BAD LEADERS CAN RUIN A CIVILIZATION.
Sarkozy Made Merkel Crucially Bad. Most Big Powers Despise The Biosphere Officially. Obama Loves Fire.
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Abstract: Three Italians named Marios have put Merkel on the ropes. It turns out, as the head of the German Socialists pointed out in parliament, six weeks after the presidency went to a socialist in France, conservative Merkel changed her music completely. She signed on measures she had insisted were against the German constitution. Such as the mutualization of the cost of defaulting banks (why should that be will be made clear below).
Not just that, but, having fallen in a trap the French socialists set for her, Merkel has already modified the German CONSTITUTION, to please them. Overnight, literally. (As I had predicted would happen.)
Americans don’t even remember when their constitution was changed last. Actually the USA does not change its constitution, just details, by “amending” it. The lack of change is built-in as the USA has NO constitutional court (strictly speaking, thus explaining SCOTUS‘ fear to be seen playing with the constitution). France and Germany, having learned from the past, have constitutional courts, and that is helpful as European construction requires continual constitutional changes.
There are broader lessons in this. If just one man, a small man who ran all the time, after his own legs, the French Nicholas Sarkozy, could, all by himself, put Europe and even the world, in a huge financial crisis, how many of these dangerous mongrels are out there?
If one lover of private bankers, Sarkozy, arrogant in his rabid stupidity, could, all by himself, keep hundreds of millions oppressed throughout Europe, how come more people are not waking up to throw similar rascals out?
It is interesting to observe that the dividing line is not so much between left and right, but between those who think the state should serve the richest folks for all to see, and those who aspire to more subtlety. The fact that the French socialists conspired instantaneously with the conservatives in Spain and Italy shows this.
What Sarkozy and Merkel did, was to enable further ruin of national states in Europe. As there is no European Federal state, that came down to transferring ever more power to those who manage the globally corrupt financial system and those who profit from it, the global plutocracy and its servants.
Similarly, the contempt of the most influential leaders for the biosphere, evident from their absence at the Rio United Nations Conference On Sustainable 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 criminal practice, upon most of the People (see also PM Cameron below for insufferable hypocrisy). This is another drawback of representative “democracy”: it selects the leadership of those who crave for power, amutually admiring society.
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THOSE WHO ADMIRE CRIME SHALL LIVE AS SERFS:
As long as one insists that mafiosi are good fellows, one will not get rid of the Mafia. So it was in the USA: the mafia was flourishing, until a number of movies (Including the aptly named “The Godfather“, and “Good Fellows“) demonstrated to the vast public that mafiosi, although charming in many ways, and craving for honor, were not just pillars of society, but disgusting criminals perverting all of society.
That new found revulsion gave justice and law enforcement the necessary context and encouraging mood to treat the criminals, as the criminals they were.
The same job remains to be done in global finance. As long as one insists that global finance mafiosi are good fellows, one will not get rid of the global finance Mafia. Justice will come, only after a mood of revulsion will set in.
The criminal problem posed by global finance is of course not of the same order of magnitude as the Mafia. The Mafia never brought the entire world economy to a halt, and never threatened the biosphere as we know it, with extinction. Global finance and its allies do. The danger they present is immensely greater. (I have also argued forcefully that global plutocracy was behind the various fascisms of the 1930s, including Stalinism, as Lenin himself foresaw!)
Some have made the additions, and found that the 2008 banking crash (which is still unfolding) was 100 times greater than the Savings and Loans banking crash in the USA under Reagan and Bush I. However in the latter case, more than 10,000 prosecutions and 1,000 condemnations against bank managers were obtained.
Under Obama, so far, none. Where there is a will, there is a way. However, microbes don’t even need a will to find a way.
Just watch most of the global finance loving leaders: they did not even bother to go to the Rio de Janeiro world ecological summit. Of the important world leaders, only the French socialist president Hollande showed up. The other permanent members of the UN Security Council do not worry about the security threat presented by the rising of the seas. Germany’s Merkel, anxious to build another 26 new coal plants, of course did not show up either. Fossil fuel Merkel will be fondly remember when Hamburg fights the rising ocean.
Thousands of the most important men in global finance should not be lionized as Obama did with Warren Buffet, or Dimon, or Rubin, Summers (See “Sage of Obama”). The mood of blind admiration for financial pirates has to be changed. By the way, such a change of mood happened with piracy, four or three centuries ago.
Piracy had started honorably (lettres de marque, corsairs). Francis Drake, who discovered the San Francisco Bay and beat off the Spanish Armada, was, with his colleagues, a corsair, a type of pirate. 150 years later the mood changed, because the pirates had gone too far, taking over entire island, making trade difficult for everybody. Then the states actively suppressed piracy. It did not take long, once Britain and France took the decision to do so: pirates were found, and hanged, from the Carribean, to the Indian ocean.
We are in a similar situation with financial piracy today: if the states cracked down, it would be over in a matter of weeks.
Actually, come to think of it, there was an even more spectacular precedent. Under the late Roman republic, preoccupied by civil war between the Populares and the plutocrats, piracy grew in the Mediterranean, to the point that there were pirate cities, pirate islands, and trade was being extinguished. When finally the distracted Roman government was forced to focus on the problem, it gave full powers to a young Pompeius Magnus to clean the Mediterranean of the pirates. It took him only three months, to everybody’s amazement.
Something similar happened in the Mediterranean, again, when France and Britain, shamed by the Navy of the USA, also took action against the pirates in Algiers and Tripoli. It is important to remember that what the naive and ignorant describe as simple colonial adventures did not start that way at all, but instead as military operations against imperialism (Napoleon in Egypt!), or against piracy (US Navy against Libya, then, decades later, Royal Navy against Algiers’pirates, followed, finally, another decade later, by French invasion… Or counter-invasion, as the French argued they represented Rome, which had been chased out by the Arab invasion of the late 7C).
So mankind has to learn to view financial plutocrats as the criminals they are. Common people do not know that global finance has set-up a machine to divert all of the world money to itself. Instead, in their naivety, they attribute what is criminal to a form of genius. One is reminded of the Bible, where the people chose to save the king of the bandits rather than the righteous Christ.
Common folks are mystified by global finance, as practiced today. They cannot know that it is just organized crime, because the machine is hidden behind non linear mathematics, and common people don’t know mathematics, even much simpler than that.
The Godfather, as incarnated by Marlon Brando or Warren Buffet has undeniable charm, the fascist instinct in man wants such a grandfatherly leader, but that’s exactly what the state of law is not.
The huge and prestigious banks Barclays, which has its own skyscraper in London, was found to have manipulated interest rates to its own interest, illegally. It was condemned to a fine of more than 360 million Euros. But its chairman stayed in place.
Curiously the daemons at the head of JP Morgan and Barclays, are named Dimon and Diamond. The former went to the USA House and Senate with giant presidential cuff links. The questions were polite: the senators and Congresspersons are on his payroll. And the other daemon, Diamond, in Britain, made sure to give to charity, for schools, millions.
They steal billions from taxpayers, and then give millions, and get to be called “philanthropists”. Singer Bono, for example, is a philanthropist; he makes billions from facebook, while singing about the poor, to enrich himself, and showing off with the president and other friendly plutocrats and their obsequious servants.
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WITHOUT SARKOZY THE DISSEMBLER, MERKEL CRUMBLES:
Meanwhile the plutophile Merkel suffered a heavy defeat at the hands of the coalition led by Socialist France. Let me explain.
Mario Draghi was for six years a partner at Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs has been in the habit of making partners in its lucrative organization Europeans with high responsibilities (such as EC commissioners, some German, or central bankers, such as Draghi). This way they can be paid, for their attention while serving Goldman as apparently independent agents. Goldman thus rewards those who had its interests at heart.
The drawback for global finance, is that such officials, should they betray the criminals, know the method of the global financial Mafia, and where some the bodies are buried.
Draghi is now head of the ECB, the European Central Bank, and he suggested in June 2012 that a European Banking Union was needed. As it is now, when a bank fails the state the bank nominally belongs to, is supposed to step in. This is unrealistic, as the banks in Europe straddle borders heavily.
For example Italian banks owe more than 310 billion euros to French banks. German banks owe more than 200 billions to French banks, about what British banks owe to French banks, and French banks owe more than 125 billion euros to German banks. meanwhile British banks owe nearly 400 billions euros to German banks. Those who want to amuse themselves with these numbers can consult the BBC website (with its apparently misleading title, “Eurozone debt“, or is it a Freudian slip that, after all, to tell the real truth, Britain is in the Eurozone?).
Financial markets responded favorably to the June 28-29 maneuver, with Irish borrowing costs for 10 years dropping to their lowest level since the month before the November 2010 EU-IMF bailout.
The maneuver consisted into creating, soon, a European equivalent of TARP. So in the future, when a bank will fail, a common European fund will europeanize it (in contrast with nationalizing it).
“It is a first step to break the vicious circle between banks and sovereigns,” said European Council president Herman Van Rompuy.
Verily this circle is worldwide, even the Chinese Premier admitted that much… About supposedly communist China: he explained banks too big to fail, even in China, got their way, and that had to change.
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MERKEL’S HUMILIATION:
The evening started badly for Merkel, who had hysterically celebrated the victory of Germany over Greece the week before (in the soccer cup). An Italian named Mario, black like charcoal, scored twice against Germany. Then he rushed to kiss his (white) mama, who had adopted him from Ghana at age two. Very touching.
Under Hitler, Germans whose fathers had been black French army soldiers, were forcibly sterilized to the German population’s rabid applause, characteristic of scared rodents. There were several thousands of those unfortunate mixed race Germans (as manly French soldiers occupied Germany a bit after the later refused to pay for its wanton and deliberate destruction of France and Belgium in 1914-1918).
Many Germans will say;”Oh, this was then, this is now, we Germans don’t revisit the past, and think guilt is passe'”. Well, now came from then. Some of what German officials said in recent weeks proved this again. Bundesbank official talked about the Greeks as if they were dogs. Just like then. Germans do not own the Greek currency anymore in 2012 than they did in 1941.
1941 was the year when Germany invaded Greece to extricate the army of the fascist Mussolini from its invasion of Greece in 1940, which had backfired. The Greeks were defeated by Hitler, but, just as the Battle of France a year earlier, the Battle of Greece caused enormous losses to the German armed forces. So, a few weeks later, it was a much diminished German army that attacked the USSR. For example the German paratroop corps was eliminated while taking over Crete, and would reappear, much diminished, only during the Vercors Battle of Spring 1944, the diversion insurrection that allowed D Day in Normandy to proceed (by diverting 20,000 elite German troops, including SS paratroopers).
There are human rights abuses in Germany now, some major ones, such as no minimum wage. One cannot claim to be superior when one uses slave labor, same as then. Does our children ever learn, as G.W. Bush, grandson of one of Hitler’s most famous collaborator, Prescott Bush, would say.
So back to Merkel. After the terrible black Mario had scored twice against the Mannschaft (“the team”), there she was meeting with the 26 other leaders of Europe. What an evening!
Suddenly, the conservatives in Spain and Italy made a united front. At 11pm, they said they were not signing the document they had in front of them. For all the talk of Germany’s crushing superiority, Spain’s Rajoy and Italy’s Mario Monti represent more than 100 million people, and more GDP than Germany.
At that point, unheard of in a European Union summit, ever, a leader rose and left. French president Hollande stepped out, in an implicit support to Spain and Italy. Merkel could not call on her mighty ally. She was all alone. where was Sarkozy the plutophile, when she needed him?
Several hours later, Merkel, and the plutocrats she represents, capitulated. Banks in need will henceforth be Europeanized, getting money directly from the ECB (thus not increasing the debts of states such as Italy or Spain anymore). Hollande came back, and signed. Merkel looked haggard. Two defeat at the hands of “super Marios” in 12 hours…
When Merkel went back to her Parliament to get the two thirds majority she needs to change the German Constitution, the (physically large) chief of the Socialists (she needed to sign on) ironically observed that what she declared, two weeks earlier, to be anti-Constitutional, now that the French socialist controlled the National Assembly, she pushed to make it into law.
Evil men can hide behind regulations, or lack thereof, but they can’t escape the justice of history.
To tell us there are no banksters does not help. One cannot stop the Mafia, if one call Mafiosi, good fellows.
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WE CONSPIRE & HATE THE BIOSPHERE, What’s Your Problem?
If just Sarkozy could prevent progress on a banking union, what can a conspiracy of anti-ecological leaders do? At the Rio ecological summit, where the subject was saving the biosphere, none of the most major leaders were present, except, once again, France’s socialist president Hollande.
Dr. Merkel went back to Germany, busy, as she is, to build 26 new giant coal plants. Australian leaders did not show up: after all Australia lives off coal sold to Asia. Putin runs a petro-gas state. China breathes coal and the mercury vapor burning coal provides with, perfumes the atmosphere, forgive our mental retardation. Obama beams from fracking and the plutocrats he feeds, just as they feed him.
British PM Cameron is beyond any decent description: he now fights what he calls a “culture of entitlement“, by removing subsidies to those who cannot afford lodging. I guess, he fights himself, as he was born with ten gold spoon in his mouth. PM Cameron inherited a considerable entitlement, he is in the know. And see: he does not need help, this is the proper culture of entitlement.
Cameron’s father was a stock broker and then an off shore fund manager, presumably not to pay more taxes; an ancestor was king; the Sunday Times Rich List compiler Philip Beresford, said: “I put the combined family wealth of David and Samantha Cameron at £30 million plus. Both sides of the family are extremely wealthy.” Yes, let’s fight the entitled, Camie boy!
Meanwhile the USA is experiencing record high temperatures, fires are burning, Obama shows off with the muscular firefighters among the smoldering ruins. No need for a carbon tax, we are already burning. Pathogens make history. The Arctic icepack is tracking at record lows. The poles are melting, the plutocrats are reigning, what could go wrong?
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Patrice Ayme
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
July 2, 2012 at 6:50 pm |
JMcG
As for the banking union, I don’t know precisely what the constitutional issues are but it needs to happen. What’s constitutional for the EU at large and what’s constitutional for individual countries are different thing with different political debates.
Constitutional courts are not immune to political influence. They just pretend to be so. If a banking union is not put into practice the EU is going to fall apart and it’s going to keep getting more expensive and more damage will be done to the economy in Europe as the crisis continues. No one wants to give up sovereign power but it’s simply necessary to have both a fiscal union and a currency union.
A lot more damage to the EU economies is obviously not what everyone wants. If there’s a better alternative than all of the member states agreeing to outside, joint supervision of the banks I haven’t heard it.
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July 2, 2012 at 7:42 pm |
Dear Jeff: So we agree on banks.
A vaguely related matter is the question of national parliaments. They make laws, so they are reluctant to cede any power. The only way out is to have the EC commission in Brussels being under tighter control of EU parliament, and also parliament to have a representation more proportional to countries’ sizes (why has germany 30% more seats than France, with barely 22% more population, while France, with 10% more population than Italy, has the same number of seats as the UK and Italy?). The European Council also vastly over-represents small nations: Malta has 10% of the voting power of Germany, or France, or the UK, or Italy, with only 1/200 of the population. As Germany, France, UK, Italy get 29 votes, Malta, if in proportion, should get about 1/10 of one vote. Portugal or Greece get about 40%, each, of the votes of Germany, with 15% of the population…Smaller countries should be encouraged to get in coalitions, instead.
Ok, got to run now! More later!
PA
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July 3, 2012 at 3:00 am |
Good Lord – Patrice – what a ‘soup of thoughts’?
The ‘biosphere’ with lot’s of ‘Merkel and Sarkozy’ – a little bit of ‘Hitler’ and the whole thing spiced with playing Fussball. And I also love myself some refernces to the ‘beautiful game’ but I think you GOT to know what team you are ‘playen’ for?
Now – MY team are basically the Spaniards – because they are such awesome players – but Merkel isn’t that bad either. And people who are not very familiar with soccer probably wouldn’t understand the importance of her ‘strategic’ role. But she ads something to the game YOU need to ponder – and let me help you by adding a few comment to the soup I lately read on a threat on Wapo:
A dude wrote:
“I believe that income inequality has gotten out of hand, I believe marijuana and other “soft drugs” should be legalized, I believe in equal rights for gay people, I believe in green energy, I believe in universal health care and affordable education for all, and I’m an atheist. So why do I support Germany against liberal icons such as Kuttner and Krugman?
Because I’m a European and I know Krugman and Kuttner are projecting America’s problems on Europe. They believe Merkel is anywhere near the American GOP on the political compass, they believe Greece and Italy are victims of a 1%, unaware of the corrupt cultures of these countries. They have no idea of the sacrifices Northern Europe has brought and is still bringing to survive Asian competition, handle dwindling natural resources and prepare for the babyboomer generation’s coming retirement and subsequent onslaught on national health care systems. It hurts when Americans accuse us of having no solidarity: we who spend much more on development aid then the United States, we who do grant universal health care, affordable education and a functioning (and increasingly green) infrastructure to our people without indebting our children, we who have already helped out Southern and Eastern Europe in the past.
AND I approve this message!
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July 3, 2012 at 4:38 am |
Dear Pieceofcake: And a good message it is, indeed! I read the Krugman hysteria yesterday on Armaggedon, I mean, Euromaggedon, and I sneered. What he is really afraid of is that his guy will lose. Krugman is afraid that Europe will slow down further. Actually the French socialists, now in total control, are apparently firmly decided to be much more austere and rigorous than Sarkozy.
They are slamming on the brakes. Looking at their numbers, the Cours des Comptes (Accounting Court, an independent body) saw a big hole, something like 50 billion Euros, in the Sarkozy circus, and they advised the socialists to fill it with, half taxation, half austerity.
Krugman is terrified that, as France slams on the brakes, with the UK in an increasingly deeper recession, and Southern Europe collapsing, that the USA will slip in recession, and Romney will be elected. I sent a commentary along your lines, that there was lots of solidarity in Europe, but the New York Times apparently censored it.
Maybe there are lots of tax cheat in Italy, but Italy is increasingly catching them (along the roads, checking expensive cars!). I also know what I consider to be (legal) tax cheat in… Deutschland (yes, I know quite a few people in Germany).
In Greece the shipping magnates and the super rich church pay no tax. It’s legal, and it has to stop. But, in Germany, some of the Mittelstand live a bit too well too, perhaps. Having no minimum wage is a Teutonic and titanic shame.
My real beef with Merkel is that she has been milking the crisis to what she views as her advantage. The “aid” comes right back to non southern banks. Real solidarity has to come out now. No more games. Fact is, too, now that she went from Merkozy to simply Mer, she looks haggard and she had to cross the Rubicon of accepting mutualization. It should have been done way earlier, say four years ago. Ireland, Greece, Portugal have been victims. Their debt has to be reviewed in light of this. The buck has now stopped coming back to Merkel. a lot needs to be done. Certainly Greece, in exchange to making the hyperrich and the church pay, ought to see much of her debt extinguished… Until it becomes serviceable. No use shearing the sheep so much that one takes the skin out too.
Many of the banks are doing poorly because they speculated on instruments that should not exist. Let’s erase all that.
And take the banks over, and prosecute and expropriate their managers, and the attending hedge fund managers, including the Belgian financial profiteer building a 40 million euros house down a bit from mine… Funny how fate does things well… I have an example below my nose…
PA
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July 3, 2012 at 10:46 am |
Dear Patrice – See – and now it gets complicated – because if Obama is ‘his guy’ -(Krugmans) – you could call him -(Obama) ‘my guy’ too! And not because he did everything right – BUT – like Merkel and Hollande – I believe that all three of them truly want the best for ‘their people’ -(and not SO much for themselves) – and that’s pretty rare in a very selfish -(and crazy) world. Dont’ya think?
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July 3, 2012 at 7:20 pm |
Dear pieceofcake: Well, long story. I worked hard for Obama, at a time, for more than two years, when Krugman supported strongly Clinton, not Obama. My old site, Tyraonosopher sounds like Obama’s rhetoric, and some third parties have said, not by accident. I did not change. However, Obama’s policy has changed from the change the rhetoric promised. Yet, I understand the need for lots of Machiavellism (as I advocated in Tyranosopher).
You can believe what you want about the inner motivations of the three leaders you mention. Obama became a multimillionaire long ago, even before he wrote his first book, he lived like one. Four in house servants when a boy in Indonesia, living in their own domicile, on the grounds. Not to say that thoose who live well are inferior. One needs to live well, just for superior thinking.
I don’t knoe anything much about Hollande, except, when he was a little boy, many witnesses said he was going around saying he would be president, making people laugh (even ten years ago). Same with Obama.
So here we have two cases of little boys who wanted to become big chiefs. Does not strike me as non “very selfish”. Quite the opposite. Something else: I did work a lot, behind the scenes, at the Obama campaign, sacrificing an entire year, and more (tons of money, book writing, fighting the campaign that he was a Muslim, etc.). It was a family matter, as some of the people closest to me, knew Obama for decades. Some of these people were right wing (signed picture of G.W. Bush on their desk).
I persuaded them to organize fund raisers for Obama, and more. When Obama became president, he took a very hard right wing turn, and I thought this was exactly NOT what the doctor ordered (that would be me). The financial sector needed to be gutted into submission, but the opposite happened.
Then, to my amazement, as I emmitted critiques, some people I knew had always been extreme right wing, accused me to me a right wing traitor racist against their dear leader (I am zero racist). Family relations suffered… some of these opportunists have even refused to even see my daughter, once, and claim they can’t be found in a city where I would be found.
You seem to have a love of the leaders, and admiration for them, and to view these as admirable traits. i don’t, quite the opposite.
There are leaders and leaders, anyway. These are political leaders. Who cares? Intellectual leaders are much more important for civilization. The greatest political leaders were both politicians and intellectuals: Solon, Themistocles, Caesar, Julianus, Clovis, Guillaume Le Conquerant, Henri IV, etc. An intellectual forges new ideas.
A political system which rests on kings is vicious. Many ancient Germans, pre-Roman, would have assassinated Merkel right away, as they would called her a queen, and monarchs, they killed (Harminius, tritor-hero of the Teutoburg Wald was killed for just that reason). Sarkozy is a plutophile criminal, who pushed merkel to crime, as i tried to explain in my latest essay, Sarkozy’s brother just the same, etc. I used to believe merkel was honest, by the way. At best, she was manipulated by Sarko. Hopefully the later is going to jail. There is a need.
We need to learn from the more direct democracy in Switzerland, and go way beyond. It’s clear to me that the present system selects for psycopaths.
PA
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July 3, 2012 at 2:59 pm |
I’ve read this Post two times. This morning aloud to Jeannie over a morning cup-of-tea. There is so much to reflect on within these words that I have had trouble making a specific comment (as these wandering words exhibit!).
Ultimately, all we can hope for is that this new world of sharing and debating will, as in WILL, bring about the end of this piracy through the mass realisation of what is happening to honest and decent people worldwide.
That theme and the inspirational talk by Don Tapscottis is the subject of my post today, see http://learningfromdogs.com/2012/07/03/hope-via-openness/
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July 3, 2012 at 4:04 pm |
Dear Paul! Thanks for the appreciation. I think the key to commenting on subjects is to focus on a particular aspect, and that is actually how debate deepens, by providing strategic depth. I have had lots of parental and related doctor issues to attend to yesterday, so I was off, but I will will try my best to focus on LfD later… Krugman was back on iceland in his blog, to fend off a “remarkable stupid attack”… But he still does not adress my points, an example of unfinished debate…
More later, rushing out with baby now…
PA
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July 3, 2012 at 8:56 pm |
Dear Patrice – sometimes I take my bike and take a ride over the border to Switzerland and I drive by a mosque and each time it reminds me that Swiss democracy pulled the plug on mosque-building – and no hard feelings – perhaps a lot of Swiss thought mosques didn’t fit in -(architecture-wise) – with Swiss cutsieness but then – on the other hand – the Swiss also destroyed a lot of their towns so thoroughly with bad architecture that the mosque looks kind of cute compared to the ugly Beton. And what I wanted to say – not only leaders -(Sarkozy) are hard to take – there is a lot of stupidity in the votes of the people too! And now I don’t want to mention Bush and all these other idiots who only became leaders because ‘the people’ wanted them. And I’m just happy – if from time to time some ‘leaders’ seem to rise above the level of a distressed democracy. Because when democracies get distressed they -(sometimes) – have this tendency to vote for the weirdest things… and then even dudes who think they are ‘leaders’ are nothig else than… ‘mosques’!
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July 3, 2012 at 9:33 pm |
Dear Piecofcake; Good point about the mosques! The functioning of Swiss democracy is one thing, the fact that the Swiss have a cote’ Cretins des Alpes another. (Not only am I an African, but, moreover I am an Alpine type… Living in far off mountain valleys make people strong, but also rebarbative)
I am not saying that the direct democracy in Suisse is enough, far from it. The Suisse system is closer to France than ancient Athens. And of course, the neutrality of Schweiz in WWi and WWII was, and is, purely and simply, a shameful, cowardly, civilization-denying atrocity.
The US Air Force had to “accidentally” destroy ball bearing factories in Schweiz that were crucially helping Hitler’s forces to be all they could be (after the US Air Force had systematically ravaged such factories in Deutschland).
And of course, the Athenian direct democracy turned out completely incoherent, insane, self contradictory, and thoroughly Auschwitzian at some point (that’s why they lost the war with Sparta). Athens’ behavior was used as a well known argument against democracy until 1789…
However, the system we have now just does not work. it’s heading us toward the greatest atrocity ever, the Collapse of the Biosphere, now in progress. The solution is not decision as much as education.
The Swiss referendum on mosques was idiotic in appearance (mosques were built long before in Suisse, without any waves; Muslims came to Switzerland more than 1,000 years ago!). In truth, I think people wanted to draw the line somewhere: OK, you Muslims want an assymetric relationship? You will not get it. here, get some of your own medicine. Indeed in the heart of heart of Wahhabist war, I mean jihad, Saudi Arabia, non Muslim cults are forbidden.
Some of the most beautiful works of man I have seen in the world were mosques. I wish some day, i could return to Isfahan. Such beauty forces respect.
Ironically minarets are imitations of Christian churches’ towers, and they have kept the ancient shapes in Africa.
PA
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July 4, 2012 at 6:04 am |
A bit OT but you gave me an opening: Wahabism has once again proven its basic enmity to Islam in Mali, by destroying ancient Muslim shrines. I am extremely fortunate to have seen the glory (bit dusty though) that was Timbuktu, and the even more splendid mosque in Jenne. The destruction of the timeless Buddhas in Afghanistan by their Shi’ite Taleban cousins thus is seen to fit into a pattern. Countless, ageless manuscripts are kept in Timbuktu… under nominal UNESCO protection… enough said.
These fanatics do live in austerity, at least at follower level. But it is well known their leaders are actively engaged in massive trafficking, money laundering and other pastimes of the plutocrat. Their objective complicity with Western leaders has to be highlighted. Especially as it explains why the War on Terror has been such a disaster: it has been designed to be so, with extensive use of utterly inadequate state of the art weaponry, the one and only purpose of which is to bleed dry the treasuries of nations pressed into NATO service.
Thinking of all those places on the planet where I once walked in full safety, and are now the province of that rabid sub-Mafia thanks to our leaders’ inept (sorry… Machiavellian) handling of the terrorist threat, puts me in a foul mood. Sorry. Completely agree with your post btw.
I thought Caesar had been the one to eradicate Mediterranean pirates? the story of how he was held captive by them (on his way back from serving as a catamite to the king of Bithynia) and became their good friend, drinking wine and cracking jokes, is well documented (whether his recent bedtime training was put to use is left to conjecture; he was a cute-looking lad and, his soldiers said later, husband to every wife, and wife to every husband). The joke that was sure to make them roll on the floor laughing their asses off was “Wait! wait! wait until I come back and nail the whole lot of you on crosses!” He did, of course, as soon as he was freed on ransom.
I wonder which European leader is cracking jokes at the pirates, even as his minions are putting the screws on his people to come up with the ransom? (Hint: The Economist is wise to him).
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July 4, 2012 at 7:26 am |
Dear Dominique: The Old Testament (OT) is never off topic (OT) here! Those crazies in the desert are a lot of Lybian soldiers, I suspect. I saw one passing by, holding a giant gun, on top of an SUV, he was even more pink than Merkel… It looked like they just imported him from Murmansk… Their game is not too clear. What is clear, though, is that the West should support the Touaregs who are secular and want an independent state. Give them their state! They were betrayed by the (racist) traitor, De Gaulle, it’s time to do justice. OK, De Gaulle was admirable before and during the Second world War, barring little details like the betrayal in Vercors.
But he got back to power in a plot and conspiracy that broke Franco-Algeria asunder. His reasons were despicable and many died (including in my family, people close to me) because of his treachorous maneuvers. He completely betrayed the Touaregs by cutting in pieces their territories among their enemies. And the Harkis were given to the dogs, as if they were not human. Of course if half of Algeria had moved to France, De Gaulle would have had a problem. A double problem, one of the aspects being that he had racial disdain for the North Africans who fought so well, some of them from 1939 until 1945… An uncle of mine wore the uniform 6 years. As an officer, and fought hard in 1940, even after Dunkirk. Village by village, hedgehog defense, killing many Nazis (that’s when Rommel assassinated hundreds of african troops and their officers).
So De Gaulle gave Tou
My first memories in life were from the Sahara desert, so I feel strongly about the subject. I don’t know too well what is the wisest course in Syria, but, clearly, with the secular Touaregs, the full might of the west should come to their help. I agree with the Machiavellian interpretation. It’s not even like with Rome and the pirates, that was an anecdote.
It’s the Great Pompey (Pompeius Magnus) who got the fullpowers to get rid of the Senate. What happened to Caesar was that he was back east (present day so called Turkey), amusing himself in a spy-seduction mission with the local potentate. After exploits no Hollywood movie would yet condone, he was captured by pirates. He threatened them with death by crucifixion, and when they asked for a ramson, outraged, asked for a much larger one, claiming he was worth so much more. So they got the huge money, he was freed, raised a military force, went back, captured them, and had them crucified. But it was just a matter of his word, as he put an end to their lives very quickly, instead of having them rub on crosses for several days.
Those pirates were on a particular island, Pompey cleaned the entire Med. Pompey was an imperator in his twenties, and was widely viewed as the greatest military genius Rome ever had. But he was nothing relative to Caesar. After he lost to Caesar, Pompey was assassinated in Egypt, as he fled, Caesar had nothing to do with it. If Caesar was here, he would certainly put the banksters to work… Say to settle the moon, or one way tickets to Mars… Caesar was a great specialist of debt and Fiat Money, he obviously hated austerity. Perhaps the best of the Romans, ever. One can look like a plutocrat, and be the exact opposite.
PA
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