BAD LIES MATTER:
“Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.”
― Homer, The Iliad.
Genuine human progress can only be founded on the truth, logic and moods articulated on the most significant facts. All of this requires deep honesty, necessary to debate the truth, and learning from one’s errors, and those of others (which are more numerous). To achieve supreme capability for understanding, one has to be in one piece, mentally, a whole, that is, having integrity, and authenticity, namely being the author of one’s own being.
If one wants genuine progress, bad lies matter: left unexamined, they teach nothing but bad habits and grievous errors.
Genuine human progress happens best and fastest when all human minds are given an equal chance to contribute to debates fostering new and better ideas. Thus, genuine democracy, demos-kratia, people-power, optimizes progress. We do not have genuine democracy now. So our progress has been faltering. A bad place to be, as the fate of the biosphere is in our hands. All indications are that we are bringing quasi instantaneously the Earth to Jurassic-like conditions. The only way to avoid this thermal and acidic catastrophe is through more advanced technology than we have today. So spurring scientific innovation should be primordial to all those who want to progress in the direction minimizing suffering.
Hundreds of civilizations have bloomed and collapsed. Throughout all civilizations, power in a few hands has brought ever more power in these few hands: power exponentiates. Invariably when few rule, oligos-arkhia, catastrophe followed. If we want our world civilization to survive, and us with it, we have to restrain the oligarchy.
Universal taxation on wealth can prevent the rise of hyper wealth; this is actually the fundamental reason for taxation. The City-State of Rome succeeded to put an absolute limit on the wealth and power of families, for six centuries. Then it failed to do so: globalism and offshorism had enabled part of the Roman elite to avoid Roman legislation, and to grow immensely in power, just as Twenty-First globalism has enabled part of the elite to avoid Western legislation.
Rome became the toy of its wealthy elites. Yet, some individuals, among the wealthiest, and most prestigious, disagreed with the most privileged, and tried to return the Republic to We The People. The most famous of these heroes who dared to confront the global plutocracy were the Gracchi, Marius, Sulla, and Caesar. Ferocious civil wars ensued. The Republic collapsed. Ultimately the selfish plutocratic families who had captured the Republic were themselves annihilated, but only by methods which made a return to Democracy impossible. Too many people had died.
We are in a similar situation. A small elite of a few thousand families, mostly spawned from the US Deep State, has seized control of world media and universities, and thus the global mind. Two thousands of them are present billionaires, but this galaxy of wealth extends much further: heirs of the once hyper powerful are found throughout the leadership system, often as officers of nonprofits, foundations, think tanks (it’s not just Prince Harry and his spouse, a Hollywood star).
The rise of this Deep Global State started a long time ago, in reaction to US President Teddy Roosevelt’s crack down on monopolies. Roosevelt broke the monopolies, but that was like dispersing vermin. Quickly, the US Deep State and its entangled plutocracy learned to use many tax avoidance tricks, and dictatorships all over, and not just in Banana Republics. Fascist Germany was used to boost the power of the US plutocratic establishment during 1914.1917 and even more in the 1920s and 1930s.
Recently the debility and lethality of the deal the US plutocratic class made with the Chinese dictatorship became blatant, and led to the election of Donald Trump, who had condemned this sort of offshorization of jobs, power, income and dreams, since the 1980s when he opposed Ronald Reagan, and his “Democratic” accomplices. The deal with the Chinese dictatorship was similar to the one the US plutocracy and its Deep State made with Adolf Hitler and his followers as early as 1922 (when Hitler was reviled in Germany).
Surprised by the defeat of their well-paid pawn Clinton, the global plutocrats have cultivated hatred against Trump as their main tool to regain control.This is a dangerous precedent: the same method was used against the Gracchi, with terrible consequences.
A small elite controls the world, leveraged by the Deep Global State, and its enforcer is Joe Biden. His stunning record is clear…much of it grotesquely anti-progressive, including deep friendship for top racists… But how much Biden has been part of the Washington plutocratic swamp has been buried by plutocratic media.
Similarly, on major objective criterions: life expectancy, inequality (Gini Index), and fracking (the US made into the world largest fossil fuel producer), the Obama-Biden administration was a dismal failure, achieving the opposite of the values it proclaimed. This lack of authenticity and integrity was completely ignored or denied by the plutocratic media, which pushed the cynicism far enough to attribute these horrors to Obama’s successor. The worst part is that this subterfuge was swallowed, hook, line and sink by intellectuals.
That the world intelligentsia fell for Biden reveals that intellectuals have given up on their critical role, embracing instead the one of happily barking watchdogs for the hyper wealthy elite which owns them. Such rotting by the head was seen before, most notably under the Roman empire, and various Chinese dynasties. It is an indication of a later stage of the global plutocratic takeover. Intellectual decay always precedes collapse, as there are simply not enough ethical and authentic brains left among the leadership to master the otherwise incomprehensible situation and its possible solutions.
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BIDEN IN A FEW WORDS:
“Democrat” Senator Joe Biden was one of the top instigators of the invasion of Iraq, second only to G. W. Bush in importance. Biden chaired the Senate Commission during 2002 which provided president Bush with the reasons to invade Iraq. The Guardian detailed Biden’s role in selecting biased, pro-war witnesses for his all-important commission (details will be found further on).
The consequences of the enormous and murderous Iraq lie have been far-reaching. Not just fracking, but inuring the US population and in particular its intelligentsia to lying, on a massive emotional and factual scale. That accoutumance to media mediated lying has blocked most of the “populist”reforms necessary, presenting them instead as deranged (Whether they came from Sanders or Trump)…
The ideology of Joe Biden is that of the Davos plutocracy, a global hydra gorged on offshoring jobs where US and Western law doesn’t reach: anything goes, as long as it leads to increasing power for an elite of a few thousand families, many originating from the Nineteenth Century USA. The way towards this takeover by wealth and greed is crooked finance, tech monopolies, nihilistic teachings, and brainwashing the entire world population with most of the world’s media, which the Davos plutocracy has captured.
Biden was also Senator, for decades, of the state which is, worldwide, the ultimate tax haven, Delaware. What could go wrong, from a progressive point of view?
To entice us progressives, Biden and his supporters make a lot of good points, nice little points to dream of, shiny dynamics, always moving according to what the latest polls say. Obama made many of the same points, with his mouth, to the opposite effect, in the resulting acts. I have been trying to figure out many points of Biden’s program: they keep shifting… Many contradict each other. Many policies are not to be revealed before the election… to avoid “headlines”, Biden himself, said several times.
The invasion of Iraq, a war of aggression, which killed millions, was a crime against humanity. Biden built the rationale for it, and it was a lie. The fact that the Editorial Board of the New York Times in his endorsement “Elect Joe Biden, America” didn’t use the word “Iraq” once, is a testimony to a bias so deep, that it is discombobulating. What else did the Editorial Board forget to mention about Joe Biden which is most significant? That Biden authored in 1994 the systematically racist crime bill which brought mass incarceration thanks to this ”New Jim Crow”? That Biden’s mentors in the Senate, or not, had achieved high rank in the Ku Klux Klan?
Under Obama, manufacturing rolled over, life expectancy went down (for the longest and deepest in time of peace), and inequality reached a higher level than ever before, while fracking soared. These are very significant facts. The Editorial Board of the New York Times says it will not happen again. Maybe that’s as naïve as when I spent two years of my life working hard to get president Obama elected, just to see the unfortunate developments I mentioned, unfold.
Biden says he will augment taxes. The elected “Democrats” say that this will control the wealthy. But they are lying. They know very well that augmenting the taxes on the middle class or even the 1%, is not how the hyper wealthy and hyper powerful are controlled… Because, like Biden and his S corporation trick, the wealthiest use loopholes to avoid taxes altogether… At the worst for them, the wealthiest turn taxation into negotiation.
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UNDER THE COVER OF ITS OPPOSITE, THE BIDEN PLAN IS FRIENDLY TO HYPER WEALTH:
I have long advocated for a lot of what is in Biden’s program: free public universities, more funds for scientific research, a green economy, infrastructure spending, Medicare For All (I invented the term) and so on. Biden says he will do much of this by just augmenting the marginal tax rate on the wealthiest… by a tiny percentage. This is mathematically impossible… and a cover-up.
Indeed, Biden says nothing about cracking down on the fiscal loopholes for the hyper wealthy…the only “loophole” he wants to close is “step-up basis”. That’s a middle class tax, not a wealth tax. The abolition of step-up basis on inheritance has been a disaster in France: it deprived non-wealthy heirs of much, sometimes most, of their inheritance. But the absence of a “step-up” basis does not hurt the hyper wealthy in France: they have plenty of special loopholes, just for them, passed by friendly legislators who were anxious to please them: pigeons are friendly to whomever gives them crumbs. Abolishing “Step-up basis” targets middle class inheritance, not the immense wealth, influence and power of “Foundations” and “Nonprofits”, let alone the anonymous financial entities which make the fortune of Delaware… And of Biden’s donors and sponsors.
The US Deep State is the original inventor of loopholes for the hyper wealthy. Loopholes, such as the Foundation law, were made into law the same morning as the income tax law. Yes, the same morning. “Foundations” enable heirs to control huge wealth, and power, tax free. It’s neo-feudalism.
The propaganda trick known as the “Living Pledge”, launched by plutocratic propagandists, shamelessly builds on the Foundation myth: give half of your fortune to a Foundation controlled by your significant others in the thereafter…and We The People will be eternally grateful to live in a world controlled and managed by your precious heirs…
The origination of feudalism a thousand years years ago followed the exact same pattern: we, the wealthy and powerful do this, taking over the world, for you, as a public service. In exchange, the hyper wealthy should go tax-free, and all of this should be made inheritable… Exactly what as the Foundations and Nonprofits go, crammed with wealthy heirs as they are… And their glorious names plastered all over public buildings (an example: the enormous and ancient San Francisco general public hospital suddenly became the “Mark Zuckenberg” hospital, although the plutocrat had given only a tiny amount of money, relative to the immense capital of said hospital).
Fiscal loopholes and jurisdiction evasion by the offshoring of industrial investment enabled by global trade are how most of the wealthiest become wealthier. Fiscal loopholes from globalocracy made the wealthy of Ancient Rome way wealthier than was legal in Rome. As a result the Republic fell, because the hyper wealthy became so wealthy they captured the Roman Deep State.
Worse, and even Machiavellian: Biden plans to augment US corporate taxes to 28% well above the countries the USA is in competition with. The naive progressives will congratulate him, believing in their ignorance that Biden will be punishing the rich, when all he would be truly doing is to provide them with a fig leaf… The consequence of a higher corporate tax would be the exact opposite of what they expect. This is so true, that quasi-socialist France is presently targeting a lowering of its corporate tax rate down to 25%. Rising the US corporate tax at 28% will give an excuse for corporations to offshore themselves (that’s the Machaivellian trick of Biden and company, providing an excuse to offshore themselves again). That will weaken We The People… the crucial effect the Global Deep Plutocracy wants most to achieve.
To boot, the 28% rate will bring down the US financial markets, hence 401k retirement plans, down (the solution for investors will be to invest overseas). That may sound innocuous enough, but, by lowering assets of average citizens, their power goes down, thus the powers of those who can use globalism, the wealthiest of the wealthy, augments relatively even more.
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THE BIDEN TAX PLAN EXHIBITS ITS HYPOCRISY BY DISMISSING A CARBON TAX:
The main US business association, the US Chamber of Commerce, now approves a carbon tax: so the “Democratic” candidate prones the exact opposite of progressively leading on the green economy. Biden talks the talk, yet walks the other way, another example of his deep inauthenticity.
A carbon tax basically makes CO2 emissions less cheap… Right now CO2 emissions are subsidized, often directly. CO2 emissions are also subsidized because emitters do not have to pay for the consequences of their emissions. Conservatively, the World Health Organization evaluates the number of deaths caused by fossil fuels at around ten millions a year.
Any country seriously adhering to the Paris Accord and unwilling to go through the sort of creative destruction Trump has promoted, from fewer subsidies, has to impose a carbon tax to reduce emissions. What?… wait: how does Trump’s creative destruction help the environment? Simple: by providing fewer governmental subsidies, coal plants have been closing at a faster rate under Trump than any time previously (including Obama-Biden). Biden’s expressed will to harness change by providing 40% to disadvantaged areas will act as a mighty brake to the modernization, and decarbonization of the economy.
By the way, the noise makers of the “Green New Deal” exhibit their own hypocrisy, or painful ignorance, by saying nothing about the dismissal of the carbon tax by their candidate Joe Biden during the electoral process. Considering the brakes Biden will put to development, with his weird 40% diktat, a carbon tax is a must. Once Biden is elected that way, by pledging no carbon tax, it will be too late to backtrack, because Biden and his wealthy sponsors will argue that not having a carbon tax was an engagement of his with the people who voted for him. Instead of letting the free market work against carbon, Biden will distribute crumbs to his friends.
So the firebrand known as AOC, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, should wake up, there is still time. A question naturally arises: why would Biden be hostile to a carbon tax. The answer is the type of sponsors on Wall Street which the Obama-Biden administration had: they financed fracking, the raison d’etre of the Iraq invasion. Those financial types have milked fossil fuels very profitably, and would love to have the party last a few more years. A carbon tax would kill fossil fuels quickly. This is also why they killed hydrogen, on day one of the Obama-Biden administration (Trump has reinstituted hydrogen research). Green hydrogen and its derivatives (ammonia, etc.) has the potential to completely replace fossil fuels..
Biden has told Wall Street that his Energy Secretary would be Mr. Tom Steyer, a multibillionaire, who claims to be an ecologist. Mr. Steyer became a billionaire through coal… and also Goldman Sachs, private prisons and offshoring jobs. Brandishing Mr. Steyer as a potential cabinet member should seduce the worst of Wall Street, because it demonstrates, for all to see, that the hypocrisy on the part of Biden is colossal, and the lie immense: nothing like an insolent liar at the head of the world, as far as the financial plutocracy is concerned. And even better: Biden’s own voters will become part of the lie, and get compromised!
That Biden can arrogantly choose such a man as Mr. Steyer, the exact sort of financiers all progressives should despise and fear, shows that Biden is the sort of soldier global plutocrats trust. Nor is Mr. Steyer unique, as an excellent and natural choice for Mr. Biden.
Another name floated by Biden to Wall Street is Ms. Meg Whitman, also a multibillionaire, from EBay, and a poster girl from the tech monopolies and their secretive financial arms, and monopolistic plots… including Goldman Sachs (on the board of which she served, before it was revealed she used Goldman Sachs for “spinning”). Proposing Ms. Meg Whitman as Commerce Secretary, is indeed very reassuring for the financial plutocracy: it shows Biden is not afraid to scandalously let the owners of the world rule, for all to see… Besides, it accustoms the Biden voters to vote for Wall Street.
What could go wrong for progressives?… once they have persuaded themselves that the world should be ruled by crooked finance, their spirits have been fully captured, and Biden is their man!
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[End Part One]
Patrice Ayme
