French War In Mali

Finally! Friday January 11, 2013, Paris, Élysée: “Mali is confronting an aggression of terrorist elements coming from the North, with a brutality and fanaticism that the entire world knows” said the French president “I have therefore, in the name of France answered the demand of help from the Mali president, which is supported by the Western African countries. In consequence, the French armed forces have brought this afternoon their support to Malian units to fight against those terrorist elements.”

And, presto, France is at war again. This is the second military intervention of France in Africa, in one week. (The preceding one stopped an insurrection in the Central African Republic.)
And at least the FOURTH major French combat intervention in two years (Ivory Coast, Libya).

French Strike Mali [From Terrorist Video]

For those who are naive in these matters, historically, in the fullness of time, France is the primary military interventionist in the world. Ever. This started when the Roman empire put the Franks in charge of defending Germania and Gallia in 400 CE. After some initial difficulties that caused the fall of the Occidental part of the empire, the Franks annhilated the Huns, the Goths, the Lombards and various other critters. (The Franks also intervened in Britannia for centuries afterwards, before conquering the whole thing in 1066 CE).

The nations French military intervention created constitute the essential of the West: Germany (starting in 500 CE), much of Europe (by 800 CE), all the way to Eastern Europe, and including Catalonia and the reconquista of Spain (Charlemagne), England (1066), the reconquest of much of the Mediterranean from the Muslim invaders (South Italy, Sicily, etc.)… even the Netherlands is, to a great extent, a French creation (a 75 year war part of a 120 year French war against Spain)… And finally, of course, the USA.

Without gigantic French help, and even… incitation, the American rebels would have all been hanged by the authorities, end of the story. Nearly all their cartridges were even made in France. Even while being created, the USA defaulted, and refused to pay back even a cent to the French Treasury for the enormously expensive war that had given birth to it. Thus default presided at the birth of the USA. (Louis XVI was advised to follow suit, and default too; but he refused, as he was hell bent on making nobles pay taxes, something that the National Assembly of 1789 finally imposed!)

That’s one problem with war. When made out of principle, it can only pay back with principle. But that does not mean it should not be made.

It’s not just that the Franks (or the Gauls before them) are slightly demented supermen in search of somebody to fight. The very position of France at the crossroads of the three main trade routes of Western Europe, since the Neolithic, condemned any people thriving there to be pretty aggressive and open minded. That is why the occupants of France may have changed quite a bit, but the mentality persists.

Frankish intervention led to the unification of Western Europe under the body of Roman law and the Roman language, and a version of civilization (and weaponization!) that they called Christianity. Achieving what they called in 800 CE “the Renovation of the Roman Empire”. The Franks, were Germans who civilized Rome, while learning the proper way of making war, a state, and a melting pot, from the Romans.

War is inseparable from democracy, be it just because plutocracy hates democracy. Plutocracy tends to blossom all over, all the time, and one of its main variant is “theocracy”, where (mass) criminal acts are ordered by god(s).

The French government declared that the invaders of Mali are “terrorist” and “criminal”. Differently from December 31, 406 CE, when the Vandals, Alans and various others crossed the frozen Rhine by surprise, France was not surprised that the terrorists decided to invade the rest of Mali, in the hope that the international community would take months to get organized after Susan Rice lifted her veto against France at the UN, and the Security Council voted to allow armed intervention as needed.

The French Air Force has already conducted bombing missions. This is excellent. In the West Africa of my childhood, one had to fear only spiders, horribly poisonous snakes, crocodiles and furry predators. The danger presented by man was inexistent.

Western Africa was way safer than Europe. Shockingly, once, a taxicab driver got killed for his money. That had never happened before. It turned out, and it was pretty telling that, a young French tourist had done it.

Black Muslim faith was not distinguishable from Western secularism in most ways, and was distinctly more progressive in some important ways (having to do with socialism, nudity, and… even the position of women in society).

The “Muslim” faith of the fanatics in the middle of the Middle Earth is a “different religion from mine” declared Abou Diouf, a Wolof Muslim, ex-president of Senegal (and General Secretary of the 70 nations strong francophonie).

Of course such a version of Islam, islam with a progressive, human, civilized face, is intolerable to a lot of bad actors.

Wahhabism, the faith of Saudi Arabia, is perfectly compatible with terrorism, gangsterism, drug trafficking, and, first of all, extreme concentration of wealth (in other words, the exact opposite of Senegalese style Islam). Thus extremely well financed bad actors, armed by the feudal oil powers, tightly connected to Wall Street, of Arabia, keep on financing it. This constant war agaisnt a self made enemy, serves as a justification for the feudal, fascist regimes in the Middle East. That’s why they keep on secreting what we are supposed to fight.

The usual professional pseudo-leftist whiners are sure to surface and accuse France of having interests in Africa. Well, there is something to the notion of empire. Originally, it simply meant command, order.

Under the British Raj, there was no danger that the Muslim dominated regions would engage into a thermonuclear war with the rest of the subcontinent. Had the British Raj evolved as Canada, that would still be an impossibility.

Whereas, as it is, after Gandhi’s pathetic circus, the existence of that Pakistani theocracy (see the connection with plutocracy, above) which he contributed so much to create, does not just threaten India with a few hundreds of millions of dead, but also could ignite a world war.

The old argument of the French in Algeria was that they were back, as the successor state of Rome, after a hiatus imposed by Arab Muslim invaders. This was also the basic argument of Napoleon in Egypt. And there is something to it.

After all, Rome had African, and even Arab, emperors.

So how does this compare with Libya, Syria and Afghanistan?

Well Qaddafi was a horrible dictator, who even raped young girls industrially. he had a deal with those plutocrats, Blair and G.W. Bush. As long as he was in place, an atrocious plutocratic symbol was in place. The difference with North Korea is that, as Qaddafi found out, Libya was only an hour flight out of European bases. Similar reasons brought JFK to a tough line about nuclear capable missiles in Cuba.

Syria is a mess. The only correct line of the West is to draw lines for Assad not to cross, and support the secularist opposition (even with weapons)… while trying not to help the genuine Islamists supported by the feudal regimes.

I have been opposed to the war in Afghanistan for, among other things, strategic reasons. The first one is that, when democracy fights, democracy ought to be pure. In Afghanistan the USA has been as impure as possible, and that had direct strategic consequences leading to the unavoidable defeat we are now experiencing.

During its great war with Sparta, Athens was not ethically pure, far from it, and that is why she was ultimately defeated by a coalition of enraged city states (led by Sparta, financed by Persia). Athens was impure because Athens used the defense funds of the Delian League to build itself pretty buildings still observable today, because Athens destroyed an entire island, Milo, just to show it was a superpower, and because Athens attacked Syracuse, there again, just because she could, as an undefeatable superpower. Athens aggravated her case by boasting of her great democracy and Open Society, while practicing the opposite for all to see.

(Analogies with the present USA, while regrettable, are not a coincidence, and fully intended.)

When the French Republic gave an ultimatum to Hitler, on September 1, 1939, the Republic had been ethically pure (Britain, that France dragged behind, had been much less pure, and its compromising with Hitler had a direct effect on its military preparedness, which was so insufficient, as to leave mostly France fighting, by a ratio of 1 to 20 in soldiers deployed!)

The first big mistake in Afghanistan is actually that the USA attacked the REPUBLIC of Afghanistan in the 1970s. It would seem that the USA (or some influential people in the USA) were after the mineral wealth that the republic of Afghanistan intended to develop with French (and probably Soviet) help.

A dirty war resulted, with the likes of the CIA instrumentalizing the likes of Bin Laden. Then there was 9/11. The West invaded Afghanistan, as was its right.

But then a tragic, and strategic mistake was done: that one of NOT enforcing a SECULARIST state in Afghanistan. Instead the west did what it should never do, put a theocratic republic, Iranian style, in power. Hence NATO fought for Wahhabism light. Thus the Afghans, including those in the army and police, got completely confused, and felt NATO ought to be supporting Fundamentalist Islam, and became crazy, observing otherwise.

Hence the famous “green on blue” and “green on green” attacks. It’s a hopeless situation, and too late to fix it. Better next time we invade Afghanistan from scratch.

Mali is completely different. Mali is a secularist republic. A natural ally of Western civilization, an emanation of it. Not supporting Mali would have extremely adverse consequences, because not just of its location, but because it would be not supporting civilization.

Fortunately precision bombing on armed columns have happened on Friday January 11. There is no doubt the terrorists were taken by surprise. Moderation in the support of civilization is no solution.
Patrice Ayme

No Law Up High, No Republic

ULTIMATE AUTHORITY OF THE REPUBLIC RESTS ON THE LAW.

Is Government Too Separated From The Authority That matters Most?

***

The planet we have is increasingly ravaged by several conflating crises. Burned by the carbonic acid created by excess carbon dioxyde absorbed by the oceans, young fishes die, go blind or become crazy, as bees do on land. The plancton, which fabricates the oxygen we need, is dissolving in the acid bath we used to call a sea.

But the fossil fuel polluters’ crimes are not even fiscally discouraged. Instead they are allowed to also spew lies, and persuade everybody that there will be plenty of air for ever (see the financing of the Tea party in the USA by the Koch brothers).

Meanwhile, the grip financial pirates have on the world has become obvious since 2008. After they seized the world economy, they asked for a ransom. And then again, And it was paid again. Now the serfs are asked to pay for distant banks by allowing themselves to become destitute (and this is happening even inside prosperous Germany, where old retirees discover they have to go back to work!)

Ever since the amazing financial crisis which grips the planet came to everybody’s attention in 2008, it has become obvious that a handful of men in suits take all the decisions with the money, and even the fate, of the public, allowing their class to thrive ever more, while, and because, the public deperishes.

The spirit of the law, if not its letter, has been denied.

I claim that this comes directly from the fact that the executive branch has eluded its responsibilities in implementing the spirit of the law. This is not just a question of the present leaders being plutophile  (lovers of Pluto, thus, wealth). Institutionally, the way executive powers are presently set-up, has less to do with wielding justice than it had under the Roman republic.

Western democracy, led by the English, American and French revolutions of the preceding centuries, consists of representative democracies with three branches of government: the legislative, the judiciary, and the executive. Legislation is established by a bicameral parliament of elected representatives (an inheritance from 6,500 years old Sumer).

In a purely parliamentary system, parliament also elects the executive. In the USA, France and Russia, a powerful president is elected directly (by a college of a few hundred special electors in the USA, by the people in France or Russia).

In any case, the judiciary is supposed to be separated from the executive. It is not clear what this exactly means: after all, most judges are nominated by the executive in the USA, and confirmed by the legislative. In other countries (e.g. France) the judiciary self nominates.

So the judiciary is a bit more independent in France: see the Dreyfus affair, where the independent judiciary forced the executive, the army and the anti-Judaists to eat crow. What I will contest here is not the independence of the judiciary, but its power: an ant may be independent, but it is easily crushed by a plutocrat.

In the USA no judge is powerful enough to judge the obvious, namely that the Federal reserve has no right to transfer arbitrary amounts of “monetary base” to the same old crooks, year after year (although a judge recently blocked an all too comfortable accord between the government and a major bank).

The difference in judicial independence between France and the USA shows: the popular Chirac, 12 year president, and Prime Minister before that, was condemned to two years in prison (suspended). For allowing City Hall finances as Paris mayor to provide supporters with somewhat fictitious jobs with real salaries. The offense is so puny, it would not really register on American radar.

The Roman republic was not organized this way. In Rome, the top executives, the two Consuls, were also viewed as the top judicial officers. Why so? It is very simple: the republic rested on the law.

No law, no republic. That had to make the law more important than anything else, including the army. Military power could be used if, and only if, it was legal. The law was the highest value, and thus the highest authorities took care of it. The founders of the Roman republic saw this clearly. Justice was not a department, it was the foundation.

The superpower of the Consuls was compensated by the shortness of their terms: just a year. But they could be re-elected. Gaius Marius was elected seven times Consul. Ex-Consuls were called proconsular officers. They were frequently nominated governors of provinces, and had many prerogatives, including being protected by lictors, special trained bodyguards carrying the axes of the fasces representing the union of the Populus around the power of the law.  

When there was war, it was made in the name of the law, under the eye of the law, as the Consuls often personally directed the operations of the main armies (many Roman Consuls died in combat, over a millennium).

Let’s remember that a mostly functional Roman republic lasted about 5 centuries. And arguably for much longer: after all, there were Consuls, and a Roman Senate, for more than 11 centuries! The founder of Francia, elected king and imperator Clovis, was also Roman Consul. Stretched to the max, a Roman state existed for 23 centuries (753 BCE to 1453 CE).

So where does the system we have presently come from? How come justice got separated from the executive? The break happened around the 13th century. In England, the French barons limited the power of the king through the Charter of Liberties (1100 CE) and the Magna Carta (1215 CE): their ancestors had joined William The Conqueror, a Duke, (that is a high commander in the Roman army of the Late Empire), to invade England, bringing with them most of the (French) army that invaded England. William had been recognized as first among equals, and the descendants of his acolytes intended not to forget that fact.

In France the break came later. Elizabeth de France, the ferocious intelligent and domineering daughter of Philippe IV Le Bel had become reigning queen of England (having visited an unspeakable end to the father of her four children, a Plantagenet, Edward II). When her brothers all died, she ought to have become (absolute) queen of France too. She, and her son, the war like Edward III, were blocked by lawyers (her father had already rested heavily on lawyers, in his hunt for popes and Templars: his closest executors were lawyers). This is how the 475 year long “100 years war” started.

So parliaments rose, ever higher, taking judicial power away from the executive. By the time of the French revolution, England, France and the Netherlands had long seen the judicial system become nearly completely autonomous of the executive. The Bastille was stormed in France to take away from the king the last shred of Roman like power the executive had on the implementation of the law.

After the English, American and French revolutions, too much of the new system has still more to do with the monarchies that preceded it, than with the Roman republican system. The chief executive was elected for longish terms, as if it were a monarch, and directly from the legislature. In other words, the parliament now elected the kings (and queens).

Here a comical aside. The USA elects its president as if he were the Roman emperor. The Imperium Romanum officially re-established by Charlemagne in 800 CE, made Holy under Barabarossa (German: Heiliges Römisches Reich, Latin: Imperium Romanum Sacrum) indeed elected its head from a college of “grand electors“. Thus in 2001, the People elected Gore president, but the plutophile Supreme Court selected Bush, instead. (Perhaps the point when, in the future, the USA will be seen has having given in to the Dark Side!)

The representative democracy, separation of powers system is viewed unanimously as fine and good. (Although Switzerland, the oldest democracy around, uses less representation, and more direct rule of the people.)

But the question remains: when a massive injustice arises, quickly and powerfully, who can handle it? Who is going to deliver maximum power in the name of the law defending the People? In other words, when executive power is needed to re-establish the law, how can the meek executives we now have, thoroughly checked and balanced, exert the required power? America’s Founding Fathers were obsessed by checks and balances, but, although Founding Father Washington became filthy rich (317 slaves in his Mount Vernon house!), the Founding Fathers had no idea what real plutocracy was like. The only plutocrats they knew were in England, and that was judged to be an ocean away.

President Andrew Jackson, one the fiercest generals ever, had a better idea. He hated the Rothschilds (great practitioners of fractional reserve banking, who considered themselves the real power behind the thrones in Europe). Jackson prevented their implantation in the USA. Next he disintegrated the Bank of the United states, and considered that, on his deathbed, to be his greatest achievement. If he was around, as chief executive, he would probably occupy Wall Street and Congress with twenty divisions, the next day.

There are still remnants of the old Roman power the Consuls had: Obama, executing Ben Laden, for example. That was well accepted, because that was overseas (and even below the sea).

Besides Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Roosevelt Teddy, and FDR, another one who took himself for a Roman consul, was, of course, Abraham Lincoln. But all those powers they grabbed, as needed, were not really the appanage of the presidency of the USA. The water was boiling, so the frog jumped out. Right now, the temperature is slowly rising, and normal powers, in normal circumstances are not enough to address the various problems. That is made plenty clear with the European banking crisis, the on-going financial crisis all over the world (even… in China!), and the ecological crisis (which the USA resolutely refuses to consider, thus undermining everybody).

In the present financial crisis, and in the ecological crisis at some point, overwhelming power will be needed. The only question is to know if the power will be military, and extraordinary, Lincoln style, or civilian and legal.

The spirit of the law has to be defended. For example against the financial derivative universe (which has no collateral, which means the unsuspecting public is the collateral; see lower down).

Too many checks and balances for the power of the People, and all you end with, is the power of the plutocracy.

The arch-example: Geithner and Bernanke directed untold trillions of dollars towards the banks which had caused the crisis, but asked for nothing in return. At that point a strong executive ought to have stepped in and declare that this fabulous gift violated the principle of the law, which is that the republic does not make gifts to private parties, without compensation. Especially when the beneficiaries are the perpetrators.

(The gifts had started under Paulson and Bush II, when the daemon Dimon was offered 30 billion dollars by the fed, collateralized by what he was buying (!!!) to help him swallow Bear-Sterns, the “Jamie deal“. Thus, Dimon is viewed as a genius. When the state gives in to the daemon, crepuscule of goodness!)

The financial crisis has been allowed to roll on because a general laxity about the law. The laxity is fed even by videogames.

The Red Cross pointed out that in the world’s most popular, most sold videogames, the Geneva Conventions rules were not just violated, but gamers get rewarded for violating them. A whole generation is being raised, feeling that one gains 50 points by shooting on ambulances. The Red Cross wants to change this. The Red Cross is right. The plutocrats and their corporations facing them, making billions from a bloody obsession with an alternate reality, will beg to differ. Not only they make a fortune from violating the most basic morality. But those daemons know quite well that the games they sell preach violations of the law, and also violations of civilization itself.

The acceptance of barbarity, as a way to get ahead, the plutocrats meekly hope, will bring more of the abject world in which, and by which, they thrive.

The mood of the times is important: pathetic plutocrats have gone around, requesting the respect they have come to expect. Meanwhile the law is symbolically stepped on. In the last three years, both the French and American presidents, both trained lawyers, violated in public, the very first thing about the law, namely the presumption of innocence (this is not a good example for the inchoating republics of Ukraine and Russia, where the law is obviously used to hunt the loyal opposition!)

The presumption of innocence says that even suspects are innocent until proven otherwise by a proper legal procedure. The presumption of innocence protects freedom, every body’s freedom, not just the freedom of suspects or criminals.

President Sarkozy claimed that former Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin was “guilty”… although Villepin was later found completely innocent. President Obama, having maybe talked to Sarkozy too much, declared that soldier Bradley Manning, who is accused to have shown the truth to the public, had “broken the law”, as his trial started.

However, as commander in chief, Obama is the ultimate authority for the military tribunal which judges Manning. Constitutionally, he cannot pose as judge and accuser.

(Let’s note in passing that the Nazi government had given orders to not prosecute soldiers who had refused to obey orders, on the ground of violations of human rights. The Nazis were afraid that any official prosecution would shine a light on their violations of human rights, the Geneva Conventions, and German law! It is rather curious that the government of the USA is too arrogant to even be as wise as that…)

Methinks that it is not that Sarkozy and Obama have early Alzheimer, and forgot the very first thing about the law.

Instead I believe that they feel they live in times where anyone up high can get away with everything (witness the enormous transfers of wealth to the hyper rich under their reigns, transfers which threaten the very thrones on which they sit, but the establishments upon which they rule feel they could get away with it, and that there is no other way… Although Sarkozy may soon understand his error, especially when, after losing the next election, French judges start to investigate him in earnest…) 

Is a new age of connivance upon us?

Justice without the determination, or capability to impose it, is no justice.

We just had a beautiful example in Italy: Berlusconi, highest judicial officer of the Italian republic, if one looks at his job in the fullness of the authority inherited from Rome, as one should, refused to prosecute the Mafia energetically. He failed to arrest top mafiosi. Berlusconi was barely gone for a few days, replaced by Mario Monti, a former university president, that the head of the Camorra was arrested (after 15 years living in a bunker in Naples).

It cannot be otherwise according to the spirit of the French and American constitutions: the highest authorities of the state are, have to be, first of all, the highest judicial authorities. It is no accident that leech known as finance is so strong in London, where the Prime Minister has fewer powers (not being head of state, to start with; and according to Rothschild, circa 1820, not the real power in Britain.)

Such disregard for the basics, for the strict letter of the law, I suggest, comes precisely from a general mood which tramples the basics of republican civilization. Or then from having a plutocratic agenda. But to believe that, in the age of the Internet, plutocracy can win over democracy, is itself fiction of the highest order. As people get more and more informed, the transition to a military regime will have to take just a generation, and not five, as it did in Rome. 

To re-establish democracy fully, it will be primordial to realize that the highest authority of the republic is the law, or, more generally the spirit behind it: WE THE PEOPLE.

And the highest officials of the republic have to incarnate it. Maybe we want to have a second look at the institution of consul. Shorter terms of the higher officials (as in Switzerland), with more of a judicial mission may help in blocking the plutocrats. France is also going to imitate Switzerland and California, and make referenda possible, upon popular request. Switzerland has imposed on its banks twice the Basel III reserve requirements. And it is said that the Fed with impose Basel III to its financial daemons; that sounds technical, but, when the banks have not enough reserves, they find them among the unsuspecting public, and then the economy tanks. (It is amazing that not imposing Basel III on American banks was contemplated!)

The derivative markets use enormous leverage (say 25 trillion of net positions out of a notional 700 trillions total, at least that is what the industry claims, giving a leverage of about 30!) But the institutions using them have no collateral. Thus, in case of failure of one, the entire world financial system will come down (as exactly happened when AIG was 200 billion short in 2008). But nobody has had the authority mental, judiciary or political to stop the non sense.

How did Rome fall? The republic faded, Rome became increasingly a fascist empire where justice could not be visited on the mightiest. An intractable financial crisis developed. Its fundamental cause was the refusal of the plutocracy to pay taxes to the Roman state, while its agents were busy disempowering Rome and Italy (to avoid a revolt back to the republic). Since the plutocracy ruled, there was no way out.

Emperor Septimus Severus, a general of at least half Libyan ancestry born in Libya, knew the problem well, and hated the Senate (headquarters of the plutocracy). But he could not fight it.

A man, even an emperor, cannot fight a mood. Only philosophers can do so. But, by the time of Septimus Severus, it was too late for philosophy. All this, because it had become a self serving habit of the mighiest to not apply the law to those who had become too big to fail, too big to flail.

Ultimately, it was a new people’s philosophy, from Germania, which was to transmogrify the ruling mood, and the empire, three centuries later. In the new ruling mood, plutocracy and slavery were out. So the entire economy rested again on small farmers, just as it did in the early Roman republic (those new, northern farmers cultivated the rich heavy soil of the colder, wetter oceanic climes with the new technology of heavy steel ploughs pulled by oxen… or horse).

It would take a few centuries for Western civilization to reach higher than Rome ever did.

But we don’t have that kind of time, we don’t have centuries to change moods, and rebuild on a more sustainable basis: remember the methane bubbling in the arctic. And plutocracy is not that ingrained yet: it is nothing that a 90% tax on the very rich, Eisenhower style, cannot fix.

(In Rome, using the Trojan Horse of foreign wars of choice (around 146 BCE), the plutocracy was able to acquire private armies which were above the law. Right now, it is just short of that. Only its business practices are above the law, and the states have been captured to allow them. But a nasty war or two (say, starting with Iran) could fix the problem.)

Applying the law can change the world. As I said for years, mercury pollution from coal burning, kills tens of thousands of lives every year and causes birth defects, learning disabilities, and respiratory diseases among millions of survivors. And this in the USA alone (compare with the civilian nuclear industry, which did not kill one member of the public yet, in the USA: is the hysterical anti-nuclear crowd paid by fossil fuel polluters?)

Finally Obama, apparently remembering some of what he is supposed to do, has unleashed the EPA onto the coal burners. It remains, though, to do the same worldwide (worldwide carbon tax, worldwide mercury tax). And if the polluters in China can’t adapt fast enough, let’s tax them into extinction! Why should they be allowed to put mercury vapor in the air, and ruin our brains? Is not that a casus belli?

The mercury pollution is just a small example of the following. At this point justice, the republic, and the spirit of the law, is not just a matter of taste, but a matter of survival.

***

Patrice Ayme

Not Enough Taxes, Not Enough Republic

 

OBAMA’S REAGANOMICS ARE AS WRONG AS WRONG CAN BE.

***

Abstract: Obama, hiding behind the republicans, as usual, is pushing for a second round of cutting taxes to alleviate the suffering of the hyper rich. This will make the situation better short term, and much worse, long term. The failure of the emotional intelligence of the so called democrats is, once again, epic.

A quick revisitation of the basic idea of the republic, as invented by the Romans, is in order.

***

LET THE HYPER RICH PAY NO TAX, THEY WILL BE KIND:

This is the second time that Obama is cutting taxes lower than Bush for that exalted group, and calling this butchery a stimulus for the economy, to the great applause of most clueless American economists (sorry about the pleonasm). Overall, 69% of Americans support the Obama tax deal, as if they decided to overlook the gift to the hyper rich (69% is also the approval of the plutocratic Clinton: the USA loves its plutocrats). But the same crowd of the gullible used to approve the invasion of Iraq with even greater enthusiasm.

The deal with the hyper rich is grievously wrong on taxes, wrong on the economy, wrong to the republic, and against the tide of civilization. But Americans have been so brainwashed, they cannot understand it. Obama, as a good Reagan admirer, gloats that "all economists" agree that this second stimulus will create jobs. They probably all got the Nobel Peace Prize too. And all write children books and invented biographies, while cutting their own taxes on their own multi-millionaires’ fortunes.

Sure, the latest Obama tax cut on the hyper rich will create jobs, Reagan style. But a country’s economy does not grow on hamburger flippers and valets for the hyper rich. The bone marrow of the states are the schools, and they are getting gutted.

Brazil, under Lula, gave money to the poor, as long as they sent their children to school, and to the doctor. That injection of public money in the economy boosted educational level, consumption, and the Brazilian industry. So Brazil has been growing at an enormous rate.

In the USA, the increasingly impoverished population is watching their worth wilt. Because the state does not have enough money for the public where it matters. A good example is idle construction workers and machinery, when there is so much to build. This lack of activity is what tax cuts into the bone of the state fabricate. This is why the US median income is going down more, and more durably, than during the Great Depression of the 1930s itself (on most, if not all, 10 years time slices).

Obama and his apologists have found reasonable word assemblies to justify their ignominious cave-in to the richest. But passion can see further, and better, than reason. It is because the Germans were microscopically reasonable, and emotionally disconnected, that they goose stepped in perfect cool discipline behind the Nazis.

It is emotionally disconnected to give so much power to the rich, and more of it, the more they mess up. It is not just about the money, it is also about the respect that flow of money implies. It’s typical of an abusive relationship, that the more the submissive is abused, the more submissive that victim gets. (A variant is the Stockholm syndrome hostages go through, and, incredibly, Obama quasi admitted to it, as he used the concept of “hostage”!)

This so called second "stimulus" , Obama style, will bring a very short term lift, as when a plane stalls, and rears on its tail, gaining altitude while losing all forward momentum. Ultimately, though, what the present leaders of the USA keep on cutting is the republic itself. After spending trillions of public money on private banks, the pattern is clear: the politicians of the USA have chosen the plutocracy over the republic.

Why? The plutocracy make the politicians ultra rich: look at Clinton, or the just resigned director of budget of Obama. He is 41 year old, and will earn millions of dollars from Citigroup, towards which the government just "directed" more than 45 billion dollars.

The enormous income and estate tax gift to hyper rich Americans, will make the situation of the American economy, even worse than it already is. In truth, it is the American republic, the public thing, which is being devoured by the hyper rich.

The government of the USA could have done differently, and swiftly: the European Union is cracking down on banker bonuses, worldwide, effective on January first, 2011: financiers will get between 20% and 30% cash, The rest will be locked in shares for the long term (to prevent them to suck up all of a bank money, and then ask for taxpayer money). It is a first step. Let ignorant American pundits be reminded that there are 500 million European citizens (and that Great Britain is part of the EU). Of course the democratic president, the democratic Congress and the democratic Senate could have taken such a decision long ago. Funny how the mighty USA is more indecisive than the 27 countries European Union.

Democratic or demoncratic? Plutocratic is the word, and demoncratic, its translation.

***

WEALTHFARE IS COSTLY:

Total government spending (Federal, state, local) in 1950 was 24% of GDP. Under Bush it went up to 35% of GDP in 2003, and then 37% of GDP in 2008. It is projected to be 44% of GDP under Obama 2010 (which happens to be exactly the same ratio as Germany).

Notice the peak caused by WWII. Also notice that the squeeze in spending FDR is often accused of in 1937 does NOT show much (the 1937 downswing is one of Krugman’s pet fixations). The explosion of spending under Obama is due in great part to economic stabilizers (for example welfare, extending unemployment benefits, etc.), but also to military spending, the highest ever, with two very expensive defeats in the making. The explosion of spending is not caused by investment (whereas the World War Two budget ought to be viewed that way).

A really horrible graph would include all the money the Federal Central Bank has "printed" for the private banks. We cannot draw this graph. It’s a secret graph. it would involve trillions of dollars secretly sent to these money losing operations which lost so much of it because they divert it to the worldwide plutocracy (the Fed also made direct payments to foreign banks). In any case, not enough money has been left for trains, schools, and cutting edge businesses, so the entire socio-economy of the USA has turned into a wasting asset.
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ROTTEN FISHES HAVE NO BRAINS:

In his autobiography, Obama mentions using a "little blow". Well, Obama’s vision of the economy is a big blow to civilization, as it promotes its enemy, plutocracy.

OK, may be deep down Obama is a revolutionary, as demonstrated by trying his best to make the USA blow up (this is a theory pushed by some employees of the plutocrat Murdoch, or even some ex allies of … Obama). Would not that be ironical…

Last Friday, Obama rolled out Bill Clinton, who gave a press conference at the White House to explain how good the latest Obama idea on taxes was. Clinton is an American politician who made more than 200 million dollars in apparent pay-back from his good service to the plutocracy.

What else? What is his job? He goes in front of various plutocrats, and they give him money. Lots of money. In a variant on that theme, Clinton arranges business deals between worldwide plutocrats and various local potentates. Sometimes Clinton carries a rice bag on his shoulder for worldwide propaganda, a bit like Hitler promised to only wear a grey uniform as the war was going on. Both Clinton and Hitler became very popular in their respective realms, and the worst the consequences of their actions were, the more popular they got. All too many people hate to admit they are wrong, and the more wrong they look, the more they insist they were right.

Under Clinton several Goldman Sachs employees (Rubin, Summers, etc.) destroyed the legislative achievement of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the separation of banks and financial speculation with the public money the banks are trusted to create.

Clinton went away, but not the men and policies he had put in place. A systematic pursuit of the exact same policies that created the bubble of the 1920s has been pursued under Bush (in the 1920s, the Fed printed money, while taxes on the hyper rich were crushed down from 70% to something insignificant, exactly what has happened since Reagan).

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ROME BECAME SUPERLATIVE BECAUSE OF ITS INVENTION OF THE PUBLIC THING:

Obama and company are children of Reagan style economics: they believe a tax cut, especially to the hyper rich, is all what it takes to get the economy to restart. They think the economy is all about private parties, and especially those private parties having the most money having even more money. It is as if the meaning of the word "republic" had totally escaped them.

The Romans were all about private enterprise. The Romans had private companies hunting for escaped slaves (as the USA did, 2,000 years later). Rome even had private companies punishing and torturing slaves, for a fee, privately. Anything that could be privatized, the Romans privatized.

However the Romans also discovered something else, which was the opposite, complementary concept. The Romans discovered that the economy of a civilization is also about public spending on infrastructure. Thus, the Roman state was organized to take into account that some crucial parts of the economy would not exist if all they had was a profit motive. Crucial parts of the Roman socio-economy were nationalized.

Indeed, what financial motive would an individual find in drafting good laws? What financial motive would an individual find in having a national army of free citizens? Or in having a national fleet? What would be the financial motive of individuals for building a road network that everybody could use, from armies to the poorest of the poor, free of charge? Or aqueducts, or theaters, public latrines, theaters, administrative buildings and the like?

Rome had typically a family, private tutoring system (often using expensive educated Greek slaves). However some Patricians families came upon hard times, and some families sponsored by the higher ups could not afford such luxuries, hence the Roman state decided to fund public schools.

The Army, and especially the Navy, even in Athens, had been a private-public partnership (and that was Athens’ undoing!). Rome, instead, went all the way, making the Army completely public, with national factories making standardized weapons. Roman military surgery, a public service, was so advanced that both its knowledge base and instruments were used for 2,000 years (and have been fully integrated in today’s medicine). The Roman republic also invented free food distributions for the poor, and welfare.

The Romans summarized all this public structure in one neologism: respublica. Res publica: the public thing. The Romans discovered that one could not have civilization without it. they also discovered one would get a better, superior civilization with it.

All these collective services characterized Rome, above and beyond civilization prior. The Roman PUBLIC THING allowed the Roman state to do many things, and to be endowed with a culturally superior population, that no other state had.

Then the Romans proceeded to destroy all the plutocracies around them, starting with the enlightened plutocracies the Etruscans were governed by, and going on with Carthage, an unbalanced plutocracy, and the Hellenistic kingdoms (plutocracies which had dispossessed the Greek City-states).

Reciprocally though, as the plutocrats became too powerful, pieces of the state became their thing, and civil war started. It would not really stop. what is known as the Roman empire was a long war between the army (more or less representing the people) and the Senate, fief of the plutocracy. Ultimately the hyper rich refused to pay taxes, and protected themselves with private thugs. The state had to use cheaper foreign bands for defense (including the Huns!) The Roman republic’s last remnants faded away.

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THE EUROPEAN MIDDLE AGES BUILT THE REPUBLIC FURTHER:

As centuries passed, the public thing regained importance in Europe. After the Late Roman empire theocracy, the Franks re-established the primacy of the state over religion, and created their own Church of Francia (which enraged the impotent Pope Gregory "The Great", a pyromaniac). The Franks financed monasteries to help preserve knowledge, especially as the Muslim devastation of most of the empire cut them off from paper, scholarly exchanges and libraries.

The Franks passed a law that forced religious establishments to teach all the children. That went much further than the loose arrangements the Romans had in education.

Meanwhile the Franks took under their wing official republics such as Venice, which were autonomous, but protected. In theory, and sometimes in practice, the kings and emperors of the Franks were elected.

In the Middle Ages guilds and corporations were officialized to marry professionalism and democracy (a pretext for Plato’s hostility to democracy). Corporations such as the law and police became pillars of the state. The law became soon as powerful as in the Roman republic. Public hospitals were created, complete with windows to drop unwanted infants, no questions asked.

The Great Fire of 1666 in London brought the realization that only a public fire brigade would be respected enough to be able to blow up houses to stop the fire (that is how the Navy stopped it).

This sort of public services are undone in the 21C USA, as the fire brigade may not come if it has not been paid, or the police may not come if only a burglary is in progress (the official policy in Oakland, California).

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STRUCTURE IS NOT A STRICTURE: DESTROY IT, AND ALL WILL GO.

In 1862, California was isolated from the rest of the USA, by the Civil War. So the US Congress authorized public spending to build a railway across the USA. It is still used today, same as 150 years ago, and most of New York salads are brought by it in winter. If the US Congress had waited for private profit seekers to build the railway, it would have never happened.

As it was, it was heavily subsidized. One could even say, astronomically subsidized. The "Pacific Railroad Act" of 1862 was a "land-grant railroad". The government gave each railroad company 6,400 acres of land and up to $48,000 for every mile of track it built (it seems that was one million in 2010 dollars). The difference with Obama and Bush giving trillions to banks, as is done nowadays, is that, first, no money was given to the banks.

Banks are indeed intermediaries. giving a message to intermediaries make sense. Giving them the house does not. Roosevelt did the same as the Congress of 1862. Under the WPA, the work Progress Administration, he used government money to provide directly millions of jobs. The same strategy ought to be used today.

When the Roman army did not have to fight, it was used to build vias, canals, and other public utilities. No doubt that if American soldiers were brought back from the Middle Eastern butcheries, they could be used profitably too. Profitably in a non financial sense (Israel uses its defense establishment to push high tech much higher than it would be otherwise).

Under republican president Eisenhower, the top tax margin rate was 92% (starting at $400,000 of income). It was a time of giant work programs, as the USA was covered with freeways, airports, and education was free in the omnipresent public schools, and second to none. .

Nowadays, the richest Americans pay the lowest rates (say above the median income). The infrastructure of the USA, including public schools and universities is crumbling, and that is augmenting the crisis. The infrastructure is starving because it is not getting enough public money (which, instead, is going to the hyper rich).

The Obama administration is even destroying NASA. Why not? let’s replace NASA by a South African billionaire; a young divorcee called Musk, to whom three billions of dollars of NASA money is presently diverted. He looks good: Musk is tall, dashing, a Silicon Valley money manipulator, he looks good in photo ops next to the president. Musk also gets plenty of money from the government for his laptop batteries luxury cars.

Eisenhower, an old style republican, had created NASA, precisely as a public service. Eisenhower knew it was important to have an organization motivated by cutting edge rocket science, instead of having only organizations which were motivated by profit (as private companies such as Boeing, Lockheed, Northrop, Mac Donnell, North American, etc. were). NASA is an asset of the USA that Europe does not have (ESA being much less financed and restricted to space).

This is a crucial point: public service has a different motive from private profit, so it can explore and exploit avenues which are barred to the profit minded. It is the essence of the difference between the crocodile, the shark, and other lower predators, and man. Lower predators look only for profit. Man looks beyond the hills, beyond self interest, beyond where the eyes can see. An entrepreneur operating for profit operates like a shark. Calling him a philanthropist does not make it more reassuring. An enterprise founded on something else than private profit can reflect more, all what the mind of man is capable of.

A country or regime refusing the full wealth the human mind is capable of is diminished, and will fall off history, if confronted to fully democratic republics.

The rockets Musk is building use oxygen-kerosene engine, decades more primitive than the oxygen-hydrogen engines used by the American space shuttle or the European Ariane V (and which have never failed).

As NASA goes down, vampirized by Musk, the cutting edge is lost, and it is lost on the public dime. The result will be the irreversible loss of this American know-how (and thousands more forever jobless in some of the more advanced jobs; meanwhile India and China are pushing for advanced space programs, publicly financed; they are going to the moon).
Another flaw in giving more power to the hyper rich is that too much power and money in the CEO class and the financial class have created the present crisis.

The health care plutocracy even enticed the delusional Obama administration to violate the Constitution’s commerce clause by forcing individuals to purchase for profit health insurance (this has just been struck down yesterday by a federal judge). The power of the CEO class ruins democracy, ruins profitable investments for the entire country, and even now the Constitution (the Supreme Court, mesmerized by the hyper rich, just like Obama, has decided to allow secret campaign contributions by the richest organizations, giving its full depth to the "Pluto" part in the word "plutocracy").

The CEO class is so powerful that it can divert investment money towards itself, and the derivatives crooks and their valets (for some of course obscure reason, thousands of these are not in jail, keeping company to Madoff).

The stimulus, as it is, one more tax cut for the hyper rich, and it augments their money and power, so it will augment the power of what caused the crisis, and thus will augment the crisis.

Eisenhower in his farewell address told Americans to “avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow”. It seems instead that Americans live mostly for the ease and plunder of the hyper rich. I have seen on European TV, Versailles sized estates built by Iraq war profiteers on Long Island. These estates speak volumes. But only on European TV. The US propaganda is careful not to show the same aerial pictures.

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CRITTERS SWIMMIMNG ON THEIR KNEES, AGAINST THE TIDE:

Obama and company are in for a shock, like lemmings at sea. Their trickle down plan will not work anymore than giving more power to the state enterprises in the USSR as it collapsed worked. In both cases, the basic mechanism is the same, and will fail, again, for the same reason. A class, an oligarchy, is in power, and has so much power that the rest of the economy has not enough power left to function properly. In a way, it’s an application of the principle of the conservation of energy.

During the Spanish Civil War La Pasionara declared: "the Spanish people would rather die on its feet than live on its knees".

It is conventional wisdom, in modern, cynical America to view such an attitude as naïve and un-American. But it is not. At the Alamo, Crockett and his friends made a hopeless stand, but thanks to such a stand, Texas became independent. La Pasonaria’s uncompromising principle ultimately led to the fall of the fascist regime in Spain, because it inspired enough people to resist fiercely, or craftily.

Had no one ever taken such an exemplary position, Spain would still be fascist. In truth we would all still be subject to the most brutish regimes. The only reason we are standing up, is that heroes in the past refused to live on their knees. To be a hero starts with the proper cognition, though. And it is very tiring to be right, much more so than to be a bleating sheep. Plundering with ease and convenience the most trivial considerations is definitively the coolest way for those for whom "cool", the absence of passion, is the highest compliment. I think Nietzsche called that the "last man". "Lowest man" may fit even better.

Nor is it All-American to be on one’s knees in front of creepy billionaires who insist to be called "philanthropists" at every turn. If they are so much in love with the rest of mankind, why don’t they start by paying 50% tax? Instead of promising crumbs after their death, while letting most of their money locked in tax free foundations, for the exclusive use of their class, or their descendants?

Remember; the 400 richest have an average income of 348 million and pay only 17% average tax. Obama did not suggest to the democratic Congress and democratic Senate to tax these people 50%. That would bring in 50 billion. Better: it would suck out power from this vulture class. At the Eisenhower rates, 150 billions would be brought in. And the best young minds would stop being corrupted by the idea of extravagant riches. (In France, a billionaire had forgotten to declare, among other belongings, a private island she owns in the Seychelles and to which she regularly jets in onto her private giant runway; don’t worry, she is not going to jail; such is the extravagance of riches). Obama has no excuses.

Until the very end of the nineteenth century, the USA had NO BILLIONAIRE (in 2010 dollars). So, if anything, BILLIONAIRES ARE UN-AMERICAN.

The Obama republican tax cut will provide a transient lift, from one more tax cut to the hyper rich. It will be followed by an economic deterioration, worse than ever before. Because the infrastructure, the public thing, will have deteriorated further.

To give more power to those who organized the crisis, reminds me of drug addicts buying a little more blow from their dealers. One will need more imagination than that to get out this pathetic descent to hell. The time has come to become as tough as the opposition. And it’s not just China, but those who pull its strings, the same sort of strings that their ancestors pulled 80 years ago. The lucrative strings of foreign fascists.

The leaders of the USA are at sea. They can swim all they want; they understood nothing of the tide of history. They are swimming against it, and many who are forced to follow them will drown too.

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Patrice Ayme

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Note1: In "Block Those Metaphors" Paul Krugman explained that " The idea that the economic “engine” is going to catch encourages policy makers to settle for sloppy, short-term measures when the economy really needs well-designed, sustained support."

This erroneous metaprinciple ("the economy engine" will come on line on its own) is typical Voodoo economics (as Bush I put it; Bush I was not a bad economist, but ironically lost the election because of the economy and the giant sucking sound of Ross Perrot). In truth, there is no "engine", and it’s not automatic. Nor is there a car in the ditch, as Obama likes to say. In truth, there is Obama, a multi millionaire who lives like the world’s richest man, and partakes to a system which sends too much money to his friend Dimon (a super banker, and a central banker, thus thief, judge and executioner) and his friend Buffet. Hey, if, like Clinton, he wants to be invited at the billionaires’ table, in a short six years, he better be nice! Change is what you make it be, as he likes to say!

Well designed support means up to date Colbertism. It will also entail appropriate protectionism, in cooperation with the EU. China, and others, use protectionism, and should be paid in kind. In particular imbalances on fighting the carbon dioxide problems ought not to be tolerated anymore (they are intrinsic to the Kyoto treaty, and a pretext for the USA to stay out).

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Note 2: Why is the abused inviting more abuse? As In Obama’s relationship with the republicans, or the Stockholm syndrome? Because psychobiology has to be seen in a global ecological context. two points: a) the prey ought not to resist too much, lest the predator be damaged. b) among humans, intellectual certainty is rewarded by leadership, because presumably the more correct ideas bestow more certainty. Thus those who are not too sure, those who are mentally divided such as the progressive Reaganite cold caring oxymoronic Obama, are psychobiologically primed for submission to those who are sure of themselves. And this explains a lot of Obama’s floundering presidency.

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