WEALTH AS WISDOM?
So Say The President Of The USA.
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Main Ideas: Obama declared his love, respect, admiration for one of the main authors of the civilizational crisis we are encountering, a plutocrat, Warren Buffet. A case study that absolute power corrupts minds absolutely. Will the French socialists be able to stop the rot?
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Abstract: Plutocracy is defined meekly as having to do with the rule of wealth.
When the Greeks and Romans talked about “Ploutokratia“, they meant much more than just wealth ruling, but the rule by the invisible (Hades) god of the underworld (brother to Zeus = Deus). Shadow Banking, that is, invisible banking, Hades banking, here we come!
The rule of Pluto is therefore the rule of evil, not just the rule of wealth.
The fundamental civilizational crisis we are confronting is rooted in plutocracy. Plutocracy has not just grabbed all the capital, all the power. It has captured the minds, making them corrupt, stupid, and degenerate.
Obama’s love statement in “Time” (April 2012) about an ultra wealthy tycoon he calls the “Sage Of Omaha” is a case in point. Here is the president of the USA telling us that from great wealth flows great wisdom.
Never mind that five minutes of Internet search show that Buffet, in truth, owns the rating agencies, and Goldman Sachs, and use them to rat on countries, entangle them in elaborate conspiracies and corruptocracies and force them to pay enormous interest rates as they go bankrupt, and millions starve, while thousands kill themselves, out of despair.
This Buffet, according to the president of the USA, is the epitome of what is now meant by morality: a winning formula for the integrity of empire.
Nowadays, it’s clear that Obama’s sycophants have been turned, by Obama’s own acts, into Buffet’s sycophants. A fact, not an opinion. So it was that in the 1930s. Then, some called themselves “nationalists” and “socialists”, and many on the left, supported them. Just because of the way they called themselves (and the lie was deliberate, as Hitler explained in excruciating details). Another fact, not an opinion.
It’s high time for Europeans to see the actions of people such as Buffet for what they are: acts of war. We have seen that circus already in the 1930s: great wealth pushing its little pawns (Mussolini, Hitler, etc.)… and reaping massive profits later. It would be better if Americans saw it too.
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WHAT TO ADMIRE AND RESPECT, BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE USA:
Times Magazine came up with a special issue on the 100 most influential people in the world. Most of them are Americans, sell stuff, and are very rich. Among them, Warren Buffet. The president of the USA came out of presidential reserve to write an ode to him. Here it is:
“Warren Buffett
Businessman
By Barack Obama
Wednesday, Apr. 18, 012
In the spring of 1942, an 11-year-old boy from Omaha made his first big investment, putting nearly his entire fortune — about $120 — into three shares of Cities Service Preferred. By June, the stock had dropped sharply, devastating his holdings.
But it’s fair to say that things got a little better for Warren Buffett after that. His shares recovered, he sold them for a small profit, and he has spent the seven decades since in a relentless search for value. Warren has seen countless financial fads come and go. Through them all, he’s sought companies with real promise and invested with integrity.
Clearly, it’s a winning formula. Today Warren is not just one of the world’s richest men but also one of the most admired and respected. He has devoted the vast majority of his wealth to those around the world who are suffering, or sick, or in need of help. And he uses his stature as a leader to press others of great means to do the same.
The Sage of Omaha has handed down plenty of lessons over the years. Today, at 81, he reminds us that life is not just about the value you seek. It’s about the values you stand for.
Obama is the President of the United States.”
[I underlined sections of Obama’s declaration that I deconstruct below]
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DECONSTRUCTING GARBAGE:
A few Europeans of center-right persuasion commented on the preceding passage:”One can feel a sick admiration for wealth“, “Hallucinating“, “Wow, that one is pretty corrupt“… One wonders what Americans would, ought, to think of it. Generally the analysis on the left, Krugman style, is:”Romney is the devil, therefore Obama has got to be god, or, at least, good.”
I will deconstruct some of the points made by Obama above:
1) “it’s fair to say that things got a little better”. Those sort of hypocritical formulations are loved in the USA. Why hypocritical? Well, Buffet made more than 50 billion dollars. So to say “fair to say things got a little bit better“, is well below (hypo) a correct critique. It’s neither fair, nor remotely approximate to truth. If that is what Obama calls “fair“, one cringes to imagine what Obama calls “unfair”. It’s rather idiotic to be that much below a fair critique, or, then, it depicts the expectation that one expects to talk to idiots.
A formulation such as this is a lie. In truth, things got ENORMOUSLY better for Buffet. Such an hypocrisy is viewed as basic intellectual politeness in the USA: it teaches to make lying honorable.
One could apply such hypocrisy to the Holocaust of the Indians:”It’s fair to say things got a little out of hand for the natives.”
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2) “relentless search for value”: What is “value” in Obama’s mind? Is it what other call financial wealth?
Buffet owns the major credit agencies (supposedly in competition with each other, especially now that they have the same owner). Then he also owns government bonds those agencies rate. Relentless indeed. When the scene of the crime is set, and the poison served, what are the knights standing outside supposed to do? Wait for mayhem? Show me how Buffet did not make profits from the debasement of entire countries. Why? Because he stands accused in the court of history. Why somebody like that is not in jail shows that the law is of little value.
3) “invested with integrity”: Surely, somebody who rigs the sovereign borrowing markets worldwide, driving governments to cut basic services, to the point millions are driven to destitution and thousands suicide themselves, is not honest. So Obama either makes a deliberate effort to misconstrue reality, or alludes to “integrity” in its two other meanings. As the dictionary has it:
b) “integrity”: the state of being whole, entire, or undiminished: to preserve the integrity of the empire.
c) a sound, unimpaired, or perfect condition: the integrity of a ship’s hull.
So is Buffet a crucial ingredient in the integrity of the American ship of state, a keeper of empire?
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4) Clearly, it’s a winning formula. “Winning” and “formula” take a new meaning. It’s not science, it’s not lofty, it’s all about making lots of dough.
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5) one of the most admired and respected [men in the world]. If what I say above is true, and it’s public knowledge, then the people who admire and respect Buffet, are accomplices into turning the world into a buffet at which they splurge. Hitler was all too long one of the most admired and respected men in the world. Actually he made the cover of Time as “Man of Year“.
Now, OK, great godfathers in the Mafia, were admired and respected. Therein their strength. The admiration and respect Germans had for Hitler, allowed the Nazis to instill discipline in Germany with just 7,000 Gestapo officers (by contrast, a fifth as large East Germany, obviously less admired and respected, had 160,000 Stasi officers in charge of disciplining the masses). Hitlerland was all about admiration and respect for Hitler: respect and admiration made Hitlerland possible.
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6) {Warren Buffet] has devoted the vast majority of his wealth to those around the world who are suffering, or sick, or in need of help.
That’s an outright lie. As I said above, Buffet, as we speak, starve millions.
Buffet though said he would give a lot of his fortune to the Gates Foundation, an instrument of domination for for-profit companies such as Monsanto. Just like the wife of Gates is big in the Gates Foundation, one can expect the descendants of Buffet to be big too. Maybe they can employ some Obamas too. Hey, it’s all tax free, but the power and prerogative, let alone the luxury, are real.
And the integrity of empire is thus invested with maximum hypocrisy, and a winning formula.
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7) “The Sage of Omaha”: With a sage like that, who needs Satan?
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8) life is not just about the value you seek. It’s about the values you stand for.
As explained earlier in Obama’s ode to Buffet, in Obama’s mind, “value” means wealth. The other values Buffet stands for are conspiracy, hypocrisy, and infamy.
It’s not just about owning the largest private jet service in the world with his friend Gates (see Foundation, above). It’s not just about owning rating agencies and selling short or going long to increase one’s value. it’s not just about owning Goldman Sachs. What is more infamous than piling up power, so as to have the president of the USA eating in one’s hand, like a vulgar pigeon, for the entire world to see? The lack of decency is deliberate: once the American People has been debased enough, it will accept even more trampling by wealth and power.
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FRENCH COUNTER-ATTACK?
Voltaire ordered to “Crush Infamy!” (“Ecrasez l’infame!“). Crushing infamy is not a choice, nor a fad. It’s a matter of basic cleaning of civilization when pollutants like Buffet, and their brainless sycophants pile up. Otherwise the arteries of civilization will clog, and it will have a heart attack.
Before crushing infamy, we have to point at what it is. The cult of Buffet is, in my opinion, a thoroughly despicable mastermind of the humiliation and submission of civilization. Let it be despised.
Hopefully, let the French socialists will understand that when they talk to their American interlocutors, there are just talking to servants who want first and foremost to fill up their pockets by brown nosing their masters.
As president elect Hollande, said, month ago:”I will reveal who is my opponent, my true adversary. He has no name, no face; he belongs to no party; he will never declare his candidacy. He will not be elected, yet he governs. My enemy is the world of finance. Before our eyes, in the past 20 years, finance has taken over the economy, society, and even our lives. It is now possible, in a split second, to move astronomical amounts of money, threatening the very fabric of states.
“What was once merely an influence has become an empire. And, far from being diminished, it has been strengthened further by the crisis spawned on Sep. 15, 2008. Confronted by the force of finance, the pious promises of regulation, the incantations of ‘never again’ have come to nothing… Everything has been downgraded.
[Those ideas will be familiar to my readers!]
Everything has been degraded, including the presidency of the USA, now little more than a Public Relation firm for the very owner of many companies whose conspiracy is roiling the world into a Greater Depression.
People like Mr. Buffet, as his ancestors of the 1920s and 1930s are driving the world towards dictatorship and terror. They, and their practices, were not viewed for what they were. The road to war.
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Patrice Ayme
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Note on wealth as hell: The idea is generally attributed to Jesus, but it was borrowed from the Greeks, who had it in writing six centuries earlier. Pluto replaced Hades in the Greek and Latin world. Ploutos, “πλούτος“, means “wealth”, but there are other Greek words for it. (Satan, from the Greek Satanas, just meant adversarial.)
At the time, a succession of Draconian, anti-plutocratic revolutions roiled Sparta, and then Athens. Draco led one of them. The Classical Greek age followed.
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
May 10, 2012 at 12:12 am |
Let’s get real here.
Warren Buffet MADE A LOT OF MONEY, but he made NOTHING ELSE.
At least, the plutocrats of the gilded age left us railroads, steel plants, oil fields, car factories, etc etc.
WHAT, PRAY TELL, HAS BUFFET LEFT US???
Not a damned thing.
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May 10, 2012 at 9:10 am |
well, like other great destructors, lots of mayhem, still unfolding. One of Warren’s unfolding disaster is Greece. New elections have to be called, by mid-June. Buffet is directly responsible, from his control of Goldman Sachs AND of the ratin g agencies he owns. Obama says: “See warren destroy Greece, that’s worth our repstc, admiration…”
Got to run, but more on this latter. Anytime, things could go much worse.
PA
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May 10, 2012 at 10:39 pm |
As an aside, prompted by Old Geezer’s reference to somehow useful plutocrats of yore.
You once wrote that Carnegie held that fortune ought to be taxed a minimum of 50%, with a strong inheritance tax.
This is quite relevant to the current debate over taxation in France and indeed the Eurozone, with local plutocrats and their lower class dupes squealing as if they were being skinned alive. (if only…) (strike that)
Would you have a link or reference to Carnegie’s opinion?
Many thanks in advance!
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May 10, 2012 at 11:16 pm |
Dear Dominique: Old Geezer is entirely correct, as he generally is! Carnegie, the first American billionaire, wrote a famous book, where he advocated and insisted on heavy taxation for the hyper rich, both on income and inheritance.
In “Gospell of wealth”, he says that:
“Indeed, it is difficult to set bounds to the share of a rich man’s estate which should go at his death to the public through the agency of the State, and by all means such taxes should be grated, beginning at nothing upon moderate sums to dependents, and increasing rapidly as the amounts swell, until of the millionaire’s hoard, at least the other half comes to the privy coffer of the State.”
Carnegie’s ideas had a huge influence on other tycoons and USA politicians (or even on the fascist movements, would I venture to say).
Now his ideas have been forgotten… Just as Ike’s 92% tax rate…
We say be soon witness of rather less nice things than the skinning alive of plutocrats, should we not temper the later fast enough. I am thinking of introducing the concept of Merkler, should the pseudo philosophical creature persist in her ways…
Meanwhile Krugman persists with his let’s destroy the euro rampage (not that I disagree with his graphs… As they are facts… I disagree with his solution… Also obviously Merkler’s fate)
Click to access brussels.pdf
PA
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May 11, 2012 at 5:05 pm |
As Ernest Callenbach wrote shortly before his death, “Now in principle, the Big Picture seems simple enough, though devilishly complex in the details. We live in the declining years of what is still the biggest economy in the world, where a looter elite has fastened itself upon the decaying carcass of the empire. It is intent on speedily and relentlessly extracting the maximum wealth from that carcass, impoverishing our former working middle class. But this maggot class does not invest its profits here. By law and by stock-market pressures, corporations must seek their highest possible profits, no matter the social or national consequences — which means moving capital and resources abroad, wherever profit potential is larger. As Karl Marx darkly remarked, “Capital has no country,” and in the conditions of globalization his meaning has come clear.”
I truly sense these are the ends of times as we have known it.
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May 11, 2012 at 9:05 pm |
I think we are rather at a great turning point in history – comparable to Gutenberg’s time. Mass production, which was the vehicle for Western progress for the past 200 years, has shifted to Asia. The West, as a result, has attempted to transform its manufacturing empire into a financial empire. I am not so sure that the West has failed. It has merely hit a snag due to lack of adult supervision during the last 30 years. But with proper controls on banking, and with total control on the sources and transit routes for energy, that western carcass may come back to a new life.
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May 11, 2012 at 9:38 pm |
I fear the issues are far deeper but, of course, would love it if your assessment turned out to be correct. I’ve been given permission to reproduce Callenbach’s last words, coming out on Learning from Dogs next Monday and Tuesday. Your thoughts would be much appreciated, Paul
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May 11, 2012 at 10:22 pm |
Dear OGP: good point. Interesting perspective. However, I think it works better with “Intellectual Property” instead of “finance”.
Also, if the world is the Titanic, and the “snag” the iceberg, this time there are no lifeboats…
PA
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May 11, 2012 at 11:45 pm |
The world is the Titanic. We are maxed out pillaging her resources in the name of “GROWTH”. It remains to be seen if we can make the global economy “grow” WITHOUT more pillaging.
I am thinking massive solar energy projects.
In ONE HOUR, the earth receives solar radiation power equal in magnitude to what its inhabitants consume in an entire YEAR.
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May 12, 2012 at 8:29 am |
Sure. Seems to me at this point massive WPA (FDR’s WORK PROGRESS Administration) solar project, plus a crash program on Thorium reactors, would be the base cautious strategy. That would allow to go all electric (that is more efficient). So an all-electric WPA could be grafted on that, plus efficient homes, very high speed rail (fast enough to compete even with crossing USA with planes, with existing tech)… No need for banksters…
PA
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May 11, 2012 at 10:08 pm |
Dear Paul: Too squeezed in time to give the answer what you wrote deserves. However I claim that the situation we presently have is endowed with a new dimension of evil that Marx did not foresee.
My anger against the obdurate Merkel is rising, as I see her refusing to understand that. I am starting to roll out a new concept: Kanzler Merkler…
She is courting catastrophe increasingly, while being very self righteous. Let’s not forget that Kanzler Hitler claimed to be a man of peace (all day long). OK, Hitler was right, the Nazis insisted, as, after all, he was savagely attacked by France and Great Britain.(Poland, too!)
The present situation is not perceived to be as bad as in the 1930s. Yet, that is wrong. The ecological and energy crisis are now spurs to horror, that did not exist in the 1930s. The craziness in the 1930s was a lot from internal German demons… Something a shrink could have solved. A shrink cannot solve climate and energy.
PA
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May 11, 2012 at 10:17 pm |
Patrice, thank you anyway for your response. Have a relaxing week-end and let’s pick up on such matters next week, Paul
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May 12, 2012 at 3:30 pm |
Dear PA:
I’m with you on the WPA Solar, but not on Thorium. The former is HERE, RIGHT NOW, ready to go. The latter will take half a century to bring from the lab to the grid.
Besides, solar creates electricity without the need for steam or turbines. Just add an inverter and presto.
And NO, we don’t need banksters. We need money, and we need banks, but the present lot on Wall $treet need a good beating.
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May 12, 2012 at 5:13 pm |
Dear OGP: Thorium did work well, more than half a century ago. It’s a much simpler tech than PV solar, that way. The details to figure out are mostly about what the best salts to use are, for most efficient large scale industrialization. Anyway, it’s a moot debate: several countries have national Thorium programs esp. India and China. Thorium will provide the base energy. Age of Thorium will come, one way or another.
Solar too is not perfectly sorted out about how to provide base energy 24 hours a day… Let alone after a week of storms… we can’t build dams everywhere… Although U235/Pu nuke plants already use them (filling them up at night…)
Thorium would not use hordes of WPA… But efficiency industries would, and that’s immediately deployable. One just has to get out of the Wall $treet paradigm…
PA
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May 12, 2012 at 10:36 pm |
Interesting item in today’s Economist about the exciting optoelectronic opportunities of graphene.
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May 14, 2012 at 5:39 pm |
dear Paul: Whatever happens, technology is clearly the way out. Austerity and shrinking, as promoted by many ecologists, will not work. Most of those are fake, anyway, because they shrink from the stiffest reforms. Thanks for telling me, I will have a look, ASAP.
PA
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May 14, 2012 at 10:46 pm |
Patrice, yes and yes! Hope you get to read Callenbach’s last words coming out on LfD at midnight US Mountain Time. Take care, Paul
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May 14, 2012 at 9:23 pm |
Graphene has the power to replace the Indium-Tin-Oxide used on touch screens. Not only is graphene cheaper – it is plentiful, unlike Indium which is one of the scarce elements hoarded by China.
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May 14, 2012 at 11:21 pm |
China has been the whipping boy of the failure of the free market about rare earths… Just mentioned in passing. Graphene is just one atom thick carbon layer (and graphite is made of pieces of it, I guess). It’s 200 times the tensile strength of steel, so it should allow single stage to orbit and 200 pounds cars, etc… Hmm… A 200 pounds BMW may have a problem sticking to the ground… I guess flying cars would be around the corner…
PA
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May 14, 2012 at 11:24 pm |
From CBS News April 4th 2012 – American flying car soars in test flight See link http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505164_162-57409394-10391734/american-flying-car-soars-in-test-flight/
The thought makes me very glad I hung up my pilot’s licence in 2008! 😉
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May 15, 2012 at 12:11 am |
Paul: Why so? At the prospect of planes anybody could operate? (Very light planes, with very advanced electronics, would be very safe and automatic…)
PA
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May 15, 2012 at 3:40 pm |
I might need some convincing of your ‘very safe’ prediction. As the old pilot’s adage goes, “I’d rather be down here wishing I was up there, than up here wishing I was down there!” 😉
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May 15, 2012 at 4:55 pm |
Paul: Not yet there, agreed, but now VW is selling entry cars with automatic safety braking. Once very clever planes can get very light, they would, in their low speed configuration, be very safe. Some Pterosaurs were enormous, and obviously capable of both very high (100km/h +) and very low speeds (as some of the biggest were quadrupedal). They did this by varying their geometry and very low density bodies (full of air). The details are very far from understood yet.
PA
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May 17, 2012 at 1:51 am |
That last post of yours, was deeply unsettling. If we can’t rid politics of the undemocratic connections and influences that abound, then there’s no chance for any of us aboard that spaceship!
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May 17, 2012 at 1:53 am |
The USA used to be an island continent. It’s still a continent, but aboard a spaceship, and the spaceship is in trouble. Mostly because the exploitative mentality ruling the USA provides with an erroneous leadership. See Obama writing his love and admiration for Buffet, as exposed above in: https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2012/05/09/sage-of-obama/
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May 17, 2012 at 3:19 pm |
Patrice, I have always been somewhat sympathetic towards Warren Buffet; primarily because of the way in which he seeks to ease his conscience by giving so much of his useless wealth away (i.e. who could possibly make use of the amount of money he has amassed?) If Jesus were to come back and re-run his encounter with the Rich Man who asked what he must do to enter the Kingdom of Heaven; my guess is that Jesus would engineer a meeting with Buffet.
However, ignoring the fact that he does not actually own the despotic Goldman Sachs, I am concerned to hear that Buffet has also profited at the expense of entire countries through his involvement with the real criminals of our Age – the ratings agencies that are currently controlling the financial chaos in Europe. As I have questioned many times before, how is it that our governments put up with a situation wherein entire governments are held to ransom by unelected people in companies with more turnover than the GDP of many countries?
As for the solution? I don’t see any prospect of that coming from France’s new President; or any other pseudo-Socialist. Socialism is no closer to having an answer to the problem that the growth everyone seeks to get them out of trouble is in fact our ultimate problem. http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/page10834.html
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May 17, 2012 at 3:39 pm |
Dear Martin: Whether Buffet owns or does not own Goldman Sachs is a bit like wondering what is the proper usage of the present tense. Thanks to obvious insider trading with the government, Buffet bought Goldman Sachs in 2008 (and not for the first time!), when the shares had collapsed, and only Buffet knew that the U.S. gov would step in, and save Goldman, after letting Lehman sink. Here are some news from 2011:
“OMAHA, Neb. — The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said Friday it has received regulators’ permission to spend $5.65 billion to repurchase Berkshire Hathaway’s preferred shares in the banking giant.
Goldman said the Federal Reserve has approved its plan to repay Warren Buffett’s company for the $5 billion investment it made at the height of the financial crisis in the fall of 2008.”
As Buffet was paid 10% a year for these shares, he made much more.
What is the basis of your assertion for believing Buffet gives his money away? To my knowledge, he does not. He speaks about it, so his influence can be even greater.
PA
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May 17, 2012 at 3:45 pm |
Dear Martin: There is growth, and growth. Building Very High Speed train lines, or more efficient urbanism reduces human foot print, and increases sustainability dramatically. Without growth, we would repeat the Roman empire’s performance: collapse. But the biosphere would follow, and war would not be with swords, but with nukes, lasers, and lethal genetically engineered synthetic organisms.
Austerity, as presently practiced, is plutocracy unchained, under another name.PA
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May 17, 2012 at 4:07 pm |
The Roman Empire fell because it ran out of countries to conquer and people to enslave. So has modernity.
I believe the German Green Party was right to say, “Greens are neither left nor right; we are out in front”. I also agree with Jared Diamond’s assertion that, rather than invest in potential solutions to our environmental problems, our governments are likely to spend ever-increasing amounts of money trying to prevent their own collapse…
But, am I right to understand you to be arguing that, in asserting that we cannot spend our way out of a global debt crisis, they are also just seeking to maintain their control? Isn’t that just conspiracy theory gone mad? If that is their game, they may well survive the longest but, in the end, Earth systems science will win – and all life apart from extremophile bacteria will be extinguished.
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May 17, 2012 at 4:16 pm |
Dear Martin: A German scholar made a list of 210 reasons for the collapse of Rome. In the last three centuries of its existence, Rome lost 75% of its territory to invasions. And, generously, I count the Imperium Francorum within the Imperium Romanum.
I have an overall, all embracing reasoning about the fall of Rome, which applies very well to our present situation. Societal stupidity, something like that.
You are right that I assert that the dominant discourse about debt is a way to maintain plutocratic control.
A lot of German greens are in (partial) charge of (state) government. In France, ecologists are now in the FEDERAL government, as per an accord made by the PS several months ago.
PA
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May 17, 2012 at 4:19 pm |
Martin: As Diamond also observed, and is well known in Europe, the 14C ecological crisis of Europe and Japan was governmentally solved.(Although he mentioned only Germany, per the usual American pro-Germanoid bias… The French solutions were even more radical.)
PA
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May 17, 2012 at 4:28 pm
You will have to forgive me, Patrice. I had Collapse out of the library for literally months but never got beyond the section on Montana.
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May 17, 2012 at 6:58 pm
Martin: I read all of “Collapse”, and I own it, owning being what the masters do. 🙂 It’s a much better book than the extremely erroneously biased GGS. The details were interesting, and some I did not know. It supports my own theory, SOCIETAL INTELLIGENCE (or lack thereof) COMING SHORT. Controlled flight into terrain, in the case of Rome, followed by lethal disintegration, and invasion by opportunistic vermin. of course plutocracy has a vested interest on the People being as stupid as possible…
PA
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May 18, 2012 at 10:24 am
… and “GGS” is…? 🙂
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May 18, 2012 at 5:15 pm
GGS: Gun, Germs & Steel… Diamond’s erroneous attempt to ascribe European superiority to biological chance and other non intellectual factors, rather than to the truth that the culturally ingrained search for truth was dominant…
PA
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May 18, 2012 at 5:38 pm
Of course. Stupid me. 🙂
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May 17, 2012 at 3:58 pm |
Martin: BTW, the head of the French Ecology party has entered the Hollande government, and has a very important ministery. Everybody in France knows that Germany created massive growth, and jobs, with a massive sustainable energy program.
PA
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May 17, 2012 at 4:25 pm |
I think I am beginning to get it…! My problem is that I have not been thinking laterally…! I have been complaining about the undemocratic power ratings agencies have over our governmentsbut I have also been arguing for austerity on the grounds that we cannot afford to lose the confidence of those ratings agencies … Talk about the left-hand not knowing what the right-hand is doing…!
OK, so, I agree that investment in green technology needs to be seen as – just that – an investment… But, what you are talking about is not just a Franklyn D Roosevelt-style New Deal – it would be nothing short of a new World Order… If so, how do we disempower the institutions the plutocracy has installed to ensure its own self-preservation?
This is the sort of thing some people think JFK was assassinated for attempting… All of a sudden, I feel, saving the planet just seems to have become much much harder…
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May 17, 2012 at 6:42 pm |
Dear Martin: the reconsidering of your position honors you. It’s hard to do, we intellectuals, and just survivors on a sick planet, have to learn to be pleased by recognizing our mistakes.
Yes, pleasing the rating agencies is just pleasing Buffet, their owner, a man, who, like Obama, thinks worth is money, and investing makes bucks. Here, on this planet investing means saving ourselves.
Right now we have no choice; either we change, or we die. Hollande’s slogan is:”Le Changement, c’est maintenant.” (Change is now.)
It’s a complicated world. Under Sarkozy, the creature of plutocracy, France borrowed at 2.8% to private banks. Yesterday, though, under the commie, welfare state, socialist big spender Hollande, France borrowed 13 billion dollars to private banks at 1.72% (Germany is at 1.42%). Spain is above 6% (although its overall debt is much less than France or Germany)…
Right now funding big efficient green infrastructure projects will be free for France, as long as inflation does not collapse below zero… Let it be.
The turning of one of the great power towards growth is a major event (however, as I said, the socialists, leftists and greens have to win the legislatives, and polls, a few weeks ago, did not give them a win).
PA
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May 17, 2012 at 4:06 pm |
Jesus would tell Buffet:”First, stop lying and dissembling!”
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May 18, 2012 at 4:37 pm |
Patrice, that was such a generous, and profound, thing to write when, in reply to Martin, you penned, ‘the reconsidering of your position honors you. It’s hard to do, we intellectuals, and just survivors on a sick planet, have to learn to be pleased by recognizing our mistakes.’
I may ponder on that and see if I can drag a post out from my musings! Certainly the notion that reconsideration of a position is honourable is worth being head-lined! Paul
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May 18, 2012 at 5:04 pm |
Dear Paul: I think that realizing one’s own intellectual mistakes ought to be more than honorable. We should learn to make it pleasurable. A new moral command, for the Third Millennium!
PA
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May 18, 2012 at 6:29 pm |
Even better – much better!
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May 20, 2012 at 1:08 pm |
Hey, I’ve nominated you for the One Lovely Blog Award,
http://totheendofhope.wordpress.com/2012/05/20/7-things-you-probably-never-wanted-to-know-about-me/
After clicking the link copy the award picture and directions into a post, write seven things about yourself, select ten blogs that you would like to nominate and link them in the same post.
Hope to keep reading your work 🙂
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May 20, 2012 at 2:10 pm |
Hello Sherryn! Thanks! As your own blog is most lovely, you are very qualified to bestow such an award, and I am honored. I will try to do so ASAP, although I am pretty stuffed with a cloud of chores immediately ahead, let alone a cold probably acquired in a CO2 flying machines, as I have indulged in that sin recently…
PA
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May 20, 2012 at 3:44 pm |
Oh really? So, now it is called “One Lovely Blog Award”? This makes me more convinced than ever that what used to be called the “Versatile Blogger Award” is just the blogosphere equivalent of a computer virus designed to waste peoples’ valuable time and clog up the system with ephemeral nonsense.
Please don’t take offence at this Sherryn; I am not attacking you. I am just very frustrated by this kind of stuff – which no-one seems able to stop – and which I put so much effort into conforming with – before realising I had been duped by a scam.
All I will say, Patrice, is that you now have evidence as to the reality; proceed with caution.
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May 20, 2012 at 11:27 pm |
haha Alright since you’re a seasoned blogger, I’ll take your word for it.
I just received this award on one of my posts and felt I’d be polite and pass it along. But really I don’t see the harm with letting other people know you admire their work.
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May 20, 2012 at 11:37 pm |
Sherryn also nominated Learning from Dogs and I was flattered! Her own Blog http://totheendofhope.wordpress.com/ is very much ‘onside’ so I’m happy to participate. Seems to me that the freedom we all have to ‘blog’ has to include the freedom for some to spam us, and I’m not pointing the finger at this fair, young Aussie lass! Paul
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May 21, 2012 at 2:14 am |
Sherryn’s blog is very interesting and genuine. Too many people are paid, and have been trained to, express canned thoughts. The force of writers who are not paid, and are not engaged in a career, is that they write because they have something to say, not somebody to feed, or some masters to please… It’s quite a bit like the difference between prostitution and love… Both of course very valuable… But not as valuable, and, in any case, not the same…
The worldwide web is allowing us to harness the full brain power of all of mankind, not just men-kings and prostitutes…
PA
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May 20, 2012 at 11:49 pm |
I am not one to spit on compliments…
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May 21, 2012 at 7:39 am |
You all seem to misunderstand me. I was very flattered to be nominated myself and I am not mocking any of you. I am just pointing out that I found it very time consuming to comply with the “requirements” for accepting the award; and I believe that it is just a rouse designed to waste peoples time and clog up the system. Saying all of this does not mean that I think anyone involved (myself included) is unworthy to be praised for what they do. Quite the opposite.
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June 18, 2012 at 11:49 pm |
[…] after careful conspiracies which seem to have the support of the president of the USA (as he sings the praises of the most successful conspirators, the so called “Sage of Omaha”: different countries […]
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July 2, 2012 at 12:32 am |
[…] Development, is exemplary of their contempt for life. So what do they admire? As my essay “Sage of Obama” demonstrated, they admire the creatures who have sustainable power, even if based on […]
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July 13, 2012 at 10:19 pm |
[…] I documented in “Sage of Obama” Obama’s mood of embarrassing adulation of riches. That deep desire to confuse […]
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August 4, 2012 at 4:57 pm |
[…] are desperate, begging for money. And people asked: what did you give us for our money, Barack? Odes to banks and the world’s richest men? The citizens of the USA are treated as if they were three years […]
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September 26, 2012 at 9:34 pm |
[…] godfather, seems to have replaced his father in Obama’s fertile imagination. (See my “Sage Of Obama“.) Everybody wants a dad, and it’s tempting to go for the mightiest dad. Upon this flaw […]
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October 14, 2012 at 5:41 pm |
[…] blatant. But they are not prosecuted. The supposedly democratic USA president sings their praises (see Obama making criminal conspirator Buffet into god… in supposedly leftist […]
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