What to do in Syria

Putin has intervened militarily in Syria to save his fellow dictator, and increase the probability of global war. The plutocratic principle says that evil rules best. The worst dictators embrace it wholeheartedly. But it’s not just that. It’s also how bad Putin’s rule is doing in Russia. This was all highly predictable. The Russian economy is doing terrible, the part of Russian society which dares express itself, has turned into a Putin adoration cult, and the Master cannot let go, he has gone too far, things are too bad, and too fast. All he needs is war. War in Ukraine has become bogged down by Western, and Ukrainian, resistance. Time to relaunch it somewhere else. What should the West do?

Certainly no-fly zones ought to be imposed by the Western democracies on the bloody, mass murdering dictator Assad (and his Putin ally) in areas where non-Islamist rebels dominate. Any helicopter showing up (to drop barrel bombs or not) ought to be shot down. Similarly non-Islamists rebels ought to be supported maximally (weapons, advisers, etc.) The military means exist to do all of this, the sooner, the more moral.

Master Of Heavens, Earth, the West, and the Rest

What does Putin want? War. Ever more of it. As a fascist dictator, he needs war to justify his fascist rule in Russia. That is spooky: it means that Putin will welcome acts of wars between the Western powers and Russia in Syria. However, there is little choice.

Putin is crafty: he is a trained killer, a KGB master mind (he led the KGB), and his hands are very bloody in Chechnya (where he contributed to kill 20% of the population… and the word “contributed” is kind: Putin may well have instigated the second war there). Putin has just built a mosque in Moscow… where there would be 2 million Muslims. Putin does not want a Muslim problem, so he wants to show those he subjugates he fears nothing, and the West considers him, Putin, a great war chief, whose cause is just.

If one does not fight a small evil, it may amplify, and become uncontrollable. Obama refused a small war. Now he may get a very big one. Meanwhile, Putin will keep pushing.

Patrice Ayme’

Plutocracy’s Tentacles All Over Physics

There is a lot of politics in theoretical physics. Why? Because physics makes people dream, and tells them how to think. Thus, if one wants to make people in advanced countries dream and think wrong, one has to start with physics. Also there is an increasing gap between what technology allows and what legislation forbids, as tech goes ever faster. The crooks work the gap hard. See the Bitcoin story (and the hate mail that goes with it).

That’s how the drug trade was made possible: ultimately all the money has to be laundered. And only the banks can do this. But there were no laws sending bankers to slammers for that, plus lax enforcement. So, in the end a criminal activity, drugs, was rendered possible by another branch of government, banking (dim wits say banks are not part of government).

What lessons can be learned from the presentation of the gravitational-waves story? Ponders Nature (October 14, 2014).

Well, much: the much publicized discovery of Cosmic Inflation was scientific fraud, and it has bit the dust. Yet, it keeps on going. It’s even more than scientific fraud, it’s tax payer fraud: most advanced science, including the prizes (such as Milner prize, see below) is financed by the public (directly or not; so are the plutocratic universities).

Says Nature: “The (welcome) rise of the science blogger has fuelled this navel-gazing. Some bloggers seem to spend most of their time criticizing other science writers, or at least debunking examples of what they regard as inferior science writing. But they do lots of good stuff too. Although traditionalists lament the decline of science coverage in the mainstream press, a terrific amount of analysis and comment, much of it very technical, is happening online under their noses.”

Make no mistakes: it’s not because there are no equations, that it is not technical. An equation, after all, is just a sentence saying that two things that look different are actually the same.

I am notoriously against the Cosmic Inflation Theory (that the universe blew up at 10^10 the speed of light, or so; that is ten billion times faster than c, or more). My reasons are solidly scientifico-philosophical, and have been detailed in many essays previously.

As the evidence for Cosmic Inflation bit the dust, as I had expected, my comments were censored on Quanta Magazine. Silly comments were allowed, so it’s not like the standards are too high.

So I enquired about this bias. I found a possible source quickly. Quanta is financed by the Simons Foundation. (Of course Quanta says they are independent; just like the hand which feeds the pigeon is independent of the pigeon, I guess.)

Jim Simons is a multibillionaire mathematician who built a more than 100 BILLION (yes, with a B, as in billion) dollars business in high frequency trading. Basically Simons has the fastest computers, and employs the brightest mathematicians and physicists. When one has faster computers, and programs, one can make sure money.

This what the best and brightest do these days. Stealing from others, and the faster, the better. A case of degenerating civilization.

It is difficult to explain what the high frequency trading crooks do: their job is exploiting all the loopholes between technique and ethics. They can leverage tremendously some derivative trades (say in the futures market). They can also simultaneously take direct positions extremely fast. The combination is sure profits, by leading the markets where they want them to go, beyond the sight of legislators (who are very happy to be fed caviar by high frequency traders).

In other words, high frequency trading and related derivative activities make the world’s most lucrative organized crime. Except it’s not officially a crime.

The whole thing ought to be unlawful. Just as slavery is unlawful, and for the same reason (because it puts too much power in the hands of too few, making them increasingly vicious, until people really own people as if they were bananas).

Only now, in 2014, American legislators are starting to smell the roses (Simons is a major donor to the Democratic Party). (See note.)

Similarly, the “Double Irish” so many enormous plutocratic corporations use to avoid taxation all together is not an official crime, just a real one.

Simons also worked with his adviser Chern who also created ST Yau. (Together they worked on the Chern-Simons Class; BTW, I also knew Chern.)

It will be interesting to see if I keep on being systematically censored there. The age of computers is also that of unethical behavior rendered particularly easy to implement (see how Mr. Simons made his fortune, although he probably envision himself as a saint, because he gave money to some scientists, tax deductible, of course).

So who is this Natalie W who censored me?

Could she be a chick paid by plutocrats in more ways than one? (As one way is clearly established, through Jim Simons, much respected in scientific circles, because he has trop beaucoup bucks; if you want to be hated and despised in scientific circle, criticize Jim Simons).

Could there be a conspiracy? I quickly found this:

“People Aren’t Smart Enough for Democracy to Flourish, Scientists Say”

By Natalie Wolchover, Life’s Little Mysteries Staff Writer, February 28, 2012.

Natalie says: “The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies.

The research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people’s ideas. For example, if people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify the candidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments.

As a result, no amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them. On top of that, “very smart ideas are going to be hard for people to adopt, because most people don’t have the sophistication to recognize how good an idea is,” Dunning told Life’s Little Mysteries.”

… The most incompetent among us serve as canaries in the coal mine signifying a larger quandary in the concept of democracy; truly ignorant people may be the worst judges of candidates and ideas, Dunning said, but we all suffer from a degree of blindness from our own personal lack of expertise.”

Otherwise said, only plutocrats know who the experts are.

This argument was already used by Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Aristotle thought his friends, lovers and executors, Antipater and Craterus were the best and brightest, they established literal plutocracy in Athens.

Natalie writes nice articles. She knows who is smart. Certainly not those who esteem democracy. Conspirare is breathing together, no need for a plot: conspiracy is better, because impossible to prove (she sat with some of my comments for weeks before rejecting them, no doubt consulting with higher-ups).

A few years back, a Silicon Valley multibillionaire of Russian oligarchic origin, Yuri Milner, funded a three million dollar prize for crazy pseudo-physics, the “Fundamental Physics Prize”. Pseudo-physics has become most of what the public knows as physics. (The Nobel committee revolted against this by giving the prize to a very practical and real invention, blue LEDs.)

“Physics” means “Nature”, and Milner has his own notion of nature. The more un-natural, the better (as one would expect from someone who made his fortune under Yeltsin, after a stint at the World Bank; Milner, like Simons, but not as much, is also a scientist, physics).

Most of the recipients of the Milner prize did not discover anything, they are just experts at self-advertising, and the “discoveries” they made (Cosmic Inflation, The Multiverse, String Theory, all sorts of weird and obscure mathematical, or pseudo-mathematical techniques) actually, well, did not happen indeed. At least not in natural nature.

When Einstein (helped to) elaborate a slightly more sophisticated theory of gravitation than the one co-discovered by Newton, at least he started from a fact of nature: the advance of the perihelion of Mercury, which the “Newtonian” theory could not explain at all (the advance comes from the fact time runs slow next to the Sun).

Most of Milner’s prize “discoveries” are not yet discoveries, and probably never will be.

I am certain though that fabulous prizes were attributed in the Roman Empire for the epicycles theory.

Why am I so sure? The richest intellectuals ever, lived in the Second Century of the fascist plutocracy known as the Roman empire. They were, at best, all mediocre thinkers. Plutocracy can survive only if mediocre thinking triumphs, because plutocracy is mediocre thinking personified.

During plutocracy, a degree of magical and superstitious thinking is entertained. Much modern physics, such as String Theory, Cosmic Inflation, is complete superstition: it stands totally above the world, there is no proof for it whatsoever, it stretches reason beyond words, and it’s not even the first thing to think of in fundamental physics.

Thus it is perfect, because pseudo-physics is a killing field for reason. And that’s why plutocrats love it.

Patrice Ayme’

 

Note on American legislators discovering fraud from Simons and the like: Both Milner (Russia) and Simons are politically connected (& Simons worked for NSA). On July 22, 2014, Simons was condemned by the U.S. Senate for the use of complex barrier options to disguise short term trading (subject to higher ordinary income tax rates) as long-term capital gains. “Renaissance Technologies was able to avoid paying more than $6 billion in taxes by disguising its day-to-day stock trades as long term investments,” said Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), the committee’s ranking Republican, in his opening statement. “Two banks and a handful of hedge funds developed a complex financial structure to engage in highly profitable trades while claiming an unjustified lower tax rate and avoiding limits on trading with borrowed money,” said Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) in his prepared remarks. Nice wake-up, guys! Were you playing sleeping beauty before?

Is Simons going to jail for stealing 6 billion dollars? Don’t hold your breath. Just expect my scientific comments to Quanta to keep on being censored.

New York Vulture Justice

Courts in New York City keep with their hyperactive pursuit of USA domination (or is that simply, New York Financial District domination?) The latest was a decision, now supported by the Supreme Court of the USA (SCOTUS), to torpedo Argentina.

So it’s not just against the French (DSK, BNP, etc.). All too independent Argentina, a country which has the insolence of not accepting Wall Street colonial status, is in the crosshairs. As Argentina does not have the military power of France, it has, with the rest of Latin America, been invited to submit abjectedly.

Argentinian President Is Held Up By Gangster Justice

And obdurate Cuba shall be punished all the way to Paris (the BNP, Banque Nationale de Paris, story: why are sanctions against Cuba “legal” in International Law?).

Thirteen years ago, Argentina, pierced through and through by American banks and machinations, some engineered by Stanford-Harvard-Chicago trained traitors/economists, supported by generals encouraged by USA secret services, defaulted.

That was a shrewd move, economically. And fully morally justified. It was a question of the Argentinian People against exploiting vultures and conspirators.

Argentina, 13 years ago, refused to pay back its debt as planned when it had been contracted (by the traitors trained in USA plutocratic universities… A situation similar to what happened to Russia in the 1990s, when Harvard devils engineered there a self interested plutocracy in which Harvard had a stake!).

Ultimately, 93% of Argentinian creditors accepted settlements with the country, which were less onerous for the country. However, 7% of the creditors refused to bargain. They were typically the richest (allowing them to hold-out), and the worst (they enforced dictatorial conspiracies, a matter of obvious principle for them, vultures keen to make predation rule).

That brought the Appellate Court in New York to decide these Vulture Funds were right (I am sure they pay well, and money is always right, when there is enough of it). The Court, unbelievably, ordered Argentina to stop all payments on its debt… less it pays the hold-outs in this 13 year battle.

The main vulture fund is NML Capital Ltd, owned by billionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Management Corp, and Mark Brodsky’s Aurelius Capital Management. They specialize in junk debt investing. They used their deep pockets to pursue a 13-year legal battle that’s now coming to a conclusion (or so they hope).

NML’s position is between 45 and 50 percent of the payout ordered by U.S. Judge Griesa, and amounts up to a billion, or so.

The good judge does not care that the 2002 default was highly successful for Argentina, and the master work of president Isabella Fernandez (photo above) and her husband (an economic university professor who was elected president at the urging of his Senator wife, above; unfortunately he died of a heart attack).

Perhaps the good judge knows no history, and does not give a hoot, and only loves caviar and songs, as served by Mr. Singer.

Another example of connection between American “justice”, vultures, and force. New York, the world central financial center, is used as a way to advance the interest of USA plutocrats, at the risk of paralyzing the world financial system.

Meanwhile several strange facts surfaced: the evaluation of Greece by the IMF a few years back, when Paul Krugman wanted to dismantle the European Union, were unduly pessimistic, the IMF itself recently admitted.  Great. How many Greeks died because of this?

Remember when top American economists were howling for the end of the Euro? Not only the European currency did not collapse, but now the yield on Spanish long term bonds is lower than that of the USA.

Morality? The cris that cruxed in 2008 is far from over. It’s a war for world domination. It’s fought in American courtrooms (objective accomplices of their pet vultures, or, rather, vice versa), and it’s fought in the court of public opinion. To fight back, well, maybe, judge Bush. It’s not exactly a change of conversation.

If American judges condemn the president of Argentina for saving her country, and punish all of Argentina, maybe Europeans could help the unjustly struck, by condemning a few American master minds, for real international war crimes. With the wrath of real justice.

Oh, by the way, Argentinian bonds, thanks to their high yields, have made a lot of money for private investors. They returned +10% in 2012, while other bonds in the average lost 6%. The total market that the Courts of the USA are trying to torpedo total 100 billion dollars, the payments blocked as we speak are of half a billion. Thus, like Putin, Wall Street is ready to use maximum force to have its way.

Victims who don’t struck back become accomplices of their tormentors. Under president Cristina Fernandez, Argentina has superbly resisted. An example all the more edifying as she is from the supposedly “weaker” gender.  

Patrice Aymé

Suleiman Aleikum: From Mubarak To Moo-Barack

SULEIMAN ALEIKUM: TORTURE WILL MAKE YOU FREE!

***

Abstract: Something funny happened. After decolonization, in many countries, things got drastically worse. In many countries, such as Nigeria (population 152 million), the GDP per head has gone down since the 1960s. Plenty of other things went down too. Although stoning went up.

Of course, some aspects of real colonialism were aspects of plutocracy, and I am not going to defend them. But the entanglement of (mostly) European powers with Third World countries did not reduce to having colons on the ground. Many countries had none (where were the British colonists in India?).

However, in many countries European imperialism was more a form of administration with more or less European standards. Removing the imperial power removed those administrations, and thus many European standards, including those pertaining to justice and fairness.

Who did that removal profit? Well, Americano-European plutocracy profited enormously from decolonization, as it covered the world with potentates it made deals with. Plutocracy was suddenly free to do whatever it wanted, such as buying off local potentates, or even creating them, and ruling through them.

Thus: decolonization often meant plutocratization.

In particular, as early as 1945 the USA made a deal with the Salafist owners of Arabia: Give them Islam, the old fashion way, give us the oil, and we will give you Wall Street, and all the riches you can possibly imagine.

Thus all of North Africa and the Middle East became a giant machine profiting the worldwide plutocratic order, with the tacit approval of the masses of the West, who learned not to ask too many questions, like the Germans of old. Little did they understand that plutocracy would thus gain so much power that it would be able to turn around and master and enslave the West, as it is in the process of doing, modulo the "finance crisis" deal.

Plutocracy is global, the law is local, and thus the former can turn around the later, and enslave the planet.

Some strategists in the USA have become aware that a fresh coat of paint is needed. So they push for the sumptuous idea that Egypt’s torture chief since 1993, as tight an American collaborator as they ever get, be named to replace their old employee Mubarak. The shadow will wander in the light. All by itself. Change you can’t believe in. As usual. Hey, was not American preceding president a would be torturer in chief too? G. W. Bush has been going around, celebrating with gusto his hundreds of torture orders, in the grand tradition of his grand father, who expanded enormously the family fortune through Auschwitz’s slave labor. Pluto reigns over the minds of plutocrats! 

It would be funny if real people were not oppressed, spoiled, tortured, and killed. Just in the recent insurrection, more than 300 people got killed in Egypt.

It would be funny if the financial artists, in the sense that Nero was a self described “artist”, had not put the entire planet at their beck and call.

For once, don’t look at slave work in China. For once don’t look at the way the fossil fuel guys made the planet dependent upon the CO2 addiction. Look instead at how the financial artists have made speculation in food possible by buying off the local potentates. Never mind if some people starve; the glory of Pluto is where it is at.

Man does not rule just with light and reason, but walks the valley of the shadows of death, and become Death, the destroyer of worlds. (Bhagavad Gita, with Bible parroting).

***

WHEN YOU OWN A THIEF, IS THAT ORGANIZED CRIME?

The Mubarak family grabbed at least 70 billion dollars in assets (say the Swiss). The wife, is, by herself, a billionaire. The sons may be so too: they pile up high fancy buildings in some of the fanciest neighborhoods, in places such as London, or Paris. The typical Third World plutocratic family: in the employ of the West, sucking it all up.

Notice that the Mubarak family fortune is roughly commensurate with the size of official American help to Egypt. Does that mean that all taxpayer money is going to a particular plutocratic family? Well, not really: plutocrats can leverage their control of the military, so it is enough to support financially the army, as the USA does, and then the local controllers of the military, encouraged by the world plutocratic order, are free to serve themselves. It could be Jordan or Morocco, so it works. And the Irish government’s decision to have its own taxpayers reimburse private lenders they had no previous connection to, is roughly just as big an example of systemic corruption for all to see (of course the USA, and then the EU, preached by example) .

So indeed, let’s talk about the third world plutocrats, but, well, what about our Western plutocrats? Were they not the ones pulling the strings of nearly all the dictators in Arab speaking countries? Why not a warrant of arrest, or at least a freeze on all (extravagant) properties of the so called leaders of Third World countries?

However, we were told that the Arab speaking countries had it good, because they were dominated by "Islam". It was great that the Arab speaking countries were dominated by "submission", with the benediction of the West. Hence the insistence, by American politician of the greatness of Islam. Good, old fashion Islam, and thus the exploiters of the people celebrate Islam through the Middle Ages (just when it turned into a disaster). It’s the proverbial package deal. Muslims ought to be happy to have these Western sponsored dictatorships, as Islam was a great religion?

True grit, in the West, will be shown when the fight against plutocracy will be joined, by asking for the departure of our own plutocrats, the plutocrats of the West, who are truly leading the world dance of plutocracy. Western plutocrats pull the strings of Western politicians, and, from there, the strings of Third world plutocrats (euphemistically known as "autocrats", another lie, connived to hide the fact that they generally depend upon strings originating in the West). Time to put the head of the snake back in its bag, lest it invenominate us all.

***

WHEN YOU PROPOSE A TORTURER, IS THAT ORGANIZED CRIME?

Frank Rich wrote an editorial critical of average Americans, and their lack of interest for the knowledge necessary to be good citizens of the world. See some of what Rich said below, in the Note. I then sent the following to the New York Times, which decided to save my reputation, by not publishing it.

The isolated brain, the American brain, is a form of extreme hubris; gimme your oil, and leave us alone, we are the super power, to all superior, and we don’t know you from the dogs. All what we care about is black oil. Ah, yes, of course, Islam is a great religion: that is what we thought you wanted to hear, so give us the oil, and we will tell you who your latest moo-Barack will be. Barack will tell you how to moo. Mubarak, that was before, it’s all over, moo-Barack, that’s now.

Barack thinks Islam is great. So he says. Suleiman aleikum: Suleiman be with you. A good man. Suleiman, Mubarak’s long time "intelligence chief". He knows how to organize elections.

Just like American potentates are on Goldman Sachs or Citigroup payroll, Suleiman, Egypt’s intelligence chief is on American payroll. So Suleiman is Goldman once removed. The eternal braid of plutocracy, nicely entangled, as usual. And thus American potentates hope that the oil will keep on coming, hushing We The American People, and the money will be recycled through Wall Street, flying above the great unwashed.

Suleiman is the torture chief of Egypt, one of the torturers the American dark forces have used industrially in the program of "extraordinary rendition". In other words, a dictator, the one who speaks, will be replaced by a torturer, the one with the pincers.

As the New York Times (02/08/11) puts it: "Vice President Omar Suleiman of Egypt says he does not think it is time to lift the 30-year-old emergency law that has been used to suppress and imprison opposition leaders. He does not think President Hosni Mubarak needs to resign before his term ends in September. And he does not think his country is yet ready for democracy… The Obama administration is still trying to balance support for some of the basic aspirations for change in Egypt with its concern that the pro-democracy movement could be “hijacked,” as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton put it, if change were to come too quickly.

The result has been to feed a perception, on the streets of Cairo and elsewhere, that the United States, for now at least, is putting stability ahead of democratic ideals, and leaving hopes of nurturing peaceful, gradual change in large part in the hands of Egyptian officials — starting with Mr. Suleiman — who have every reason to slow the process."

Hey, no doubt Himmler was the best guy for "nurturing peaceful, gradual change… ahead of democratic ideals".

***

NEW PHILOSOPHY, OLD FRAUD:

Some will smirk that, once again, I committed the heavy crime of blatant anti-Americanism, aggravated by saying nice things about European imperialism.

So let me relax the atmosphere by attacking a pseudo-colleague of mine, BHL. Bernard-Henri Levy, the French philosopher. Because he self defined as a “New Philosopher”, French president Mitterrand (who had trained under Vichy) found alluring to befriend BHL. BHL found interesting to replace his own father at the head of the failing family business. Mitterrand, helped by his devious son, forked over the juicy contracts with the local African potentates, and then, presto, BHL was richer than ever. And many a place in Africa had no more primary forest (wood is what Levy harvests).

Thus, do not expect BHL to rile against plutocracy. Since he and his friends own palaces in Morocco, do not expect him to say anything untoward about the plutocratic dictator of Morocco, either.

Aristotle and Plato were famously sympathetic to dictatorship and slavery. Both had tight links to plutocracy, so that is not surprising. To present as new, the same old crocodile drifting to look like an innocent tree trunk is not reserved to politics. 

***

I DON’T KNOW, THEREFORE I LIVE:

How did Nazi Germany come to be? Well, old fashion Germans minded only their business, they had been imprinted that way. That came, at the cost of emotional and cognitive dwarfism. They knew little else, except what their profession required. A society of artificial robots. Clogs in a machine, unthinking, unfeeling.

That was pretty much the logico-emotional path followed by Rome before. Hence the constant reminders, in Nazi Germany of eagles, domination and predation (following also Napoleon, himself mimicking imperial Rome).

Fascism is compatible only with a reductive, and reduced emotional system, where the only emotions worth having are about domination, predation… and submission (Hitler admired Islam, a society of warriors according to him).

In a fascist regime, most people obey: "O ye who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the messenger and OBEY THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE IN POWER." (Quran, S.4; v. 59)."

Thus most people learn to find their emotional reward in submission, and being happy not knowing too much. That makes fascist regimes fundamentally hostile to cognition.

In Nazi Germany those who knew too much were anti-German. (That is one of the reasons the regime could only hate the Jews, who, coming from at least two cultures, were fundamentally more cognizant).

In Rome those who appreciated more than the games were living dangerously. In the USA, knowing more than team sport is to thread where culture is confused with rancor.

***

Patrice Ayme

***

Note: Says Frank Rich: "A month ago most Americans could not have picked Hosni Mubarak out of a police lineup. American foreign policy, even in Afghanistan, was all but invisible throughout the 2010 election season… And so now …does anyone seriously believe that most Americans are up to speed? Our government may be scrambling, but that’s nothing compared to its constituents. After a near-decade of fighting wars in the Arab world, we can still barely distinguish Sunni from Shia."

Verily, the USA has been fighting for more than two decades of in Iraq, and fighting more than 30 years in Afghanistan (since 1979: the direct American armed intervention was started by Jimmy Carter, Mr. Nobel (in War and) Peace Prize). And the USA destroyed Iranian democracy in 1953, and has been supporting evil Salafism in Arabia for 65 years. What is there not to like? Pass the pop corn, and watch the steroids on TV. Just don’t stand below the walls when they come down.

***

The Obama administration sent Frank Wisner to Egypt, as a Special Envoy. Wisner is currently working for the firm Patton Boggs, which has represented and currently represents the dictatorship of Egypt and its cronies.

The French Prime Minister, and the French foreign Minister, spent the 2010-2011 Solstice vacation as honored guests of the Egyptian and Tunisian dictatorships respectively, and as guests of their friends, the local plutocrats.

***