow and steady, terminal drought).   

Sénégal is the most democratic country in Africa: not only the country has been independent for longer than Kenya or Tanzania, but it has been continually ruled by universal suffrage. (By contrast, most other African countries were not only dictatorships, but nationalistic to the point of racism, racist (South Africa, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe) or theocratic (Egypt), monarchies, etc. )

So Sénégal is a democracy, in spite of being one the poorest countries. This shows that democracy and wealth are independent notions. One does not need to be well off to have the People in power. Democracy is not a luxury.

Sénégal is very poor, but also very smart in its own special ways. Some of these ways are on the forward edge of global civilization. For example Sénégal is less sexist in some ways than its ex-administrator, France. This shows that anti-sexism is not exclusive to Western civilization. This also shows that not having sexism is not a luxury.

Democracy and having no sexism are no luxury, because they are natural states of Homo Sapiens.  

Anti-sexism in the West originated from the Etruscans and the Germans. The Greeks and Romans, let alone the Jews (who originated the Abrahamist disease), were awful sexists.

France, a merger between Gaul, Rome and Germania (“Inferior“) pretty much invented a lot of anti-sexism: Merovingian queens could reign, and at least seven did as much as any king did (one of them outlawed slavery for the Franks, and everybody had been a Frank for a century). The Salic law allowed girls to inherit fully, just as a man, including the throne, as long as no brother was left (hey, Salic law was written 17 centuries ago).

By contrast in England, for another millennium, husbands appeared in court in the stead of their wives (however they were not roasted in their place).

While in France noble women studied more refined ways of handling inter-gender relationships in the “Courts d’ Amour” (that gave birth to “common courtesy”, as we know it), much of French culture, as the rawness of the Franks got diluted, returned to the old demons of Roman sexism (for five centuries from about 1320 CE to Napoleon’s infantile sexism, and grotesquely misogynistic  legislation).

Thus one sees that sexism has a long and complicated history in the West. In non sexist Crete, girls with very little clothing fought bulls, for a profession, but thirty centuries later, Jeanne d’Arc was condemned to burn alive, for having worn pants in jail (to avoid rape, she said). This shows that erroneous mental systems have huge inertia.

This also shows one of the interests of Black Africa. Differently from North Africa (which is fundamentally Western Eurasia, culturally and genetically), Black Africa is philosophically independent. Black Africa, by staying out of the convoluted history of the Middle Earth, was able to stick to a more fundamental philosophy, which, per its fundamental nature, is often more correct.

Sexism in the Middle Earth is very complex. But complexity is not veracity.

Until very recent times, not only Senegalese women did not cover their face, but, whenever working, or exercising, not much of their body either. Why? Well, why not? Ah, and a little detail: temperatures can reach 50 Celsius, 120 F in the interior.  

One can compare the Senegalese tradition of women dressed like the Olympic athletes of old, with that of the Middle East. There, traditionally, women have been turned into tents. Thus they are unable to go outside much, or to do any significant work there. Thus they stay inside, turning stupid… And not turning the children they bring up inside into the brightest bulbs, either. 

Sénégal has its own version of Islam. Something crucial about Senegalese Islam is that it is non sexist. In some ways, it was significantly less sexist than anything found in Europe or America (for example, women did not have to be more covered with more clothes than men).

Overall, Senegalese society is less sexist, because it worships less at the foot of the difference between genders. Or let me rephrase that; coming out of Sénégal, and watching the Euro-American circus of civilization pretense, I was struck by how much was contrived to increase differences. For example Western men are enticed, and train themselves, to avoid high pitch sounds. It’s something that is pretty obvious when one lives in West Africa.

Why that fear of having European men pass for women?  Is it because European men are supposed to be terrifying, and terrifyingly serious all the time? Is it because the roar of a low growl fills the inferior ones with dread? Thus, is the lack of high pitch related to empire?

Were African-American  musicians subversively undermining the Western empire by going high pitch occasionally? If Obama had exhibited early on his high pitch capability (which he discreetly showed to Mick Jagger recently), he would never have been elected president.

Indeed a few pop stars, since the 1960s, have neglected the interdiction against high pitch squeaking, and feminine voices. But certainly, many were not completely mesmerized by empire (and thus some were decorated by the empire to cover-up that fact).

In Sénégal, men have kept fuller voices, and are less afraid to pass for women (probably because, well, it’s hard to confuse a big strong Senegalese with a woman…). In Sénégal, the gender gap is viewed, in some important ways, as less important to society than in it is in Euro-America, and it is also viewed as something impoverishing society, because it puts both men and women, each, into their little box (and then Euro-Americans have all these rather comical gender identification problems).

A lot of contemporary music originated in West Africa, where the main instruments are obvious direct ancestors of those of jazz and rock.

Another important activity of Senegalese society is talking and debating. OK, at about 12 degrees of latitude, the most productive thing to do, mid-day, is to rest in the shade and talk. But talking is viewed as so important in West Africa that an entire caste specialized in it exists, the griots. Griots are in charge of talking, storytelling chanting, and no doubt incarnate the origin of what came to be known as rap.

Debating and talking was viewed as essential in a lot of European civilization at its most famous. This is another case of convergence between Sénégal and the best Europe ever offered.

So what is it about Senegalese Islam? Well one can put it in a rather striking way: Senegalese Islam is secular (!).

After hysterical laughter from those who do not know the meaning of some words die down, I will explain what secular means. “Secular” means living in one’s age. One can be to some extent superstitious, and secular, at the same time. Indeed, everybody is a bit of both. Even the most fanatical of fanatics has to live, to some extent, in his own time, be it only to be effective in his nastiness.

Thus Osama bin Laden studied civil engineering. (So one can see bin Laden was completely steeped in the world he had when he was three year: he believed thoroughly the superstition of his ancestors, he studied the knowledge of his father, an engineer, founder of the Binladen group.)

Senegalese Islam is viewed as “Sufi“. That means that Senegalese Islam has an important, even domineering, philosophical component.

The Wikipedia article on Sufism I linked to emphasizes the mystical character of some types of Sufism… as if Sunni Islam were not mystical; it is true that some forms of Sufism are very mystical… But it’s just the opposite in Sénégal. Senegalese Islam is a philosophical machine.

So what is the metaprinciple of Senegalese Islam?

One can put it this way: to inject into secularism the spirit that habitated Muhammad. So it’s not just about the Qur’an (which was written long after Muhammad’s death), nor is it about all what Muhammad was supposedly heard saying (Hadith), or supposedly seen doing (Suna). It’s about being inhabitated with the same spirit Muhammad had.

And what do we see in the spirit that habitated Muhammad? A strong will to change secularism by improving civilization along the lines of science and new possibilities. Thus in Senegalese Islam, wise religious figures can rise as high, or even higher than Muhammad himself… thanks to more knowledge and more possibilities.

That was the case of Amadou Bamba. After opposing (pacifically) a rather obtuse French administration (which deported him far away), this Senegalese holy man came to terms with it. Amadou Bamba understood that it was important to help France defeat racist Germanoid fascism. So him, a pacifist, help send an enormous number of  Tirailleurs Sénégalais. 200,000 saw combat in World War One, and 30,000 died, thanks in part to Amadou Bamba.

A few years ago, the Constitution of Senegal was changed to limit presidential mandates to two terms (as in France, itself following the lead, for once, of the USA). President Wade chose to interpret this as meaning that he could do a third term, as the change happened during his second term. The Senegalese were not amused, and demonstrated massively. Wade impressed on the Constitutional Court that his point of view was right. However, he was defeated by one of his own past Prime Ministers (initially an agronomic engineer), now president Macky Sall. One can compare with Russia, where Putin just said he envisioned to be president until 2024!

By American standards, massive demonstrations against the guys in power is too awful to contemplate, it’s not part of democracy as United States citizens are supposed to understand it. However, the Senegalese, just like the French, and, increasingly, other Europeans, view civil disobedience as a form of free speech. Yet, the Senegalese although friendly to great verbal energy, and even confrontation, are overall extremely pacific.

In general, there seems to be a complementary relationship between verbal violence, and real violence. And it’s understandable: verbal violence can address problems that, if left untouched, only physical violence can otherwise fix.

I was raised in Sénégal. Once after more than a decade, a taxi cab driver was assassinated. Something never heard before. It turned out that the assassins were two white French tourists!

There has been a secession war of sort in Casamance, in the equatorial south, separated from the rest of the country by (the English speaking country of) Gambia, religion, way of life (villages are full of black pigs). But the situation there is easily explained by the unfolding anthropogenic ecological disaster, some of which just arose from making roads through the giant mangrove forests, destroying them, with the teeming life they brought.  

Basically the problem with Casamance, or, in general, with the catastrophic turn of Senegalese ecology is too big for Senegal to solve alone. I was aghast when I saw recent photographs of entire regions that went from lush with towering trees, to moon like dried mud, from horizon to horizon.

In any case, let’s revert to the positive. How come is the  civilisation Sénégalaise so advanced? How does that fit with my Middle Earth centric view of the world? The Middle Earth is composed of the Indo-European ensemble plus North Africa and Arabia.

The Middle Earth centric view claims that the Middle Earth (in the middle of which is the Middle East) that most human inventions arose there, because the Middle Earth was the forum of the world. It is bordered to the west and north by the ocean, and to the east by the nearly completely impassable giant mountains of the Himalayas, Karakorum, Tien Shan, and their associated deserts.

Right now Black Africa is separated from the Middle Earth by the Sahara desert. But it was not always so. The Sahara was wonderfully wet at the very birth of Egyptian civilization. The Egyptians had to take refuge along the Nile and associated lakes, as the Sahara finally desiccated. That was about 7,000 years ago. But trade routes remained.

In the last 3,000 years, Carthage re-established the relationship between Middle Earth and Black Africa (so did Morocco later).

How come Europeans could not repeat in Africa what they did in the Americas? Steel. Africans had steel. Steel arrowheads would have been enough to stop Europeans. As a child, I saw some native hunters train with bow and arrow, and I was impressed. The penetration of arrows deep in solid tree trunks was astounding.

Africans had, have, developped their own steel technology. So who invented steel? It’s not clear. The Dorians showed up with it, and conquered Greece, thanks to it (killing all the men, causing a Dark Age). The Dorians came from the north, but I believe possible that steel technology actually arose in Black Africa first, and came to Greece in a circuituous route.

So was Sénégal part of the Middle Earth, in some ways? Of course.  First Senegalese, those the French were in contact with, had French citizenship, already in the seventeenth century (curiously, under the sectarian fanatic Louis XIV, probably desirous to make us believe he was not how he truly was). In the Nineteenth century, the French conquered all of Sénégal.

That meant that 5,000 Tirailleurs Sénégalais, armed with guns, led by ten French officers, yes, only ten, conquered all of Senegal, and beyond.

Senegal was thus created as a country. Senegal did not exist before that because it was actually made, at the time, of at least six different nations, each with its own language. These six “regional” languages are recognized officially: Wolof, Soninke, Serer, Fula, Maninka, Diola. (In a similar fashion, before Caear invaded gaul, three main languages were talked there… Latin became the new lingua franca, would I say, trying to be funy…).

The national language of Sénégal, of course, is French. One should not forget that France and Sénégal were long united. There were French Members of Parliament, or Senators, Senegalese born. Leopold Sedar Senghor,  Sénégal’s first president, was a prominent member of the French constituent assembly after World War Two. 

Senghor was a major French poet and philosopher. With other prominent French thinkers of non white skin, he thought one had to be proud of the word “niger” (the Latin for black). The fact that Americans think that “niger”, mispelled, is an insult means that the USA has not yet graduated out of racism 101. Senegalese make a lot of paintings where black dominates, it is unique, and extremely beautiful.

One can go back much earlier than the European period. Before the Europeans showed up on one ridiculously tiny volcanic island off the Senegal to trade slaves (and where I nearly got killed in an accident), Sénégal had, twenty century earlier, been in contact and trade with Carthage. Carthage, as a Phoenician colony, was fully a Euro-Mediterranean power. Although Rome hated and annihilated Carthage, Rome absorbed many of the Punic colony’s ways, from naval and agricultural engineering to other, more subtle moods.

Carthage got destroyed by Roman plutocrats, because they had come to fear its democracy. But the democratic ideal of that giant city survived (although those it inspired in Rome itself were destroyed in the next few generations, well, here we are, confronting the bankers and their ilk).

Civilization is not just about books, or even oral knowledge. It is also about moods. Long ago, may be as they traded with Carthage, and allowed Carthagenese to install a settlement, the Senegalese learned to be more open minded, and laugh about it. The West, and especially France, can do better than mildly forget about Sénégal, which incarnates so many of the good ways of the West, and sometimes does it better than the West can yet understand.

***  

Patrice Ayme

RADICAL BANKING FIX

BANKS ARE PUBLIC, MAKE THEM TRANSPARENT!

Why Are Banks Dealt With As If They Were Private? When They Are Not?

An Obvious Corruption Of The Constitution?

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Abstract: I track the genesis of Fractional Reserve Banking, all the way down to imperial Rome (a full 14 centuries before Wikipedia has it, nota bene). Rome developed a serious money problem, a Fractional Reserve System, properly done, would have solved it. Instead Rome invented other useful institutions: central planing, feudalism, and a notional currency (a few centuries later the Song dynasty used another notional currency, paper money; Rome could afford the luxury of diluting more precious metals in copper coins).

A slight problem that our contemporary plutocrats have succeeded to hide, is that the power and advantage of Fractional Reserve Banking lays in the fact that it is state controlled. The state can change the money supply, as needed. Up or down. What the Roman Principate could not do. Rome had run out of money, unlike the Fed, or now, the ECB.

In this enormous power, notional currency, that is, fractional reserve, great opportunity, but also the risk of enormous corruption. China, which did not have enough silver and gold, used copper and paper currency. That led, after centuries, to a terrible inflation that destroyed the value of money (contributing to the fall of the Yuan dynasty). China soon became dependent upon Spanish provided South American silver.  

Thus it is no wonder that Big Banking has turned into organized crime, thanks to Fractional Reserve banking. Corrupting the state through money fabrication gifted to friends, is a not a new crime, as cybercrime is. But its extent is new (by the way, early American presidents feared this, and took strong measures against it; president Jackson, not a shrinking violet, called it its “proudest achievement“, on his deathbed).

Nor is that crime unlawful as two of my smart interlocutors have pointed out. When a plutocratically minded Principate rises, it is careful to change the laws to suit its evil ends. A principate we have. Each time American media celebrates the “first lady” and “first family”, they celebrate the first man in Rome, the Princeps (as one says in Latin). Then Obama sends the first daughter to Mexico with a private army. At this point he implicitly tells the banksters: “I am one of yours! We are first! We own the world! welcome me in your arms! I need money!” It may not be conscious, but it is deliberate, at the subconscious level. Otherwise, why the outrage, when Angela Merkel herself flies not just in a common airline, but a low cost one?

However, differently from old Rome, and West County Men friendly England, France and the USA have WRITTEN constitutions. The first words in those Constitutions are the most important. There are six. Three in the USA, three in France. Those are clearly violated. (Could Obama understand that?)

The politicians, who have been in cahoots with the financiers, have been unwilling to turn against their accomplices (politicians get instantaneously punished, at least in financing: Obama, having raised his voice a bit against the financial conspiracy is running at 25% of the funding he got at the same point in 2008, when the banks thought he was in their pocket).

So, what to do? Very simple, having exposed the problem, one can actually roll out a solution. Democracy has to be transparent. Taxes are transparent, at least to the state. There is a reason to hide taxes from the public eye: income is a private matter, and so is spending… As long as they involve only private money.

However, if they involve credit, it is another matter entirely. Credit is the extension to private entities of public money. I will indeed argue that credit, when it involves banks enjoying the Fractional Reserve System, is actually PEOPLE money.

To keep CREDIT FROM THE PEOPLE clean and ethical, make that spending of PEOPLE money, public and transparent.

If not, it’s civilization itself, that will keep on going down the drain.

***

BANKING AND INTEREST:

They are different notions. The Islamist civilization evolved a very complex financial system, with most of the characteristics of Western banking… But without charging interest.

What’s a bank? Originally, it was an organization B that pooled otherwise unused capital, and then gave said capital to some other entity C that could make use of it. The capital was lent, and that means, that it was reimbursed slowly, according to the creditor C’s capability.

One may wonder why bank B would lend money.

For doing so, interest was invented. However, after a few generations of free interest rates, the Roman republic observed that interest made the rich richer. Interest was restricted to 10%, then 5%, and finally outlawed interest in 342 BCE (that’s not long after the writing of the Bible’s Old Testament, although at the time Rome knew nothing of the Jews). By contrast, the European Union has allowed recently money changers charge states of the Union interest over 30%.

Otherwise said, today’s Europeans are like the Romans of 26 centuries ago, before the Roman revolution, rather than as enlightened as those of 23 centuries ago… 

Abrahamist faith declared that banks would lend to co-religionists out of the goodness of their heart. Lending money to heathens and miscreants could be done against interest, a supplementary payment or tax, well in line with scripture.

Scripture mercifully envisioned the survival of miscreants, as long as they paid interest. Thus banks, complete with lending against interest, could exist. They were obviously private enterprises.

So far, so good. Then something happened that even the perverse writers of the Bible and Qur’an had not anticipated, even though, their delirium, they generally get all the angles covered.  

The Fractional Reserve System was created. The preceding link, to Wikipedia, does not go in the mathematical details. I have already explained in Fractional Reserve Gouging, and many other essays, that Fractional Reserve Banking (FRB) is intrinsically unjust, and an engine for constructing neo-feudalism.

***

The FULL HISTORY OF FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING STARTS WITH ROME:

American Wikipedia, as a faithful servant of New York finance, starts the history of Fractional Reserve Banking, FRB, with the Dutch: New York started as New Amsterdam, and the Netherlands, having been created by… France (to a great extent), then conquered England (!), inventing the highly leverage finance tied into the state that we observe now in the USA.

Immediately after inventing astronomical leverage, the hyperactive Netherlands turned against its creator, mightily arrogant France, the greatest land power… That is why highly leveraged finance had been invented, to start with: to give the Dutch armies power much beyond the tiny size of the Netherlands. That financial power went into an enormous Navy, soon duplicated in England, and the Bank Of England was created to finance it!

In truth it did not dawn on Wikipedia that FBR was a solution to a problem that was in full evidence in imperial Rome. Naturally enough, the solution was found in the Italian republics, a millennium after Rome only partly solved its financial quandary.   

To fully understand FRB, one has to go back to the Third Century of imperial Rome, the Third century of the Principate, which started with the Libyan Septimus Severus, imperator of the Illyricum armies (“Balkans”),  sending back the Praetorian Guard to its barracks, and becoming Princeps in its stead.

So it started well, but it ended with catastrophe: constant coups, “barrack emperors”, a massive plague killing much of the population… And a collapse of the financial system. There was basically not enough currency for the empire’s growing economy.

That was caused by a lack of precious metals. Rome used a three tiered system; copper, silver, gold (China had mostly only copper, making the currency impossible). Rome ran out of silver and gold. Five centuries later, the Franks got the precious metals, lots of silver, in newly conquered Eastern Europe, to feed their free market.

The Roman government reacted in two ways:

1) by creating a notional currency with a fictional relationship to the gold currency they kept on using (the latter was to stay in use in the Imperium Francorum/Romanum through the Middle Ages until 1,000 CE).

2) by setting up a government regulated barter system. That was a further step in the instauration of feudalism. By the way, such a system is basically in force between the West and the feudal lords of the Middle East, as many an enraged Muslim fundamentalist will tell you, while foaming at the mouth).

While doing this, the organization of the empire switched from the Principate to the Dominate (although I give references to Wikipedia, that does not mean I agree with all what’s there; it’s just a rough, and raw idea of the referred notion. In particular that article evoked that the “Western empire formally collapsed in 476 CE” is simply, and formally, false).

The switch to the Dominate corresponded, to some extend to the switch towards a command and control economy (paradoxically, there is no contradiction between the growth of command and control and the growth of plutocracy; plutocracy crowded out the free market, as did the dwindling technological options, due to the faltering of timely technological progress).

After 1,000 CE, as Western Europe, propelled by beans and other scientifico-technological advances, became richer than the Roman world had ever been, more determined efforts were made to reconstitute the Roman republic. The Franks had protected the reconstituted republics, such as Venice (after all the Imperium Francorum was supposed to be a republic, with elected heads of states). So:

3) Banking appeared fully, in an addition to the Roman system (1) money backed by the armed force of the government and 2) mandated state enterprises, above). The Italian republic created government bonds (to pay the armies), and Fractional Reserve Banking.

***

FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING AROSE WHEN…

Paper notes representing the precious minerals in the vaults of banks, were themselves traded. It was soon realized that this was identical to the main Roman monetary system of notional currency, and, that, just as in Rome more of these notes could be traded than the precious minerals they represented.  

So, instead of using fake precious coins as Rome did, the Middle Ages switched to promissory notes, paper money, and the like. Before soon, the governments, whose armies protected the bank vaults, came to use those notes as currency.

***

MAKING FRACTIONAL RESERVE BANKING CONSTITUTIONAL:

From the preceding, it is hopefully clear that banks, even private banks are actually STATE enterprises. All they have that is private is who manage and exploit them. But they are on a mandate from the state to create credit, that is, money.

Some will scream as they read this, and tell me that I understand nought. Yet, I do, and they don’t. There is total lack of understanding, true, but it’s on their part.  The only way to have really private banks is with no leverage, whatsover, and no back-up from the state. I would say that, when a big bank uses 97% leverage, it’s at least 97% people owned. (It’s more than 97% because of the back-up of the bank from the state.)

In 2008, the “Fed” would lend 50 billion dollar to Lehman Brothers in the morning. Every morning. The three top guys at Lehman walked away with 5 billion dollars between them, or so. The money was never recovered, nor do the fat cats want us to think of it this way. Your money is their money, end of the story.

Thus I believe that, as banks are actually public enterprises, they ought to be people controlled, instead of being milked by a few individuals who golf with the political chiefs. Instead of having bankers buy politicians, we should have the people, checking them both, under scrupulous laws.

How to do this? Make all and any bank transaction public, and pass laws to insure that any extension of credit from any bank is economically justified. Moreover use the Internet to publish the whole thing, so that everybody can have a look, check, and report to the government, if they spot any deviation between the official reasoning to support some investment, and the reality of what is going on.

***

BECAUSE BANKS ARE PEOPLE OWNED, THEY SHOULD BE PEOPLE CONTROLLED. That does not mean they should people managed. Air Traffic control, or the Army are people controlled, but they are not people managed (that was the point that eluded Plato and Socrates!)

The preamble of the Constitution of the USA is very clear. It starts with three words:

“We The PEOPLE”

(yes, in capital letters). It does not start with: we the politicians, we the bankers, we the plutocrats, we the conspirators of the United States of America, we the republicans, we the fat cats of America, we the free marketers (not to be confused with the three musketeers).

The French Constitution starts with “LIBERTY EQUALITY FRATERNITY”, not “Slavery Inequality Inequity”. Actually the Article Two of the French Constitution says the French government is “par le Peuple, pour le Peuple“. It is not a government by the bankers, for the bankers.

The bankers reply that they are somehow uniquely qualified, but their only apparent qualification is the greatest misallocation of capital, ever. And the fact they stayed out of jail or the scaffolds, while doing so, is also unique in history.

All other constitutions are a mix of the French or American ones, that is why fixing France and the USA is key. (Britannia does not know how to write, apparently, so it is hard to know what it is about, and that is why nations around the globe have inspired themselves from the French and American idea, from 1789, to sit down, and write a constitution).

***

NO DEMOCRACY, SAYS WALL STREET:

After I wrote a shorter version of the preceding paragraph in the Wall Street Journal’s comments, in an article which exposed president Obama’s love for a fat cat, Mr. Wolf, the head of UBS. Somebody working in the finance industry, John Crocker, replied scathingly that we “you do not understand anything … certainly not banking. If you’d like to think you do … well, what color is the sky in the universe where you live? Banks should be “people controlled”? …  we do not live in a “Democracy” .. we live in a representative republic. And also one that happens to be based on free market principles… In many ways, the US Government is now more of a “criminal enterprise” than any bank has ever been. Only because the government itself decides what is “legal” or not, they will never be arrested. Yeah … bankers cultivate and form relationships with federal politicians … Why? They have to.”

I think the response is pretty telling. Fat cats on Wall Street see, in the preamble of the constitution of the USA: “We The Free market of America Have A Republic Where We Are Represented” Old Geezer Pilot on this site concurred:

“It is not organized crime.

It is not even disorganized crime.

Because during the past 30 years, those banking operations and financial transactions have been made PERFECTLY LEGAL by our Congress. The best politicians money can buy.”

***

IGNORE THE CONSTITUTION, GET CIVIL WAR & NAZISM:

From above, one can see that Congress has strayed from the Constitution. The Constitution is about a “PEOPLE” regime. Unfortunately, when the Constitution of the USA was written, it was not thought to create a Constitutional Court. France has one, so now does Germany. Both courts have come out with interesting decisions the Supreme Court of the USA (SCOTUS) could never have come up with. SCOTUS has traditionally adopted a small role of pseudo Constitutional Court, but was unable to stop the multi-generational march to the American Civil War. That war was absolutely devastating. Scholars have revisited the number of dead. Upwards.

In New Estimate Raises Civil War Death Toll, the New York Times

For 110 years, the numbers stood as gospel: 618,222 men died in the Civil War, 360,222 from the North and 258,000 from the South — by far the greatest toll of any war in American history.

But new research shows that the numbers were far too low. By combing through newly digitized census data from the 19th century, J. David Hacker, a demographic historian from Binghamton University in New York, has recalculated the death toll and increased it by more than 20 percent — to 750,000.

The new figure is already winning acceptance from scholars… A pre-eminent authority on the era, Eric Foner, a historian at Columbia University, said:

“It even further elevates the significance of the Civil War and makes a dramatic statement about how the war is a central moment in American history. It helps you understand, particularly in the South with a much smaller population, what a devastating experience this was.”

Well, it ought to have been a devastating lesson. What was the lesson? That, when one let festers an unconstitutional situation, an infection of civilization by infamy, gangrene sets in.  

However, the leaders of the USA, did not learn their lesson. When American plutocrats ran away with Hitler, Stalin and company, even president Franklin D. Roosevelt did not pay attention to the problem that “We The PEOPLE” was threatened with.

FDR may have talked loudly against Hitler, but he let American banks finance him, Wall Street organize its largest companies. And when it came to stopping Hitler, FDR never stopped encouraging the few fascist French collaborating with Hitler. (As the southern front was opened from Africa, and turned into a disaster for Hitler by Spring 1942, this was of great military import, as Churchill kept on pointing out.)

Companies such as IBM or Ford were allowed to collaborate with the Nazis throughout the war. That means they did not just kill European Jews, French, and the like, but also American GIs, and bomber crews. IBM had the monopoly of computing all over the Reich. That meant that the backbone of any serious organization in Hitlerland, from trains to directing fighters towards Allied aircraft, was Made In America.

What we are confronting now is exactly the same syndrome: banking is grossly violating the spirit of the Constitution, and the political leadership is out there, golfing with the miscreants.

Banking needs to be completely changed. Banking needs to made democratic. It was done with the military, it can be done for the money changers.

Better a look within the machine that fabricates money, rather than letting the crooks have it. Better a look than a crook.

***

NOT ONLY WILD BANKING DEVOURS DEMOCRACY, BUT CIVILIZATION ITSELF:

Yes, banking is devouring civilization. The capability of finding Earth like planets exists. Now. It is just a matter of placing in space a football sized telescope, and making a spectral analysis of small planets. Seeing a lot of methane would be an indicator of life. Seeing oxygen would prove photosynthesis is going on.

NASA and ESA had two such space telescopes, ready to go. NASA had its Terrestrial Planet Finder. Europe had its Darwin telescope. But the money was cut off. Why? Bankers. Not only they steal us, and they make us stupid, but they are making us blind. And they want us NOT to think of the grander poetry of another Earth. If we are too elevated, we may find them too base.

One has also to understand we have only one chance at advanced civilization. This is it. The technological tricks we have been using have depended on accessible oil, gas, and coal, for energy, and accessible metals, thanks to all that accessible energy.

When Rome could not access metals anymore, because they were too deep, and Rome did not have enough energy to get to them, it was a disaster. Roman armies could not build the weapons they needed, from lack of metals. Ultimately, around 660 CE, the Roman emperor decided to strip the metal from all the roofs of Rome, to get the metal needed to fight the Muslims. He went to Rome to oversee the operation.

Our situation would be worse: Rome depended on burning wood. we came to depend upon burning fossils. If the fossils are too deep, or hard to get to, or have been exhausted, we cannot wait for them to regrow. Forests can regrow, not fossils.

We have to use that opportunity we have now, to access higher magic (advanced forms of solar and nuclear energy, including fusion; maybe unanticipated forms such as vacuum energy, plus designing materials atom by atom).

If we do not, the world economy will hit dwindling resources. That could be as early as 2016.

The solution that will then impose itself will be war, and unimaginable forms of exploitation. Think Genghis Khan, with the caveat that Genghis was acting out of a mix of indignation, vengeance, opportunity, and the necessity to keep the 200,000 men Mongol army on a mission. Genghis Khan was not acting out of despair, because he was a cornered rat. Still, he caused terrible wars.

Now we have states, such as Israel, that reason like cornered rats, and fidget with their nuclear weapons, while mumbling about annihilation. Not a good symptom (as Gunter Grass rudely remarked).

In a way, we are threatened to all turn into cornered rats. If we let the bankers eat all the cheese, we sure will.

***

Patrice Ayme

Fools’ Days.

The day of foolish jokes. I already wrote about Cosmic Inflation last week. What’s the joke in that? That a problem, the apparent synchronization of the universe over distances so great that light could never have covered them, is solved by an even more deeply mysterious, if not outright disturbing solution, Cosmic Inflation.

Solving one problem, with a worse problem is no solution, in my not so humble opinion. But that is exactly what has been done with finance, then the economy, and now the world. The biggest joke of them all?

***

Throwing Money At Banks To Make Us Richer?

Please don’t laugh. This is the solution that (supposedly left wing economist such as) Paul Krugman and the head of the central bank of the USA (“Fed”), Bernanke have found.  OK, the latter hired the former at Princeton, so they are related. They keep on exploiting this curious notion, because that is the only thing they can do.

Now it is duplicated by the European Central Bank (“ECB”). It works. The ECB lends money for (basically) free to banks. More than a trillion euros, to hundreds of European banks, and counting. Then the idea is that the banks would buy government bonds.

Europe is like the USA. Except in the USA, one has these rather fake states. In Europe, the states are actually nations, with full democratic systems therein. Or nations made of unions of nations, such as Spain (Basques, Catalans therein), or the United Kingdom (as its name indicates).

Of course the head of the ECB was a partner at Goldman Sachs, that means he is from the New York financial aristocracy. Same for Krugman and Bernanke. When Krugman sees the Manhattan skyline from his first class seat, once a week or so, tears well up, and he celebrates what he calls “the most beautiful city in the world“. In New York the notion of beauty itself is being leveraged.

OK. Let’s be serious. Jokes are best, when one sobers up. Krugman and company’s argument has been that the economy is in a Liquidity Trap. Krugman talks about that every day, like the crow croaks in the tree, every day.

A Liquidity Trap is a situation in which injections of cash into the private banking system by a central bank fail to lower interest rates and hence to stimulate economic growth. A liquidity trap arise when people, or companies hoard cash because they expect adverse events such as deflation, insufficient aggregate demand, or war. Characteristic of a liquidity trap are short-term interest rates that are near zero and fluctuations in the monetary base that fail to translate into fluctuations in general price levels.

Generally, historically speaking, when central banks lend money to private banks at lower interest rates, the banks lend more to the enthusiastic rabble, and the economy rebounds. However, it may happen that the rabble, or the banks, feel mournful, refuse to play, and reject spending, even if the central banks lends at zero  interest rates (or even negative, below the inflation rate, as not only Japan has been doing). This is the Liquidity Trap.

The Fed has been reacting by buying all sorts of unworthy assets. That supports the price of these unworthy assets, preventing, short term, runaway deflation. Another thing it does is that, as many as these unworthy assets belongs to Banks Too Big To Fail (BTBF), it supports these banks and their plutocratic managements (“My friend!” used to cry out Obama, each time he evoked Jamie Dimon, the Deimon at the head of the biggest BTBF)

In other words the Fed supports the powers that be.

Well, that’s a joke.

Why? Because supporting the powers that be, fosters the very problem, plutocracy, that caused the problem, dejection, not to say depression. People do not support the economy, because the economy does not support them. They are too indebted (much more than in 1929, the last time the global economy crashed, for that same reason. I will show the graph another time).

Just go back to the definition of a Liquidity Trap. It’s a consequence of the expectation of greater problems. At least Wikipedia has it that way. Krugman does not have it anyway, he just has it. He wants to fix it, by throwing more money at it, through the banks. If Pluto is not nice, make him nice, by making Him gifts. That’s basic Abrahamism: if the boss wants to kill your son, just appease him, and offer your son, saying it’s not what it looks like. I read it in the Bible (hey, I have a copy at home. Not as much fun as Tacitus’ “The Annals Of Imperial Rome“, but still fun).

So what is really going on?

Irrelevant, frivolous elections are coming in France and the USA. Obama and Romney in the USA, Hollande and Sarkozy in France. Basically the same program, a program the commons cannot inflect.

In the USA Obama runs with his proudest achievement: Romneycare, also known as Obamacare.

In France, both the conservatives (starting in 1973), and the Socialists (after 1980) invented a system where the government financed itself by asking the plutocrats for money. The plutocrats accepted. Not out of generosity, but out of interest. It is the existence of that interest which makes borrowing more expensive than taxes.

It is also addictive. The French Socialists, main promoters of the European Monetary Union (“EMU”), presented the same system of borrowing instead of taxing, to finance the states of the EMU. This way, they were sure to get the support of the plutocracy.

So now the plutocrats are coming and asking for what they were after, their interest. The learned to have it easy: no need to finance the real economy. Their friends the politicians created a wondrous loop for them. Now the Fed and the ECB have even free money for them.

Very serious economists’ now share this opinion of mine; see http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/29/who-captured-the-fed/. (Simon Johnson from MIT was chief economist at the IMF, and has long advised a rather deaf U.S. Congress.)

Thus here we are, and the situation is roughly the same, in the USA or in Europe.

What is really going on is that it is not just a liquidity trap. It’s a technology trap, as we are fast reaching the end of the present energy system, without an alternative (this happened last around 1300 CE; the population soon crashed by half in Europe).

What is going on now is not just a Liquidity Trap, it is also a globalization trap: globalize Pluto, enslave the People. Also, particularly in Europe, a plutocratic trap: the more one claims to help the people, the more one helps what oppresses society, the banks. And, worse of all, it’s an ecological trap, for the whole biosphere.

What is going on, is the greatest joke of all. A few small men, knowing basically nothing, are supposed to take all the decisions, have all the ideas. And what they know best, is how to look good, and how to lie to get elected. What a joke.

But don’t be surprised if democracy falls apart. Among other things. And that will be no joke.

 ***

Patrice Ayme

Intellectual Fascism

THE MOST EFFICIENT WAY TO RULE MINDS IS BY SIMPLIFYING THEM. 

 Abstract: The Open Mind, has driven the evolution of topmost civilizations. As Pericles said in his Funeral Oration:”Our city is open to the world… We are the school of Hellas…” Pericles talked of Athens as an open school, and society. But he emphasized that its strength came from making Athenian minds as open, and richer, minds: “our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters.”

 Rousseau pointed out that, everywhere one looked, man was in chains. OK, it may be less true now, but we are going back there. Fast. And the real question is: why do the subjugated people love it?

 How come? Minds are brainwashed, and imprinted in simplified forms where core human wants, like curiosity, are reduced to pathetic forms, such as fascination for celebrities. (That is why the kings of France wore extravagant, hyper expensive clothing, for more than a millennium; not just because they could, but because that gave the rabble something to dream of!)

 The general drive for simplifying minds is a deliberate strategy, well engaged in the Roman empire by the year 300CE (so pre-Christian; Christianity was an afterthought). I call it Intellectual Fascism.

 Intellectual Fascism is a neglected concept. It is the opposite of the Open Mind. The Open Mind is the core of progressive civilization, whereas Intellectual Fascism is the ultimate strategy of repressive plutocracy. 

 Intellectual fascism is a form of fascism specific to human beings. It is the higher, more subtle, form of political fascism, itself an expression of group fighting as one, a trick many social species have evolved. Even wasps do it, when they swarm and attack. Intellectual fascism gathers the People tight around a few ideas, again with a combative aim.

  Superstitious religions are a typical example of Intellectual Fascism. God(s) have answer to everything, and the answer is always the same: God(s) Great, the shameful incantation of the subjugated. More generally, Intellectual Fascism views individual reason, the capacity of individuals to think for themselves, as the enemy, and always looks for some reason to subjugate it.

 In modern times, the idiocy of submitting ancient ‘gods‘ has become much less popular, because our civilization requires more brains. Thus a new startegy to subjugate reason had to be found, by the enemies of free minds, those who Pluto fascinates.

 Thus intellectual fascists have come to pretend that democracy is the ultimate reason for reason. In its most hypocritical version, intellectual fascism pretends that all ideas, or even reason itself, ought to emanate from the People (which, of course, has leaders, so it is truly these leaders who determine what reason is). Whereas the truth is that it is the other way around

 Verily, reason is the ultimate reason for reason. Reason is how what is veiled becomes defined in its full glory. Reason is the unveiler of truth. Democracy, well done, is just a mean to better reason.

 Reason emerges from truth. The best civilizations know this evidence, and act accordingly.

***

WHEN FOOLS PRETEND TO THINK, SO THAT THEY CAN DOMINATE:

Before WWII, the young philosopher Paul Nizan, a friend of Sartre, published “Les Chiens de Garde” (“The Watchdogs“). He argued that many famous intellectuals and philosophers just enforced the established order. An example was Bergson, a Nobel Prize winner.

Initially a communist, Nizan broke up with Stalinism, especially when he loudly condemned the alliance between Stalin and Hitler. He was thereafter reviled by the French Communist Party. That explains why he is not well known.

Nizan was killed in combat on May 23, 1940, at Dunkirk (the heroic delaying battle by the French army which gave enough days for the one and only entire British army to escape Hitler’s army).

A lot of the present world economic crisis has to do with the intellectual analysis of the situation not being up to snuff. The watchdogs have barked up the wrong trees, as they are supposed to. Often deliberately so. Ex PM Blair of Britain goes around, heaping spite on “Occupy Wall Street” and the outraged. Nobel Krugman told us that Greece would be better, off, ruined by abandoning its currency, and switching to monkey money (OK, recently Krugman changed his tune, it seems, but much damage has been done).

Main Stream Media (and that includes websites set up by the plutocracy such as the “Huffington Post”, or by the CIA and the like, such as the “Daily Kos”) reinforce points of view typical of pure intellectual fascism. Here is a spectacular example, straight out of the New York Times.

More than once in the NYT, Michael Lynch, professor of philosophy (University of Connecticut, Northern Institute of Philosophy, University of Aberdeen), author of the forthcoming “In Praise of Reason,” “True to Life” (2004) and “Truth as One and Many” (2009), was allowed to claim authoritatively, as a “philosopher“, in various editorials that:

“our faith in reason, as it were — is not blind. It is an expression of our commitment to democracy itself.”

Sounds good, but it is full of lethal venom. Watch the subliminal message. Because we are committed, we reason? To think we need to be crazy? Next Professor Lynch will probably claim that reason was invented by “liberal democracy” aka Wall Street. After all, Fukuyama (RAND, Stanford) did that before him, and was revered for it.

Seriously, the operative core of the doctrine of Hitler and company was exactly this principle. Hitler made clear statements to that effect, up to a small modification: “our faith in reason, as it were — is not blind. It is an expression of our commitment to National Socialism itself.”

One has to know, to appreciate the parallel fully, that the top Nazis argued, half jokingly, that Nazism was a “total democracy“.

Nazism was all about the rule of the mob, when civilians broke the law massively: see the Kristallnacht. This sort of tradition, to make the social contract the primary causative agent of the human mind, and of what is right, or wrong, goes back to Locke, Kant, Rousseau, and Herder. In the case of the latter three, it clearly led to murderous, racist fascism, straight as the arrow flies. Even an idiot such as Eichmann pointed that out, waiting calmly for his rope in Jerusalem.

Eichmann argued that he did not hate Jews. He was just doing his job, and did it well, as the (German) People had asked him to. He paid the Jewish girl who taught him Yiddish. His best friend was a Jew, he tried his best to save him from Auschwitz, even asking Himmler to intervene.

Eichmann claimed that he did what Germans had been told was the good: follow common interest and the will of the (German) people to determine what reason was. That is the core of Kant’s doctrine, Eichmann pointed out. And was not Kant an absolute good?

In the modern USA the argument was duplicated by Rawls, for justice (so Lynch borrows from Rawls who borrows from the usual suspects).

Rawls has a theory of “Justice As Fairness“. That is not supposed to mean explicitly that only people with a fair complexion gets justice. But maybe that is the subliminal message. Indeed, it might as well, because it rests, basically on mob justice (as in Kant, Rousseau and Herder).

Indeed that is what a critical inspection of Rawl’s “two principles of Justice-as-Fairness” reveal. The second principle admits social inequalities, and justify them by social justice (JF, pages 42-43). What Rawls forget is that everybody, even Hitler, agreed with “his” principles. So they are far from just, and his contrived argumentation leaves him in the neighborhood of the Reichstag, 1930s version.

The time honored characteristic of justice, instead is justice as balancing the facts to find the truth out of reason alone (and not from appearances).

The devil is within what is true, or not. Cognition primes even volition. This is what happens to those who make incantations about “If God wants it, Insha Allah, Deo Volente”. They have been imprinted upon subjecting what they want to what they know.

There is nochoice. Any human being has to do this. That is why Cognition Primes Volition.

***

SOCIAL CONTRACT AS THE MIND IS THE ESSENCE OF FASCISM:

Believing that the social contract is the end-all, be-all, is more than a mistake to those who trust in reason. But, of course, the primacy of the mob has been the main argument of intellectual fascism: reason ought to be submitted to the madness of crowds (themselves manipulated by their own fascist leader(s)).

The submission of reason to collective passion is a denial of the essence of man, which is wisdom. And that comes  from the independent mind. To subject reason to the rule, or approval of the mob, or to the rule of the people, is not reasonable in the fullness of civilization. Because civilization, and human progress, rest on truth, not feel-good-as-a-mob.

Verily, I think, because I independent.

***

WHY WOULD PSEUDO PHILOSOPHERS NOT KNOW WHAT A LEOPARD KNOWS?

A snow leopard reasonably thinking does not ‘commit to democracy’. She tries to do the right thing, such as habituating the prey to little noises from the particular direction where she is crouching, by pushing little stones, just so.

The antelopes she is hunting then come to believe that some melting or crumbling process of non animal origin is creating the sound, in that particular direction, and pays no more attention to little noises from there. Thus, when the leopard will sneak and dash, she may gain the two seconds which will allow her to kill. The leopard gets to eat, and survive. Thanks to her theory of other creatures’ minds.

For the leopard, and not just the leopard, truth is in the kill. The leopard has faith in reason. No democratic process is involved. Only truth.

Pseudo philosophers do not teach people how to think better, but how to think worse. They are paid for that, and that is why Main Stream Media (NYT, WSJ, Murdoch, Huffington, etc) advertize them, loud and clear. That is also why the truth about the economic crisis is not brought to the fore.

Verily, among the characteristic of Pluto is invisibility. A confused mind cannot see well, because one sees mostly through the mind. A deliberately confused mind is a marvellous thing to ride. Ask any potentate.

***

TRUTH IS ABSOLUTE:

Indeed, there is such a thing as truth. Simply because there is something as the universe. The one and only. Not everything is relative, or false. Newtonian mechanics is still true, same as ever was, in its domain of application. Same for ancient Ptolemaic optics, or Archimedes principle, or Pythagoras theorem. All true, just as on day one. In their context (or “universe” to use semantics from logics). If one throws a two kilogram stone on some opponent’s head, it is still most injurious, a million years later. That is what it is, it is the truth. 

Truth, ultimately, is just what is. Nothing could be clearer. If it is, it’s true, if it is not, it’s not true.

OK, Martin Heidegger could not have understood that one, that ground for evidence, because all he wanted, deep down inside, was Nazism to be of the essence, but he could not say it, so he went around in circles, looking for the “ground”. Truths provide with grounds. Nazism, though, was, fundamentally a masochistic denial of reality, thus truth. So Heidegger could not find any ground that he could boast about.

To get to unobvious truth, reason(s) may have to be found. Truth rarely stand naked in all its glory on a denuded plain.

Faith in well known reasons reinforces reason, that faith is necessary to make reason all it can be.

Well established science in general, and mathematics, in particular, are reservoirs of well known reasons.

Mathematics consist in two pieces:

1) axioms, which depict some reasons we believe are crucial, or just interesting to believe in.

2) theorems, which are unobvious truths derived from axioms, which are unveiled through complex reasons.

The derivation of theorems itself uses other axioms, such as the Principle of Induction, which we have faith in (I gave a strong reason to believe the PI actually fails in my essay Largest Number, a modest full upside down of all of mathematics and logics that I apologize profusely for).

To believe in the Principle of Induction is an act of faith (all the more now that I gave a reason not to believe in it!), which, itself had been proven true by countless usage. What do we mean by this? Theorems proven by using the Principle of Induction have led to observable phenomena (such as jet engines purring) which were true and true according to predictions.

Did I just contradict myself? No. For all practical purposes we know nowadays, infinity exists. So the PI is true within its present context.

Democracy is most useful, because it allows debate, and debate helps in finding the truth, by putting many minds in parallel. So democracy creates reasons mechanically.

***

WHEN DEMOCRACY IS IN THE WAY OF REASON:

In the case of the ephemerally proposed Greek referendum, the reasons given for the decision to conduct a referendum on the exact nature of a rescue plan were clearly abysmal: people cannot judge upon such arcane financial technicalities. The Greek people was at 60% against the rescue plan. And that only for a bad reason: European inspectors are cracking down on amazing tax cheating in Greece.

Problem: in spite of the fact I want revolution now, I must admit, one must admit, that there is no immediate alternative to the rescue plan. It has the immense advantage to implement what I advocated for a long time, the immediate cancellation of 50% of the Greek debt, by the plutocrats themselves.

Moreover, if France and Germany don’t give oodles of money to Greece, right away, it will default uncontrollably, causing instantaneously a drop of per capita wealth in Greece of 50% and soon enough, 70%, with no way out. Instead France and Germany are trying to keep on going with the present orderly default (the Greek state has differed payments of some bills since 2010). The Greeks know that France and Germany will not make huge sacrifices for no good reason whatsoever.

Thus Merkel and Sarkozy correctly ordered instead that the referendum be on a non technical, but deeper question: do you Greeks want to be in the Euro zone or not? 

The answer to that one was known too: the Greeks are, by and large, very favorable to the euro. It has made them rich in more ways than one, be it only through subsidies. So not only they were then asked about whether something they liked should keep on happening, but also whether they would like not to drown.

So this was a case where a democratic consultation was not going to help.

Have all the truths been revealed in connection with the debt situation? Clearly not. And that, the People should try to start thinking about it.

How come the Greek debt, which is something like 120% of GDP, is supposed to explode to 200% of GDP, after a full year of a strict austerity program? It does not compute. Nobody explains that one. What kind of Dark Twist enables that sinister trick?

That is exactly what the watchdogs don’t want to talk about. So they will distract you with other things. I will dissect that fascinating riddle, crux of the problem, in another complex essay.

Let’s just say that both the problem, and its solution, are not localized to a few countries, such as Greece. They are global.

As far as the watchdogs of the established (plutocratic) order are concerned, the G20 at Cannes, distracted by the Greek crisis, was a great success: nothing was done about a Financial Transaction Tax. Britain, hypocritically, keeps on opposing it (they already have one, called the “Stamp Tax”, but on stocks only, not on the much more crucial derivatives; stocks are for vulgar investors, derivatives are for full blown plutocrats).

The USA is of course against a FTT as transacting the world into oblivion has become the last, and greatest, expression of American plutocratic power.  

Let’s also say that transacting away is how countries are brought to their knees by the world’s richest men.

***

NUKED REASON:

The U.S. department of energy just announced that CO2 emissions, worldwide, jumped up by 6% between 2009 and 2010. The emission due to coal burning jumped by 8%. more than half the increase is due to China and the USA (the same plutocratic mega organization: maximize coal burning, maximize profits for the richest of the rich).

This is an important failure of reason: we are puffing away towards a disaster which will make WWII seem like an anecdote. And it’s not just the reigning leaders who are at fault.

Ecologists puffing away obsessively against nuclear energy are also at fault: they make the bed of coal, and the results are blatant (I am not defending present reactors, which are dangerous, and ought to be phased out; but coal burning is not just dangerous, but guaranteed to be lethal on the largest scale). Nuclear, with its energetic intensity 100,000 more than anything else, is the only alternative to coal.

Let’s vituperate against fracking too: the USA is getting dangerously dependent upon fracking for natural gas. Let’s frack! Greedy bullies scream. Who needs water, when one can breathe gas and drink oil?

A well is not fracked once, but many times. Dozens of times. One can suspect that the process will lead to migration of the strong and nasty chemical agents fracking uses, over a few hundred meters in a few decades, polluting the water table. All the more since the concrete lining the wells will decay. The long term effects on the water table don’t look good, with a pretty high probability. If it turns out that there is a problem, it will be energetically disastrous. 

That is why France outlawed the technique (although the country has large reserves of shell gas). More modern, less dangerous techniques may be available in the future.

In the false debates about energy, one can see the failure of informed reason versus the reason of the mob. The mob does not like the word “nuclear” because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Chernobyl, and Fukushima.

Better to breathe mercury vapor from coal plants, and eat mercury laden fish, because it gnaws at the brain, source of all our troubles.

***

TO SINK NOT, THINK SOME:

Another question, related to the meaning of reason, is whether animals are machines programmed by genes. This selfish gene theory was suggested by Hamilton. It is erroneous, or, let’s say, deeply misleading.

Living organisms are programmed by genes, true. But even much more so by the environment. And the more sophisticated organisms are, the more programmed by the environment they are. This is made obvious by the fact that sophisticated species have often fewer genes than grossly inferior, mindless species. Genes are just subtle keys which allow to unlock a development which, in turn, gets programmed interactively by the environment. This, I claim, will be true even at the level of the ten million insect species (and indeed hints that wasps have emotions have come to the experimental fore recently; emotions partly come from the environment).

The environment is not digital, as genes are. Instead, like Quantum physics, the environment is continuously differentiable, and completely adaptive. No wonder: the environment itself is an outgrow of Quantum physics. To describe either, our full mathematical and logical panoply, from C* algebras, to quantum logic, while larger than any human can muster, is not enough.

There is no physics but the Quantum, and Muhammad is not its prophet. By this I mean that truth is not determined by social agreement, whatever Rawls, Lynch, Herder, and billions of Judeo-Christo-Islamists think.

Reason is a capability that evolved to allow organisms to make models of the environment. It is intimately related to minds which can create baby universes. Those models answer questions not just about what is, but also about what could-be, IF. Thus the organism can judge which universes are available, and which one, among them all, it prefers, and select for it.

Notice that the multiverse thus exists. But it’s all in our heads. And we are the ones determining which, among these possibilities, is going to be the universe, looking forward.

If we tried to do this with fully determined classical minds, it would be impossible. But we do it with Quantum minds, which escape local determinism, through non locality. That’s how reason gets entangled with freedom.

***

Patrice Ayme

USA: Empire Or Business?

 

OR THE EMPIRE OF BUSINESS?

 

A US president famously uttered that:"The business of America is business."

In contrast, the old (US president) Monroe doctrine (1823) has been presented as "América para los americanos", meaning: the Americas (north, central, and south) for the USA. The fact is, as it is, the USA is the greatest imperial military power that ever was, with considerable armed forces all around the world. It may be argued that the worldwide power of USA based corporations, and supply chains directed towards the USA, go a long way to explain the riches of said USA.

Instead, those partial to the might of the finance industry of the USA, argue that the power of the USA comes from its Ayn Rand character, of private entrepreneurship, muscularly envisioning and building a better world.

As Sherry Jarrell, a finance professor, puts it in "Learning from Dogs": "The reason the U.S. economy is as strong and vibrant as it is is because of our labor market, our capital market, and free enterprise. These markets are supported by the legal and regulatory systems that define the rules of the game; they are damaged when the government steps in and tries to play the game or change the outcome of the game."

Sure. But who invented the game? The government, also known as the democracy. And who allows the children to play their game in their playground? The government, also known as the democracy.

In any case, the assertion that the “US economy is strong and vibrant” needs to be stridently revised. I have long lived in the San Francisco Bay Area (where I am thoroughly familiar, not to say familial, with the university and venture capital system). More recently, I have been residing in the French Alps. One cannot compare the strength and vibrancy of the French economy, where everything gets done, with that of California, where everything seems, weak, decaying, falling apart, and crucial elements of society seem on their way out.

At this point Northern Italy and the parts of France I have seen resemble construction sites, and one does not need SUVs to go around because there are so many potholes (as is the case in California). The French know how to dig deep and repair roads with high quality materials.

But of course road repair is government financed, even in the USA, therefore worthless according to Wall Street profiteers: if people cannot stand the potholes, the Wall Street types seem to be saying, let them all buy Porsche Cayenne Turbo: after all access to cheap oil is financed by the Pentagon!

In the SF Bay, the state (overseeing) and its private contractors are still trying to replace the main bridge since …1989. The most important bridge there was damaged in a quake, and nearly collapsed in the SF Bay. Said bridge is supported by rotting firs (!), stuck in Bay mud, screwed together with rusting bolts, ready to snap.

This happy crew, of state supervising, and private contractors contracting, are still at it, forever building that bridge, an apparently insurmountable task for their incomparable incompetence. The fact that the bridge is built in China may explain some of the problem. Strong and vibrant China is, no doubt. But it is a zero sum game: strong and vibrant there, to do that particular job, and it means it does not get done somewhere else. Apparently another insurmountable piece of logic for Wall Street, its minions, and servants.

The French built the world’s tallest bridge in three years, a few years ago, with a freeway on top (the five kilometer long Viaduc de Millaut, built by Vinci, a private contractor). The bridge elements were built in France, on the spot, not in China. Industry is not all about financial tricks to make Wall Street critters richer, it’s also about common sense: build the USA in China, and, instead of “comparative advantage”, you will get the USA to become a colony of China. You don’t get “comparative advantage”, you get comparative decay.

The Chinese imperial state understood this perfectly well went it refused to allow the free enterprise of the opium trade on its territory. Britain insisted. To force “freedom of enterprise” on China, France and Britain invaded it with their armies (enforcing the cultural exchange with the destruction of various architectural monuments, including the Summer Palace).

Here in La Salle Les Alpes, a village in the Alps, the city government decided a few months ago on a whole set of pharaonic projects, including replacing the local main bridge over the local Alpine river, one mile of re-made torrent, with Inca style stone blocks, and an impressive dam to slow down potential floods. All will be finished before the ski season. Nothing made in, or for China.

A lot of pro-plutocratic theoreticians in the USA do not seem to realize that their “level playing field for business and finance” is organized by the government of the USA. They do not seem to understand that the government, also known as the democracy, needs to be financed appropriately to make the sand box the financier and the entrepreneur play, possible at all. The French, though, have understood this since the 1600s. Some of the Americano-American debate on economics was word for word vocalized and written down in France in the 1600s. The dust has settled since, and the present pro-business, conservative government, just as the one in Germany, is practicing policies that are so much left wing, that they are unimaginable in the USA.

The USA has become increasingly an unreal place which has frequently assigned other parts to war, but was never visited seriously by war (except for the Civil War; 9/11 was just a minor scratch, relatively speaking). In France, people are still busy repairing damage from WWII, or from emergency measures, themselves damaging, taken as a result of WWII, and several other wars, before or since. Now the long term, sustainable, much more democratic European model is rising, and it seems much more competitive, strong, vibrant, just, free and equalitarian than the decomposing system in the USA.

It may be time for the USA to learn, from overseas, a few tricks it seems to have no conception of. And some integrity too. If the "game" organized by the government is biased in favor of a few particular individuals (as it is right now in the USA, be those individuals private-public politicians, or Big Bankers, friends and clients of the preceding, and vice versa), what has happened to democracy, equal opportunity, freedom, and the like?

What sort of integrity was it to give or lend or guarantee to Big Bankers so many trillion of dollars, without anything in return from them? Are the richest people in the USA so used to get money for nothing (thanks to a perverse tax structure, and decades of buying the most powerful politicians), that they cannot even say thank you?

People with a democratic and republican mind ought to ask these questions, instead of celebrating an incomparable rot.

Patrice Ayme

THE QUR’AN HATES DEMOCRACY.

WHY AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN, IRAN AND OTHER ISLAMIC REGIMES ARE FUNDAMENTALLY HOSTILE TO THE WEST.

Pakistan has a new “President”, Benazir Bhutto’s widower. Afghanistan has a “President” too. But what does that mean? During the Roman empire, for centuries, citizens could embrace whatever religion they pleased (before the rather short lived Christian dictatorship). In today’s Afghanistan the “law” has it that if a “Muslim” becomes a “Christian”, he shall be executed. What happened to civilization? Is it supposed to be going backwards? Are Western powers helping those vicious superstitions, and thus undermining themselves?

Pakistan is an Islamic Republic (since 1956, reviewed in 1973). This causes an insurmountable problem because Islam is not compatible with democracy. Although Benazir and her husband seem noble and extremely courageous, the task they gave themselves is hopeless. Islam was designed as a war machine against the West. That is why it succeeded, and only ultimate force stopped it (in Francia in the West).

Benazir Bhutto, in her posthumous book, “Reconciliation” observes that “a discussion of Jihad is critical to the world”. She presents what she calls a “thesis”, that “democracy and Islam are compatible”. But she admits that this is true only if Jihad is not “about religious war against other religions and Muslim sects”. But she is not sure. Maybe, maybe not. Hope is her only logic.

Whatever. What part of the word “Jihad” did Benazir not understand? During that last bomb explosion, that killed her, did she see the light? Well, we sure saw it on TV.

Muslim fundamentalists have (correctly) counted nearly 200 passages containing calls to extreme murderous violence in the Qur’an. The Fundamentalists know best: they use those precise passages to justify their own murderous violence, including killing little girls that go to school, and women who go to work. Threatening to kill those who insulted “the prophet” is a particularly appreciated delicacy.

But the violence of the Qur’an against Western civilization is not restricted to calls for maximum and lethal physical violence. First, there is the fact that “Jihad” replaces all and any of the activities connected to democracy. Islam is about one man, one jihad, not one man, one vote. Moreover the Qur’an is full of statements such as: “And those who disbelieve in our communications, they are the people of the left hand. On them fire closes over.”  (S 90; v. 19-20). the left hand is used for the rest room, in the desert, you know. (Wash with dirt, recommends ‘the prophet”, always very practical!)

There is also a fundamental violence of the Qur’an against the very principle of democracy. The Qur’an enjoins that: “O YE WHO BELIEVE! Obey Allah, and obey the messenger and OBEY THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE IN POWER.” (Qur’an’s fascist principle, S.4; v. 59). In other words, obey authority as a matter of religion.

Hitler, who admired Islam as a war religion, used to call this the Fuehrerprinzip, and it was the central functioning principle of his Nazi Reich. All Germans had to obey any authority as a matter of religion. The fascist principle makes Islam incompatible with democracy. (Of course, the entire point of Islam is that dictatorship is religion, so it’s no accident!)

Some will say: “Wait a minute! What about Christianity? Europe is Christian, and still became democratic! Indeed, Islam is the bastard child of some type of Judaism and Christianism, marinated in a pungent desert sauce. And indeed the West became democratic. But the West had been democratic before (republican Rome, many Greek City states). Even at the worst of the Roman Christian Imperial theocracy (fourth and fifth centuries), the law was mostly secular, and its own power, independent of religion. Even at the top of the Roman Christian Imperial theocracy, a woman, an Augusta, reigned (fifth century). She invented the theory of the STATE OF LAW: “The law shall apply to us just as much as it applies to our subjects.” 

When the Franks took control in the West, they did not establish a Christian dictatorship. Quite to the contrary, they progressively transformed Christianity in an instrument for the advancement of civilization. The Franks, as good Germans, were more democratic and less sexist than the Greco-Roman. As good Germans admiring Greco-Roman civilization, they were dismayed by what Christianity had done to it. All in all, the Franks imposed on Christianity much higher ethics. They forced the Christian establishments to teach secular knowledge.

Saint Augustine and his accomplices, the Founding fathers of the Church, had justified slavery as a punishment from God (as the Quranic parrots would later do). The Franks just outlawed slavery. By 800, the Pope was the Franks’ pet, and the Carolingians (who had crushed Islamic invasions earlier) took a great dislike of the Eastern Christian Roman empire. In 1204 the Franks conquered Constantinople, smashing for good the remaining Roman imperial Christian power. the anti Christian humor of the franks could be tasteless: during some crusade, a bit short of food, they made fun of Christ’s recommendation to eat (his) flesh, by actually eating some of the (Muslim) natives.

Even as dedicated a Christian as the formidable Roman emperor Justinian, when he ordered a refurbishment of the entire Roman legal system, nominated a pagan law professor to head the commission, and the emperor instructed him to separate the huge body of secular law from the laws of a Christian nature. That secular body of law the entire world use nowadays, except for the Islamic states.

The secret of the West is not Christ, it’s the Pagan Franks masquerading as Christians (proof: when they smashed the three Muslim invasions of the eight century, the Franks, after having nationalized the Christian Church to draft the entire economy, called themselves “Europeans”; they viewed Muslims as a new Christian sect).

During the later Middle Ages, the Frankish empire was breaking down in national powers. A Christian fanatic such as (Saint) Louis IX, hated the Jews. Still he could not do much against them: centuries earlier Frankish law, following Roman secular law, had recognized Jews as full citizens. In the end the holocaust of the Jews had to wait for the replacement of secular Roman law by Nazi garbage.

In Pakistan, according to the Islamic Constitution, only a Muslim can become President or Prime Minister. No law repugnant to Islam shall be enacted and the present laws shall also be Islamized. Injunctions of Islam as found in Qur’an and the Sunnah have to be obeyed. The 1973 (and current) Constitution of Pakistan gave a definition of a Muslim which states: ‘Muslim’ means a person who believes in the unity and oneness of Almighty Allah, in the absolute and unqualified finality of the Prophethood of Mohammed [PBUH: Peace Be Upon Him], the last of the prophets, and who does not believe in, nor recognize as a prophet or religious reformer, any person who claimed or claims to be a prophet, in any sense of the word or of any description whatsoever, after Mohammed.”

In other words, sheer superstition. Well, Poo Be Upon It [PBUI].

Islam has got a long way to go, before it can join Christianity, and be put to sleep…

The West may want to reconsider its attitude relative to all Islamic regimes, including “republics” such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Obama suggested this: next time bin Laden is in the crosshairs of the West, if Pakistan refuses to act, the West will; France, more directly, suggested that a French 9/11 may be rewarded with nukes for the host country.)

For a long time, Islamic dictatorships (a pleonasm, sorry) were the best friends of the oil thirsty USA. Oil was good, so dictatorships were good, so the dictatorship friendly Qur’an was good. Well, that was before Islamic Weapons of Mass Destruction. Now all these discourses about fire from the sky and holocausts, in the Qur’an, after 9/11, do not seem such a good idea anymore, even to the USA. It maybe time to encourage forced de-Islamization programs, somewhat similar to those implemented by the Franks against Christianity.

It’s better to put the Qur’an to sleep that way, rather than the alternative…
***

Patrice Ayme 
***

P/S: Under the Hanafi jurisprudence of Afghanistan’s Sunni majority, favored by the Afghan Constitution, apostasy -abandoning Islam for another religion- is a crime punishable by death. it’s all about whether it’s the sovereignty of the people (democracy) or the sovereignty of God (a figment of the imagination and tradition of cavemen). It should not be tolerated anymore that Western soldiers die for this.

P/S 2: ”In reality, the monotheist texts preach neither peace, love nor tolerance. They are texts of hate.” (Michel Houellebecq.)

LUXURY AS A WEAPON…

… TO HELP THE PLUTOCRACY FEED ON THE MIDDLE CLASS.

So far the luxury economy seems to be doing all right as Roger Cohen notices (September 15 2008:”Premiumize or Perish“). The rush towards luxury is not just about soberly replacing Hawaiian vacations by fancy candy. There is a more sinister side to it. Luxury is about putting the entire socioeconomy to the service of the rich. It’s both a symptom and a further way for the rich to dominate.

In a functional democracy (“peoplepower”), the middle class has the power. The lower class is too low, too uneducated, too unenlightened. The lower class does not have enough power to free enough time-energy to study and find out what’s up and what’s down, hence it is led by the nose always. The question is by whom. (Call this an elitist argument, if you will, but it’s really happening, to deny it is futile, just as it is futile to deny gravity.)

So the struggle for power is always between the higher class and the middle class.

Some may object to some big revolutions where it looked as if the lower classes fought for control. Such cases, such as 1917 Russia are irrelevant to this essay. In 1917 Russia, the budding democracy was wiped out by the fascist methods that arose much more naturally from the then unfolding, massive war; the point being that Russia did not have the time to develop a democracy yet (somewhat similarly, but much more excusably, than today). The same mechanism was at work in France in 1793/94 and 1870/71: each time, as in Russia, or in China during the “Long March”, a war situation involving an external aggressor had developped, and was the main aggravating factor. Instead we are looking in this essay at the milder cases of a social collapse occuring for internal reasons related to wealth inequality. No external aggression is involved in the beginning (although war often shows up in the end, it does in the way it shows up in Orwell’s “1984″, namely as fascism’s best friend and ultimate justification!) 

When the upper, moneyed class grabs power, that, by definition, is “moneypower”, plutocracy.

The plutocracy makes itself perennial by putting the entire economy to its own service: not only is it nice to have ever more servants, and trinkets nobody else has, but, the more so, the less power the middle class has (because since more economic activity is directed at luxury product, less is directed at products for the people, increasing the relative cost of those). Hence luxury products thrive, and real estate becomes stratospheric. Indeed, such evolutions weaken in turn the middle class some more (causing it difficulty from fewer cheap products, and expensive lodging).

This phenomenon occurred in Rome, 2,200 years ago, as the Second Punic war made the rich way richer, thanks to a lot of policies that should have been made unlawful in a timely manner. Thye measures that were not taken: as rent control, prevention of a real estate bubble, and help to small holders of agricultural land. Later they were coumpounded by the rich buying elections (don’t laugh if all this sounds eerily familiar, we are not making it up…). As those people friendly measures were not taken, Rome started its colossal, six centuries descent to hell, from republic to theocratic terrorcracy. Now, of course, we have seen it all before, and thus it will not happen again, because history is something we all know really well… 

The present world shows all the symptoms of a mighty struggle between democracy and plutocracy.

An example of the resistance of the People is the crashing and burning of the financial sector. It can be interpreted as a struggle between the People, who is fed up feeding banks and other rich financial sector manipulators (so people tend to refuse to pay the money they owe, or to pay for credit they don’t want to engage in). In this sense the present crisis is healthy, and a very good sign: the People is putting finance, and its associated plutocrats, on a diet.

An example of the aggressivity of the rich is Putin’s invasion of Georgia. It seems Putin and his multi billionaire friends are immensely rich through ways that should not be legal; by attacking another country, and threatening others, Putin and his fortunate friends create a state of war, favorable to fascism, antipathetic to democracy… Inside Russia itself. That state of war is adverse to looking at what Putin and friends are really doing. Thus allowing them to proceed, ever more. It’s often like this with plutocrats and fascists; having crossed a few Rubicons, they have no choice, but cross some more. Criminals cover their crimes through bigger crimes.

Of course, it goes without saying that the plutocrats and oilocrats around Bush used the invasion of Iraq in a similar way (they were serving only themselves, and not the USA, because, long term, having killed so many Iraqis, and destroyed the country so much guarantees that ultimately all Iraqis will hate and despise the USA).

So there we see, just as with the Second Punic war, that some wars can serve the rich (the difference being that Carthage and Hannibal really attacked the Roman republic, whereas neither Georgia nor Iraq was a threat for those who attacked them, and, clearly, Russia is not much of a republic, and, arguably, the USA has been increasingly behaving like a plutocracy already).

To orient the socioeconomy to few, rare, extravagant products is another, softer sort of war against the People by those who own most. Luxury is a form of usury.
***

Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/

MONEY DOES NOT THINK.

… BUT DEMOCRACY DOES, THAT’S ITS FORTE. THE US ECONOMY IS NOW HEADLESS BECAUSE DEMOCRACY IS BEING DEVOURED BY AN  INCREASINGLY STRONGER PLUTOCRACY.
***
The USA just nationalized the two largest US banks holding 45% of US mortgages (total worth: about half of US GDP). But nobody in the USA wants to use the word “nationalization”. Hey it would sound socialist, or even, God forbids, French!

The famous economist from Princeton, Paul Krugman opines in the New York Times that: “the Fannie-Freddie rescue was a good thing. But it takes place in the context of a broader economic struggle — a struggle we seem to be losing.”

Losing? The US economy is failing because it is a horse without a rider. It has eaten all the grass in its small enclosure, but it can’t get out on its own, and it needs to be led somewhere else by a more intelligent creature.

The basic socioeconomic mistake of the Nixonian, Reaganoid USA has been to believe that the “free market” should, and can control all. Since what’s most free in the market is what, and who, has most money, to believe that the free market should control all, is another way of saying that money should control all, and so that money-power - in one word, plutocracy – should reign. (Come to think of it “free market” is a euphemism for the concept of capital, a good way to make old critiques look obsolete by changing the label on the product!)

Abdicating to plutocracy is a complete misunderstanding of what the role of democracy is, and a full violation of the United States of America’s Constitution.

For a reminder here is how the Constitution starts:
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Where is the free market in this? It is nowhere to be found. The Preamble does not start with: “We the Free Market of the United States of America”. It starts with: “We the People”. And the People has power. It is not: “We the Free Market and Rich People of the United States, and its Venture Capitalists, in order to create more Riches to ourselves and our Posterity, and establish more injustice, promote the general Welfare of the higher ups in the Chinese Communist Party and secure the general misery of the People, establish this Delocalization of the Constitution of the United States of America…”

Thanks to decades, even generations of extreme, fantastic right wing propaganda, the United States of America’s population has macerated in the warm mantra that the free market is not just the best path to prosperity, but also is best to decide all strategies and every single thing about the economy. This extremely deep propaganda blossomed in the late forties, when Nixon became a force in the USA, by accusing his Congresswoman opponent to be “pink right down to her underwear”.

Money-power as the ultimate ruler means that whatever or whoever has the most money takes the most important decisions. Laws and regulations do not come in the way (since they have no power, relatively speaking, the power being in the money, not in the representants of the people as such).

So the cities’ very extensive electric tramway systems were dismantled. No maneuver was abject enough to dismantle public transportation. General Motors bought the San Francisco Bay bridge and owned it just long enough to dismantle the train that was going over it, and maximize its car carrying capacity. And so on all over. In general, train operators, less popular in Washington (Smaller bribes? Less glamorous? Or was it that they had fewer actresses around than Howard Hughes?), were neglected, and all the money went to car companies, airlines, the oil industry, etc. Trains and their lines, which transport most goods (even in the USA) were neglected. But of course electric trains as used in Europe are much more energy efficient, and that was bad for maximizing the oil industry and those who like to profit from invading the Middle East and make deals there (Carlyle group, Bush family, countless oil cartels, etc…).

Anyway the big picture is that the so called free market decided where the US economy would go. Bigger SUVs to go along with the bigger potholes. What the US society has overlooked is this: the economy does not exist independently of the sociology. The SOCIOECONOMY IS JUST ONE BLOCK. The economy controls the country, and even the minds. This was not just true in the USSR. Indeed most of United States media control (with the vague exception of NPR and some PBS, restricted to a small elite audience) is in private hands. This is not compensated by the State having a strong independent voice, because elections are literally bought in the USA. Such enormously injurious facts to the concept of democracy are no figure of speech and acidic critique. They are just facts. So those who have the most money end up with the most control, as the present presidential campaign in the USA demonstrates … on both sides…

Since the search for profits has masqueraded as a search for a socioeconomic policy, the USA has piled up insane economic decisions, that connect deeply with American semantics, and American minds.

Take “house ownership”. Absurd statistics are brandished about it (most Americans are homeowners, etc…). The simplest hurtful truth, though, is that many Americans feel that they are proud homeowners, when all they do is to rent their house to a bank at such outrageous rates that they cannot have much of a life (besides feeding the bank). The whole credit crisis has to do with the fact that US citizens are discovering this, and are starting to pull away from that exploitation scheme, thus mightly hurting bank profits (subprime is just a sideshow).

And so on. As long as “We the People” does not become master of its own destiny, captain of its own soul, and does not treat the economy and money as instruments in the service of “general Welfare”, the United States socioeconomy will go down, relatively speaking.

Plutocracies can’t compete with countries with a higher democratic index. Republican Rome defeated the Hellenistic kingdoms and Carthage, simultaneously, because, at the time, Rome was less plutocratic and more democratic than them. This pattern has renewed itself throughout history. Rome, in the end, became a plutocracy too, and then it went down of its own weight, freedom crushed by money, and the few who had it (the “Barbarian” invasions, by tiny armed bands, were more of a symptom of the disease than the disease itself). That, too is a pattern of history: plutocracy can collapse a civilization all by itself. There is no need for an ecological disaster to cause a collapse, contrarily to what another American academic, Jared Diamond assumed, conveniently enough for US plutocracy. 
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Patrice Ayme
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P/S: 1) Increasingly much simpler version of this commentary were systematically barred by the Krugman team at the NYT (while hundreds of other comments were published; as we hinted in the case of Jared Diamond, claiming that the concept of plutocracy is of no import in the USA is viewed as extremely important by the wealthy owners of America, so they do not want to advertise this anathema).

2) The opposite of democracy is fascism. It is not plutocracy. But unconstrained plutocracy leads to fascism. Plutocracy arises by degeneracy from democracy.

3) A demonstration of the amazing hold of plutocracy occurred when Obama, supposedly the people’s candidate, refused to be financed by the state (his hope was to get more from hyper rich donors, in other words, the plutocracy; those people who do not mind forking out the median US salary to just be in the Presence… at a distance, rubbing with their peers… for a few minutes.) Amusingly the supposed candidate of the rich, McCain, accepted public money (thus forfeiting most direct private contributions). True, McCain had authored the public finance law, another reason why the plutocracy claims not to trust him (besides, what can they offer to him?) Even more amusingly, suddenly private money, having apparently second thoughts, seems to find it less rewarding to get to Obama. Out Machiavellizing Machiavelism seems to be where it’s at. That’s why we are trying to simplify the debate.

NO USE HIDING BEHIND THE BUSH.

DEMOCRACY’S TOTAL FAILURE IS A FAILURE OF THE MIND.

Everybody has become highly critical of Bush, but one man does not a republic make. Nor does one man a republic dismantle. Following Bush like bleating sheep was a cop-out, excoriating Bush another. Sheep do not a republic make. All they can do is graze.

The increasing system failure in the USA did not just spring from Bush’s cluelessness, plutocratic preferences, and desire to switch the conversation from his business association with Osama bin Laden’s family to Saddam Hussein, bin Laden’s enemy. The failure did not spring just from the Supreme Court deciding who should be president. No, it’s more like a failure of the American mind, as an American mind.

The crumbling infrastructure of the USA can be traced at the very least to Bill Clinton’s choice of Robert Rubin over Robert Reich. Rubin behaved as if an obsession with money was the only infrastructure worth having, whereas Reich advocated infrastructure in the conventional, material sense of the term. Thanks to Rubin, the tail of finance wagged the dog of the entire American economy. Bush was just the next chapter of that degenerated tale.

Even now people go around like chicken on the left, cackling; “change!, change!, change!” But nothing more concrete than a change of methodology can be proposed to them. Indeed real change is a no-no for those little ones. It would frighten them, and they would fly away, cackling louder than ever. They are going to have to be tricked into change.

Real change would mean redirecting the economy in different directions. The so called “great generation” that won W.W.II in three years from a tremendous effort, military and industrial, was the fruit of the socioeconomic redirection Roosevelt accomplished with the “New Deal”. When the war came, Roosevelt accentuated that redirection by nominating a young Canadian academic as economic czar with full powers. The young czar decided what all and any company would do, throughout the US economy.

In a non war situation, how does one redirect socioeconomic activity? With taxes. The tax debate so far has been restricted to whether one should go back to the tax structure of Clinton’s rule. Supposedly the economy was doing great under Clinton, when one measures it in a rather naive way, that of the height of GDP. But GDP is crude, and height a false indicator. Verily, a plane that is going to stall also gains altitude, in a last gasp, when vital dynamic energy going forward is transformed into a fatal hiccup. The bubble economy started under Clinton, and Rubin’s wild financial engineering is no stranger to it.

What’s the essence of democracy? Making arguments. An argument is a logicalo-emotional presentation made to clarify to oneself and to others a model of a piece of the universe. It often boils down into a plan of action. Arguments are elaborated in strenuous back and forth with others. It is both crucial to develop arguments inside oneself, to insure originality, and with others, to insure mental wealth. The Greeks made refined distinctions between diverse aspects of democracy, and equal capability to make discourses (“isogeria”) was viewed as crucial. In other words, equal access to public argument making was viewed as essential to democracy. The Greeks of Athens’ apogee did not envision that a race would evolve that did not like to argue. Greek democracy took centuries to die, and died fighting (against Persia first, then Macedonia, then finally against the fascizing Roman republic). The Greeks resisted decerebration until the drastic holocaust inflicted by the Christian dictatorship. This makes the mental evolution in the present day USA more similar to what happened in Rome: death by plutocracy.

Democracy is strong because all minds are used in parallel, all bringing their own ideas, to form a gigantic set of ideas. Anti-intellectuals view this as idle. Their motivation is in general clear: they are from the plutocracy, or in its service. US President Bush Senior, the famous billionaire, used to talk derisively about “the vision thing”. But vision from ideas is what allows to not fly into walls blindly, as the USA did with Muslim Fundamentalism, Afghanistan, and Iraq (the former two walls were multi generational American mistakes where democrats were as involved as the worst Republicans). (I will not mention Hitler and Stalin, who were both extensively supported by the USA, before, and during (!) W.W.II, because I do not want to stress out further those poor cackling chicken… that led to some problems that were as many opportunities to US plutocracy, including the Bush family.)

Democracy’s power and definition is in the love of arguments. But “arguments” and “arguing” have become pejorative in the USA. Now even joking is becoming criminal. One starts with airports, and with the Latin word for “black”, but where will it stop? What happened to “the pursuit of happiness”, one of the “inalienable rights”? Are those who can’t joke happy? Does that mean their “inalienable right” has been alienated?

The opposite of democracy, fascism, is weaker than democracy, on a historical scale, because the fascist mindset is all about minds operating in series. As the Qur’an orders it, “obey your superior”.

In fascism, political, social or intellectual, all minds ultimately take their orders from just one mind, “The Decider” (as Bush calls himself), or the “Guide” (as Hitler called himself; “Fuehrer”), or the “Messenger” (transmitting “God” violent elucubrations). As Hitler pointed out, this “guiding principle” (“Fuehrerprinzip”) allows to take decisions quickly, and as shockingly as needed (Hitler illustrated this with glee, by making an alliance with Poland in 1934, after running a hateful, and threatening election campaign against it in 1933). As Hitler demonstrated, fascism also allows to take the most stupid and criminal decisions, because there are very few true geniuses of wisdom and benevolence, and many evil morons (especially in high places). If of one mind a country depends, chances are it will be moronic and violent (those who like to contemplate butterflies and fields of flowers tend not to not make it to the top of the crab heap).

If the USA wants to be strong it will have to consist of many original minds contributing. It used to, and the country was strong and modern (in spite of being founded by rabid plutocracy and boosted by the primitivism of slavery). Now, after W.W.II, the USA has been victim of a burst of plutocracy, similar to the one Rome knew after vanquishing Carthage in the Second Punic War (and for similar reasons). That there was such a burst of inequality is beyond doubt: look at the US GINI index, and how it is picking up. The plutocrats don’t mind that the country is falling apart: not only do they not fly “commercial”, but the lower the people below them, the greater their perceived glory (we have seen it all before: remember how Rome went from democracy to plutocracy!).

In any case, if the USA wants to stop the rot, it will have to look at Europe. What it will see there first, is a very different tax structure… And also much more critical minds, who love to be critical, thus no joke, or no information, is left unturned.
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Patrice Ayme.
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P/S: Within days of a murderous ambush on French marines in Afghanistan, a blonde reporter from Paris Match met with the assailants, and she transmitted their pictures, partly in captured French uniforms, and, skeptically, their view of the world. France took it calmly, remembering that piece of wisdom from her history: before acting well, it’s necessary to know well.

Learning about the world is perhaps the main French past time. Another French reporter, using the same mix of amazing courage and female innocence, besides excellent Russian and knowledge of the region, charmed her way deep in Ossetia through the Russian lines.  This sort of very long shows are very popular in France, and feed the conversations that are the core of social interactions there. Conversations being the occasion to roll out arguments, and the more original, the more esteemed and appreciated by all. This compares favorably, democracy speaking, with the American social past time of watching some sport teams on TV, and keeping scores. Minds are born at home, and if all there is at home is watching guys on steroids getting excited by banging into each other, the minds one will get will have more to do with an aggressive version of cows watching trains pass by, than the masterful minds democracy live by, and for.

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