TO SURVIVE, CIVILIZATION HAS TO FIGHT RATS AND CRATS.
Abstract: Europe long suffered from the exactions of the hyper wealthy, various plutocrats such as kings, dukes, princes or sultans, or, more generally, all those who lust after power to the detriment of the rest.
I give examples extracted from (a small part of) what happened in the late Seventeenth Century, just in (part of, mostly) Eastern Europe. And the irony of it all. While showing that the evil organization of (say) the Ottoman empire, or more generally, of wrath wrecked Europe was such, because many profited from it, Satanic style.
“Kratia” in Greek means power, rule, sway… Hence demo-kratia, the rule of the People, and Pluto-kratia, the rule of Pluto, and his obsession with underground wealth, underground emotions, the invisible hand.
So stupid many economists are, at least around New York or London, that they laud loudly the “invisible hand”.
In their ignorance and depravity, they wallop so much, that they have no idea that invisibility was viewed by the Greeks, 3,000 years ago, as one of the Lord of Hell’s most terrible attributes.
And sure enough, if Auschwitz had been visible, it would not have happened. Think about that, Lords of Finance, if you can! Sorry, I forgot for an instant, that one sees best with the heart, and you have none!
Now the world suffers from 600 trillions dollars of invisible derivatives, 450 trillions of them weighing on the bond market, agitated by well orchestrated panics, so that the rich who organize them, can get ever richer, from the toils of taxpayers, and the ruin of savers, retirees, the unemployed, the sick. “Shadow Banking” is supposed to be glorious…When actually it should be a cause for incarceration.
In Egypt, the army keeps on going as overlord, with the invisible American hand feeding it, instructing it, organizing it…
In the Nineteenth Century, Nietzsche claimed that men were mostly driven by the “Will to Power” (and that it was healthy).
A century earlier, Sade had insisted that political leaders, in particular, were psychopaths, lusting so much for power, that inflicting pain on others was their main driver. Louis XVI put him in the Bastille (big mistake, as it turned out in July 1789!)
Perfect illustrations of the Marquis de Sade’s theory soon blossomed in abundance, with vengeful plutocrats trying to burn all of Europe, demented revolutionary leaders cutting heads by the thousands, and Napoleon’s childish ambition to spill as much blood as possible; those tyrans and crats all had this in common that they hated Sade. They imprisoned him for decades, and Robespierre’s gang scheduled his execution for having saved thousands of lives from the terror. (The ambition of Robespierre’s gangsters got cut short, with their necks, sparing Sade, just in time!)
Of course, humans are motivated by more than the Dark Side’s Will, Violence, and Power. Be it only because of the Light Side, of love, empathy, curiosity, even poetry, and singing, which make even more of a driver of human behavior. And we have names for them: lover, empath, inquirer, questioner, investigator, poet, singer, etc. Just as we have now names for sadists and brutes. (“Sadist” though is a neologism introduced thanks to Sade’s provocative revelations!)
In all and any case, nobody proposed to name those who, among humans are obsessed with the infliction of their will upon others. No name for the power-hungry, the over-ambitious, those who lust for power, the Genghis Khans, the Alexanders, the Caesars, the Napoleons and Hitlers, Rothschilds, Clintons, and DSKs. This is all the stranger, because a noun naturally offers itself!
Thus I proposed a neologism: CRATS, for those so greedy for power that they forget other human values. (Krugman promptly used it in his blog without proper attribution, after I mentioned it in his blog’s comments; I do not belong to the power circle of those worthy of quotation, as I am not a Very Serious Person.)
“Crat” has also the advantage of fusionning two concepts: c, for conspiracy, or cretin, and “rats” for an all too social animal which seems mostly motivated by food, and inspiring to those who lead us into oblivion.
Crats, like rats, have always existed, and have always tried to devour civilization. That’s what they do. To prevent the devouring of civilization, Neolithic men invented cats (against rats), and taxes (against crats). Modern politicians though, inculcated in their subjects the complete disdain for this lesson.
However there is an example of a spur of civilization which evolved, thanks to crats. Colonial English America thrived from civilizational devolution: if English colonial Americans had taken care of the Indians as French Jesuits did, in Canada, the colonials would not have got as rich, as fast as they did.
This is an important point that Professor Niall Ferguson miss in his white wash “Civilization” book (November 2011). Ferguson celebrates the attribution of Indian property to whites in North America, that is, to the European invaders. He finds that most wise. In contrast, Ferguson recognizes that there were plenty of Indians left in South America, and that Spain limited immigration to South and Central America, precisely because of this, the abundance of the natives. And Ferguson deplores that!
Thus naughty boy Niall does not realize, in his Harvard induced murderous superiority haze, that he is showing his hand. His hand is not invisible anymore, he should be more careful. What Ferguson is actually saying, for all to see, is that holocausts are the superior economic model. That was Hitler’s point, entirely. But Hitler did not teach at Harvard, that was his mistake (although some Harvard songs were adapted into famous Nazi songs by some of the individuals who connected the university and the party!)
And of course holocausts are much superior economically for those who survive them, especially if they are the perpetrators, and they thrive.
OK, the perpetrators of the American holocaust are long dead in the case of the English American colony. But the ideology of GREED AS SUPERLATIVE is still very much alive. Killing it, is what the world revolt is all about. So Niall should find sonmething else to celebrate, it would be only prudent.
The USA embraced plutocratic civilizational devolution as a metaprinciple of “progress”, and access to riches. The exact sort of “progress” Krugman embraces: divide the world, divide Europe, and then New York, what he boasts is the “greatest city in the world“, will conquer. He was a child a few miles north, he thrives a few miles south: alleluia!
American intellectuals of the powerful type, such as Paul Krugman and Niall Ferguson, perceive a weakness in Europe, and, as good servants of the plutocratic system they suck from, they are on the attack against the European project, telling us that the gods of Anglo-Saxon finance will forever rule, thus hoping we will lay down our mental weapons, and surrender. But, far from it, here is more ammunition to fight what Voltaire used to call “infamy”.
And what is the modern European project? The wise victory of the mind over fate, from knowing more, the very definition of Homo Sapiens. In particular the victory of mind over wealth. The victory of mind over the military, fascist, plutocratic system, as deployed in, say, Egypt. That system which replaced three important European leaders by agents of Goldman Sachs, in two weeks. The victory over the biased accounting the likes of Krugman venerates.
Krugman tells us that accounting his way, is the most worthy thing. Not only he does not know how, and what to count, but, tell me, Krugman, how much is Auschwitz worth? Is it because Americans were doing accounting their way, that they sent to Nazi Germany’s Air Force crucial war supplies in 1939, to enable it to fly, while France and Poland were already in combat against Nazi Germany? Is it why Poland and France fell, and dozens of millions died? Accounting by American plutocrats, for their own benefit?
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BARBARIANS AT THE GATES OF EUROPE:
During the summer of 1683, the Turkish army besieged Vienna. It was allied with the Khan of Crimea and its 40,000 horsemen cavalry. Everyday of the two months assault, the formidable Ottoman war drums beat ominously. The constant rolling was not mean to just destabilize psychologically the Austrian capital. It was conceived to make difficult for the Europeans to localize where exactly the slaves of the sultan were digging their tunnels and covered trenches.
A vast underground battle between 5,000 experienced Ottoman sappers and defending “moles” was punctuated with large explosions when Turkish mines exploded under the successive fortification rings of the European capital. The last and most formidable mine was detected in the last hours of the final battle, as the Turks tried desperately to blow up the main Austrian fort. It was defused by Austrian “moles”, at the last moment. Elite Turkish troops and janissaries had been held back for that moment after the giant bomb exploded. It never came.
The Turks are an interesting example of the importance of ideology. The old Indo-European (not Semitic!) world of Turkic nomadic bands was transformed by the war religion of Islam, about a millennium ago. It allowed them to conquer quickly a vast empire, and they headed west. In a generation or two, they had the Roman empire on the ropes (Byzantium called itself Roman, because that is what it was, although it spoke Greek). The Romans then called the Franks to the rescue (the Franks were all the more willing to settle the problem militarily as recently 10,000 pilgrims to Jerusalem had been massacred, in one swoop).
But it did not work; the ravenous Turkish military established a gigantic empire, which covered Anatolia, the Middle East, North Africa, Anatolia, Eastern Europe. By far the most important reason why the European counter-attack did not work is that the Europeans were very divided. (The same situation happened with the Muslims to the south: Frankish knights, allied to the Mongols were an irresistible force, so the Pope and the French king outlawed the Franco-Mongol alliance with the greatest threats, after the fall of Baghdad and Damascus! If not for that, Islam would probably have become an archeological curiosity…)
In 1204, the Frankish army conquered and sacked Constantinople, in a final, savage conclusion to their nine centuries old domineering military role in Rome, deep down inside hostile to Christianity, which they viewed as all too anti-German, anti-progress, and no fun, if not kept in check by secular power.
The European divisions endured. The Turkish high command was good at exploiting them. Or let’s say that European adventurers found to their advantage to ally themselves with Turkish fascist imperialism. During the final siege of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, not only the Turkish shock troops were made of dozens of thousands of indoctrinated, fanaticized enslaved Christian boys, the Janissaries, but the giant “Turkish” guns were made by Hungarian engineers. Moreover, France was treacherously allied to the Sultan, one reason why the relief army failed to materialized. The ancient hostility between the Franks and the “Orthodox Catholic” church had reached its bitter end (Venice and other terminal allies of Constantinople was a client republic of Charlemagne, not Constantinople).
The Janissaries were an interesting institution, typical of a fascist order: Christian families who sold their boys thus got a social promotion and riches. With Janissaries, the Sultans thus had at their disposals a force which owed them everything: so revolution could not come from the real Muslim population. Indeed the anti-Islamist, pro-European revolution in Turkey followed quickly the elimination of the Janissaries in the 19C.
When the situation got grave enough, the Europeans cooperated enough to get the Turkish off their back. The Europeans came together at the siege of Vienna, with the alliance of the Holy Roman Empire and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After 12 hours of battle, at 17 hour (5 pm), the Polish king ordered, and led, the largest cavalry charge in history. 20,000 horsemen galloped down a mountain. Simultaneously, the Viennese garrison made a sortie. The Turks were finished.
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WHEN CRATS RULED, SO DID WAR:
Prince Eugene of Savoy‘s reconquered Hungary and some of the Balkan lands within the following years. “Prinz Eugen” is also the name of the famous Nazi battle cruiser crammed with advanced technology, which became later a U.S. Navy ship (at least three of its master technologies were thoroughly copied by the Americans). Prince Eugene de Savoy (old French for modern “Savoie”) was born in Paris in 1663. After chasing the Turks off a bit, a peace was concluded (1699). Europeans were free to fight each other. Prinz eugen then fought with Malborough against members of his own family, for example the elector Emanuel of Bavaria.
Tellingly that prince/prinz signed his name: “Eugenio von Savoy”. An Italo-Germano-French signature! At the village of Blindheim (in English: “Blenheim”), Marlborough and Prince Eugen fought against the combined Bavarian and French armies. 240 years later, a descendant of the Duke of Marlborough, namely the British Prime Minister Churchill (an Anglo-American), sent Bristol Blenheim bombers to sink the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen.
It sounds funny, but, in the great European wars, up to half of the population died. Many wars lasted centuries. Prominent individuals were on both sides of the same war. Do we want more of this European war circus? Well, Wall Street does. Because the more the Europeans are divided, the more the financial pirates of Wall Street reign. The long memory of the Europeans for the exactions of the hyper wealthy is nothing Wall Street wants to hear more of.
Thus it’s useful to change the conversation with distorted history. American intellectuals such as Krugman and Ferguson live off Wall Street (whether they are conscious of it or not). While playing the roles of critiques, they help the pluriharmonic melodious chorus which allow the likes of Obama to claim total confusion, and support the mighty.
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PLUTOPHILES NEVER RUN OF ADMIRATION FOR PREDATION:
Another weekend, and another blast by the servants of American plutocracy against Europe. In the Wall Street Journal, Niall Ferguson, the Scottish born plutophile history professor at Harvard informs us that Ireland, will asked to join the United Kingdom, in a “Reunited Kingdom“. Ferguson boy probably does not know that the latest measure of inflation in Great Britain is 5.9%. That means: near catastrophe (and I love inflation at 4%!). By the way I am reading his book “Civilization”. The usual thing: history started when Great Britain was created. That would be after the Dutch invasion, and the submission of Scotland, after 1700 CE. By then the American English colony was de facto independent, and had invented racially discriminating slavery. Indeed, a unique contribution. by killing lots of Indians and enslaving lots of Africans growing lots of tobaco, English colonists had become the world’s richest tribe.
But Ferguson does not tell you what I just said. Instead he tells you it’s all about British genius, just like when Newton discovered the Law of Universal Attraction. That is the Anglo-Saxon propaganda at its best. Actually Newton himself, more honest than Ferguson (who, as an historian should check history before proclaiming it!), asserted that Bullialdus, a French priest and lawyer, found it first. Giovanni Alfonso Borelli suggested first the balance between centrifugal force and gravitational attraction. But you see, Bullialdus is French, thus he does not count, because he is not endowed by Anglo-Saxon genius. Even worse for Borelli: he was the son of a Spanish soldier and a Napolitan woman, races which according to Ferguson, do not have the Anglo-Saxon genius so obvious at Goldman Sachs.
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CRATS’ DEVIOUS VIEW OF HISTORY:
That may be also why Ferguson has the history of the Anglo-Saxons starting so recently: before that the so called Anglo-Saxons were actually French lords, so that’s best forgotten. Edward III “Long Shanks”, conqueror of Scotland, initiator of the half a millennium long “100 years war” was French on both sides, and the grandson of the formidable Philippe Le Bel.
Of course the only reason why the tiny Netherlands became so powerful was that, in a 150 years long war or so, Spain was defeated by France, and lost the low countries (which was only justice, as the Franks came from said Low Countries! And for centuries, France, England and the Netherlands had formed a triangle of commerce). Of course Spain owned the Netherlands, because Charles of Bourgogne did so, as part of his middle of the Imperium Francorum inheritance, and he had been elected king of Spain.
Charles V spoke perfectly five languages, but his birth language was French, as was that of his great enemy Francois Premier, born a few “lieux” away.
Thus in the end, much of the terrible wars between 1300 CE and 1815 CE were all about French fighting French. It is normal: France was the largest single piece of the Imperium Francorum, and the later had not been formally dissolved. Instead it went on, at some point as more than 1,000 pieces…
This would go on: after the fascist, or, as he put it himself, “poorly advised” Louis XIV, kicked out millions of Protestants from France, many fled to Switzerland (where they started watch making), some to the Netherlands, or South Africa (where they made wine). many also were welcomed with open arms by Frederick the Great of Prussia (this explains why so many Nazi generals had French names).
In 1945, most French and Germans had come to the conclusion that, whatever was next, it would include definitive peace between France and Germany. The seventy five years of war between France and Germany (1870-1945) had shown that they had more to gain being together, than fighting against each other.
Those who knew history real well knew that the Franco-German wars had started with growing apart.
A lot of this had been propelled by the arrogance of Parisians. In 358 CE, shortly after the name of Lutetia had been changed for Paris (name of the local tribe, the Parisii), the Parisians and the crack Franco-Gallo-Roman troops elected by acclamation Caesar Julianus as Augustus. Julianus demurred for a while, but then accepted the nomination. He had no choice.
The emperor Constantius II, anxious to separate the Caesar from the empire’s best troops, had decided they would be moved to Mesopotamia. Instead, the Parisians rebelled. Julianus took control of the entire empire, and proceeded to de-Christianize the Roman empire (Julianus’ view of Christianism was even worse than that of Nietzsche, 14 centuries later, and fit well wit those of the Franks). Julianus was hit by a lance in Mesopotamia, the Franks took power directly, a century later. Frankish troops would be allied to the Mongols to seize Baghdad, and Damascus, a millennium later.
Forever after electing Julianus, Paris acquired a dangerous attitude. No wonder Carlus Magnus made his capital in Aachen. Throughout the Middle Ages, Paris was by far the largest city in Europe. By the Eleventh Century, Abelard had gone beyond Aristotle, and Paris had a university, by the Twelfth Century, Paris invented the so called “Gothic style“, then actually known as Opus Francigenum.
Actually one of the Franks present at the inauguration of the first Gothic cathedral, with typical Parisian spite, called it “Gothic” as that was the ultimate insult for a Frank (the Goths had been exterminated 450 years earlier, in a combined Franco-Roman-Muslim effort).
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FRANCO-GERMAN REUNIFICATION:
One has made a big deal of the reunification of Germany. But that is small potatoes relative to the reunification which is really needed, that of West and East Francia. That is, Francia and Germania (to use roman rather than Frankish terminology).
The six year long Second World War (1939-1945), the last bout of fighting between France and Germany, coming at the end of 75 years of hostilities, demonstrated to all French and Germans that a thorough rethink of the situation was needed. Obsolete nationalism had become clearly counter-productive for all to see. The Nazis, supreme irony, had demonstrated this to themselves, at their entire dismayed dissatisfaction.
During WWII, Hitler himself, to his rage, had to collaborate with French industrialists. He whined to his cabinet that, once Germany won the war, it would be in the grasp of French civilian industry. But Speer told him that was there was no choice. Hitler’s top, most fanatical generals, once brought to France to occupy and terrorize, generally turned around, and worked against their evil master. Marshall Rommel, a fanatic, mass murdering Nazi in 1940, was pretty much the exact opposite four years later, after getting command in France.
Thus Hitler put in command of Paris the SS “butcher of Sevastopol”, who had, during the siege of Sevastopol, exterminated Jews (as he admitted in a secret recording made by the British August 29, 1945).
Hitler’s order from 23 August 1944: “The city must not fall into the enemy’s hand except lying in complete debris.” Hitler phoned Von Cholztizt in a rage, screaming, “Brennt Paris?” (“Is Paris burning?”) [An account confirmed by Col. General Jodl, Hitler’s chief of staff, who added that Hitler asked the question many times, and wanted independent confirmation.]
Instead Von Choltitz and the 17,000 German soldiers under his command surrendered to French general Philippe Leclerc de Hautecloque, commanding the Second Armored French division, which had rushed to Paris through successive Nazi defense rings, and to the Resistance leader Henri Rol-Tanguy at the Gare Montparnasse on 25 August 1944. The Germans had suffered 3,200 dead in combat with the resistance in Paris’ streets, and resistance leaders persuaded Von Choltitz of the uselessness, and immorality, of pursuing the fight, and burning the capital to a crisp as he had been ordered to do.
In 1948, after careful thinking, Robert Schuman proposed that “Franco-German production of coal and steel as a whole be placed under a common High Authority, within the framework of an organization open to the participation of the other countries of Europe.” French and German political leaders united the energetic and steel production of France and Germany. This actually extended work made in the same spirit in the early 1930s (which would have prevented WWII, had it come to fruition).
In 1951, the Treaty of Paris extended the European Steel and Coal Community to the Benelux and Italy.
Why the extension?
Well, France and Germany together united form a superpower which cannot be beaten, so it has to be joined. Superpower? France and German GDP, together, is four times that of Russia (and Franco-German GDP does not rest on the viscous prop oil and gas, as Russia’s does, but, instead on genuine human genius!) For other European countries it is not as if Franco-Germania were sitting on the other side of a vast ocean: if you are a European country, Franco-Germania is next door. Overall, Western Europe is the size of the North East of the USA. Just ask the Swiss how much they have to obey when France and Germany bare their fangs.
Moreover, the other powers, say Italy or the Benelux, were clearly lose parts of France, or Germany. Often of both. In other words, those other countries were created mostly to weaken one, or the other (For example, modern Italy had been pretty much created by the idealistic Napoleon III, who had a long history of conspiring with Italian independentists, as he was truly a Swiss… Piedmont, as its name, and its Savoy cross indicates, has more to do with France, than with Rome…)
So now here we are. American intellectuals are very well paid to demolish the European Union, and to distract from plutocratic Wall Street. Meanwhile in Egypt, the army is firing on protesters, using American weapons and cartridges. The government of the USA gives billions a year to the Egyptian military. The crackdown in Egypt was subsequent to the shooting, and killing by University of California police in Berkeley of a student at the business school, while Occupy Wall Street protests were going on outside.
Why does not Krugman attack that? Instead he deplores that accounting does not reign and that European countries are not fighting each other through competitive devaluations:
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KRUGMAN’ DREADFUL SONG ABOUT EUROPE:
Paul Krugman, the Europhobe, is in great shape, his masters in what he calls the “greatest city in the world” will reward him well. In “Boring Cruel Euro Romantics” (Nov 20, 2011) he pontificates imprudently that:
I like technocrats — technocrats are friends of mine. And we need technical expertise to deal with our economic woes.
But our discourse is being badly distorted by ideologues and wishful thinkers — boring, cruel romantics — pretending to be technocrats. And it’s time to puncture their pretensions.
I guess among “ideologues and wishful thinkers“ are philosophers, like yours truly, who believe in the victory of the mind and enlightenment over the viciousness of Pluto. Indeed, who does Krugman want to “puncture“?
“these people — the people who bullied Europe into adopting a common currency… — aren’t technocrats. They are, instead, deeply impractical romantics.
They are, to be sure, a peculiarly boring breed of romantic, speaking in turgid prose rather than poetry. And the things they demand on behalf of their romantic visions are often cruel, involving huge sacrifices from ordinary workers and families. But the fact remains that those visions are driven by dreams about the way things should be rather than by a cool assessment of the way things really are.
And to save the world economy we must topple these dangerous romantics from their pedestals.
Let’s start with the creation of the euro. If you think that this was a project driven by careful calculation of costs and benefits, you have been misinformed.
The truth is that Europe’s march toward a common currency was, from the beginning, a dubious project on any objective economic analysis. The continent’s economies were too disparate to function smoothly with one-size-fits-all monetary policy…”
Just like the Nazis used to claim that the Jews were cruel, Krugman claims “impractical romantics“, those who want European unification, are both boring and cruel. Well, it can only mean that they do not use expert torturers. In the Middle Ages, torturing was the most appreciated spectacle. nothing boring about it. Maybe we could torture some boring American academics with our contempt, to start with.
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SAVING BANKS IS DIFFERENT FROM SAVING CURRENCIES:
Bravo, Krugman, Bravo! Listening to Krugman you have the impression the euro, as a currency, is a disaster. It needs to be “saved”. The Economist”, and the rest of the financial propaganda systematically claim that the euro needs to be saved. So how come it’s 40% overvalued over the dollar?
Krugman is called an economist, but apparently, he cannot distinguish between a currency and banks. He apparently wants them to be the same. Does that mean American economists are even more incompetent than the realm they built, or is it actually a Freudian slip?
Verily, the so called euro crisis has nothing to do with the euro, or with romance. Whatever the admirers of New York and its financial system say. Europe was born in war. Dozens of millions have died in an holocaust, and the survivors drew some important conclusions which can only have escaped the American society, which ate on both sides of the manger.
The USA, in the entire war lost about 415,000 people, nearly all of them soldiers. French controlled territories lost about two millions, only a third of it, soldiers (don’t expect to find this statistics in USA propaganda). True, for a while (1942-1944), after the defeat of 1940, the million man French army fighting was out of Africa (several of my relatives were in it).
Other European countries had much greater losses. Poland lost six million. Germany lost ten million (OK, they started it, as they chose to be led by Nazi marionettes, with plutocrats pulling the strings). The USSR lost not far from thirty million (OK, they did not have to be led by a Georgian gangster).
To avoid conflicts, it’s important to know who is really pulling the strings.
There is a crisis in Europe, but it’s not a euro crisis. The German ratio of national debt/GDP is 83%. The British and especially Spanish one are lower. France has a ratio of 87%. The USA thrones with a national debt/GDP ratio of 104%.
OK, that’s not all: one has to look at personal debt, etc. It’s bad in Spain. One also has to look at the instantaneous current account deficit: it is nearly as good in Italy as it is Germany, but it is really bad in the UK and the USA (around 12%).
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YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE!
The crisis has everything to do with the privatization of public money, as I explained many times before. It was in the air of the times, the era of privatization of everything: Your Money Or Your Life!
Thanks to Milton Friedman and another 13 American “Nobel” prizes, most of them from Chicago (a place of dubious fumes such as mafia, Daley, Obama, and “French” IMF director Lagarde). The doctrine of Milton and his ilk, is the simplest and the oldest of the enemies of civilization: Greed Is All You Need.
Currency is the essence of the state, short of military force. Privatizing currency, made the oligarchy on top ever more powerful, because it made, at the outset, that oligarchy into the state itself. that made it into an instant plutocracy.
Plutocracies can be most resilient. Look at Egypt: since the late forties, when it set up a coup, the Egyptian military has reigned. Cynics in Europe suspect the dictator Mubarak (ex-general commanding the Air Force, like Pinochet in Chili), is still in power. What is sure is that his right hand man, another general, is in power, plotting with the Islamists (who he uses as a justification for his iron rule).
We have seen plutocracy before: it ended up with highway men all over the ex-Roman empire, asking for your money, or your life. And behind high walls, sat the great lords, with their private armies.
So a conspiracy of crats, plutocracy, brought the Late Roman empire where it finished, and us where we are. Crats just want power, nothing else matters to them. They select other crats.
Obama, in his memoirs, say that what is important, in life, is navigation. The grand Vizier would have said the same. Thus the rule of law was very weak in the Ottoman empire. The Grand Vizier travelled with his personal fortune. He had it on board when the Ottoman fleet was tremendously crushed at the battle of Lepanto.
All and any financial transaction ought to be revealed, regulated, and taxed. Those who cheat should go to jail and have their property confiscated, as pertains gangsters of the highest and most dreadful order.
That European banks, and Shadow banks are in the world financial spider sucking on blood, there is no doubt. That they behaved as if they were our overlords, no doubt either. However the three buffoons nominated recently, Draghi, head of the european Central Bank, super Mario (-nette), parachuted head of Italy, and whatever his name in Greece, were all Goldman Sachs officer, one of the major the spider nests.
So the present austerity is not about saving the euro at all. The euro is strong, all too strong. No, it’s all about paying rent to the banks, until all freedom is gone, except that of the ultra rich, it’s all about a new feudal order.
I will not answer the ill informed anti-European rant about European states being so disparate that they cannot have a common currency. France and Germany decided to become united in 1948. Together, they are at least half the economic power of the USA. Other states on their doorsteps can hardly ignore them. a truck driver, on one shift can cross half a dozen countries, and so on and so forth. I do understand though, that those who think, as Paul does that New York is the “greatest city in the world”, probably thing that, by necessity, Wall Street is the greatest street in the world.
France and Germany want to put an end to the domination of Wall Street. The euro will survive, big banks too big to fail, and big enough to flail us all, should be killed, and the American university-plutocratic complex will be exposed for what it is.
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WHEN WASHINGTON WANTED TO OCCUPY FRANCE:
In 1944, the Americans intended to treat France, exactly just as if France were Nazi Germany. The AMGOT administration for France had been planned by the American Chief of Staff, Marshall. A fake French currency had been printed. Hundreds of American collaborators had been trained to take over the French administration. France was to be occupied. Indefinitely. By the Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories.
The American hegemony failed, because the trained, combat experienced French army was actually much bigger than the American army… in 1944 (it’s always the same American divisions which did all the fighting, whereas the French had completely replaced their experience and ferocious African army, by a new one). At most the Americans had 65 divisions in Europe. In any case the relationship between the French government and Washington was execrable. The French played the pivotal role in the failure of the Nazi offensive in the Ardennes: the panicked American command ordered the evacuation of Alsace (as Hitler thought would happen). But the French refused. That allowed Patton (who also believed that Washington was full of traitors) to throw his Third Army, the best tank army of the USA, north (as his right flank was covered by the French, who had surrendered just two and a half centimeters to the enraged Nazis).
In any case, AMGOT explains clearly why the USA, as a government, refused to help France and Britain in 1940, after hurting them in 1939 (and for several years before that). As far as all too many in Washington were concerned, France was an enemy, and Nazism a tool against that enemy.
A war gets engaged first by propagandists. Europeans have to understand Washington will keep on supporting the banks. So maybe they should stop collaborating.
Why not let the too-big-to-fail banks fail? Is it not what austerity ought to mean? (By failing I mean, while protecting small savers’ deposits, of course!) Then banks, helped by ferocious re-regulating, could stay small enough to help the People, rather than help themselves.
Massive default of the culprits, punishment and recovery of stolen hundreds of billions is a pre-condition to a new, and better financial order. Austerity ought to start at the top. Reintroduce Eisenhower’s 90% upper margin tax rate!
And please resist Krugman’s Europhobic ranting… Just as the Nazis, in a tradition going all the way back to the proto-Nazi philosopher Herder, Krugman exaggerates the “disparity” of the different European nations. Why does not Krugman tell us too that the Jews were too different? Why does not he tell us that Jews and Muslims, or Protestants, for that matter, were too disparate to function smoothly with one-size-fits-all monetary policy? Because he would sound too much like a proto-Nazi?
The Nazis, to a great extent, were manipulated by their American corporate sponsors. They also had German sponsors, but Wall Street overlorded over them (for example, Wall Street created IG Farben, among others; of course Wikipedia will not tell you that; I suspect that paid cleansers take out, or displace, a lot of the serious evidence in the Internet about the connection between Wall Street and Nazism; some pieces are left here and there).
What were the American plutocratic sponsors of Nazism about? Always more power to themselves, getting others to make their dirty work. Yes, some of the most important ones, like the Warburgs, were Jews. American culture, after grabbing an entire continent for itself, could only want to grab others.
As far as the other side of the culture which brought Auschwitz, one does not have to go very far. The ex astronomer Kant was, with Frederick the Great and Herder part of an infernal trio. Kant defined the Enlightenment, just as Krugman defines Europe. In his essay. “What Is Enlightenment?” Kant eructs that:
“Only one who is himself enlightened…and has a numerous and well-disciplined army to assure public peace, can say:’ Argue as much as you will, and about what you will, only obey’ A republic could not dare say such a thing… A lower degree of civil freedom, on the contrary, provides the mind with room for each man to extend himself to his full capacity.”
Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Goering parroted this sort of thought many times during their reign.
Kant was a very good astronomer, but, as a proto-Nazi philosopher, he was superlative. As a historian he was a zero, because he obviously did not know the history of the Roman republic, a place where steely obedience triumphed, and where fascism was harnessed for the better, and for justice, in the interest of the many. Republican fascism: “All for one, one for all” became the symbol of the Roman, and latter the French republic.
But fascism as defended by Kant, was just in the service of his master, “one who is himself enlightened…and has a numerous and well-disciplined army”.
The rule of the one: the Greeks called that tyranny; that is what the word means. So Kant was also an etymological zero, or extremely dishonest, as he chose to forget what tyranny was. Kant’s call, just as that of Krugman, is that of division. All and any country at each other’s throats, in the hope that his own, with a “numerous and well-disciplined army” will win.
After all both Kant and Krugman lived of what they praise. Indeed economic war of countries against countries through devaluation is the essence of Krugman’s message. One may wonder how much of Krugman’s so called “New Trade Theory” is little more than a fig leaf over the vast worldwide conspiracy, plutocracy its name, which strangles civilization, and the biosphere itself, a galaxy of conniving crats around the globe, immune to reason but for more obsessive power to themselves.
Krugman may still learn. A few of the basics above he learned in the last 12 months. Ferguson is a more complex case. He is less short sighted than Krugman, but neither his mind nor his eyes, nor memory, go far enough. Kant will not learn anymore, and he had nothing major to say which was good. It remains to kill him in other people’s minds.
Kant has much to do with what became the “German problem”. As Eichmann testified in Jerusalem.
What was the “German problem”? It was the Prussian hallucination that Frederick the Great approach to civilization could triumph. It was very similar to the English American colonial approach. In truth, it was an even more dreadful devolution than the American one, because not only it was out to spoil the Indians, but it mistook Europeans for Indians. As so many influential Germans brandish the most selfish and idiotically short sighted reasons for not supporting the rest of Europe Germany profited so much from, one can only conclude that some more philosophical work needs to be done.
Qaddafi used to call the freedom fighters who wanted him out of power,”rats”. But he spent his last moments of freedom in a sewer. Thus that crat was caught as a rat. More generally, one suspects that human institutions, which are all power structures, to be full of crafty crats in the most powerful positions. Thus the outraged/indignes/Occupy Wall Street are right to insist on absolute democracy. Crats there always will be. Mitigating them is of the essence for the survival of civilization.
Civilization is hard work. But first, civilization is superior mental work. Nothing that sheer brutality can buy. Greed is not enough to animate a civilization.
Civilization, and, more generally, the human spirit, has always incarnated the triumph of ever more sophisticated minds over the “objective economic analysis” of rats, crats, and other crocs.
Si Vis Civilisationem, Cave Kratos.
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Patrice Ayme
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 