Neat Suggestion For Net Neutrality

Under Obama, the US spy networks were given full power. Paying no, or little taxes, with the full resources of the USA behind them, they were mandated, as modern-day corsairs, to seize the world. They did (in spite of the Snowden scare; Snowden revealed the entanglement between the imperial machinery of the USA and the US Internet companies).

This Internet coup is a Obama’s great achievement, proving how great and just the brown president has been for the powers that be, over the powers that don’t deserve to be.

Here is the market capitalization of the forty largest French companies (the “CAC 40”), versus that of GAFA (Google-Apple-Facebook-Amazon):

Thanks Oh Great, Wise, Respected Obama, For Having Made The USA Mightier Than Ever With Your Mighty Espionage Agents

[Was the satanic Bush a smaller devil? One shudders at the question. Just asking…]

As you can see, GAFA, those four companies, Google-Apple-Facebook-Amazon, under the presidency of Barack Obama, became everything, while the French Republic stagnated between being and nothingness. This is a general pattern, with all countries. It has to do with GAFA being above all and any local laws. And there are no global laws to speak of. (The Chinese joke that GAFA is the new world empire; well, new, not really.) In particular GAFA eschews most taxes, so stand above all and any companies and firms, worldwide.

Donald Trump, hated by GAFA, has said that he would make GAFA pay taxes. Said Trump, speaking of GAFA, and, in particular, Amazon:”Oh, God, would they have problems if I became president”. But what of the rest of the world? How can the world get out of this pickle?

First GAFA should pay taxes (France wants Google to pay billions in overdue taxes, Great Britain, though, asks for only a tenth of what the French Treasury is asking. Why? Because Great Britain is onto the plot, and understands that GAFA is one way for its overlord, the USA, to seize world control, and will be rewarded for getting on the program!)

To force GAFA to pay taxes, they should be threatened with exclusion. Now, of course, that would require guts. First, suffering of being accused of “anti-Americanism” by the soon to disappear in the oubliettes of history, Barack Obama, the great enabler of GAFA. (The US already makes war against the French economy, so it may as well come up to the surface!)

Unfortunately for, say, the French, GAFA uses massively treacherous countries without much industry such as Great Britain (full of subordinate tax havens, more than a dozen treasure isles which charge no income or wealth tax), and Ireland (top corporate tax rate, 12.5% in contrast with France 33% and the USA’s 35%!)

So going to war against GAFA means that the French would have to go to war with Ireland and the British Virgin Islands (hence the UK!) If the traditional parties don’t have this sort of guts, maybe Marine le Pen will… (She will be accused of dreadful “populism”, just as the Donald is, for doing something against the multibillionaire plutocrats of GAFA, and their demonic little helpers…)

Could we try something less bloody? Well, GAFA spy on people, and then tweak what they see on the Internet, accordingly. GAFA, and its ilk know you have a health problem, so they suggest businesses associated to treatment or relief from that condition. I have noticed search engines such as Google manipulate searches according to what they think i should see. Worse: Microsoft’s Bing censors completely some of my essays. For example “Violence In The Holy Qur’an” cannot be found on Bing (even looked directly by title and author) This sort of censorship is deliberate: the essay consists essentially of 10,000 words from quoting entire verses of the Qur’an. (The English paper, The Guardian, accused me to be someone who “blogged” the Qur’an, to justify censoring me!)

If these Internet manipulations were completely unlawful, all the time, the business model of GAFA and their ilk would collapse. Of course, one does not want to be that cruel (what would Obama do?)

But here is an idea nevertheless. Why are not GAFA (and its ilk) required, by LAW, to present a neutral web if asked to do so by someone using the Internet? As I said, one does not want to be too cruel with the corsairs of modern communications: after all, they have some public utility, as they (vaguely) innovate.

So, say, every time one turns on one of the GAFA, or other Internet manipulators, one should be offered, manually, the option of a neutral web.

Simple. Drastic.

The right to neutral information is basic to enable democracy. Without it, there is no democracy. The present rule of GAFA, and their present manners, is a complete denial of democracy. Time to fight. When the philosopher Demosthenes called the Greeks to fight the (gold mines propelled) the Macedonian plutocrats, who were quickly increasing in power, he was not listened to. It sounded alarmist to go fight the rich and nasty. When it turned out Demosthenes was finally observed to be right, it was too late. Democracy was destroyed in Greece, for the next 23 centuries. And it all originated from a philosophical debate where Aristotle was prominent.

We are what we know. And we are nought if we know not. The neutral Internet is not obsolete, it’s a human right. Are those obsolete? Hmm… Wait…

Patrice Ayme’

 

Apple A Criminal Organization?

In 1839, the French government bought the right to the invention of photography, from Monsieur Daguerre (his co-inventor had died in 1831). Then the French government turned around, and offered the invention to the world. Present tech giants are doing the exact opposite: they steal inventors and sell the world to enrich themselves. So doing the violate all and any local law, and ruin the world.

Is Apple a criminal organization? Just asking. Let me roll out a few facts. You judge. Five hundred (500) people were killed or gravely injured in Paris, just because Apple, a tax-thieving corporation, which has weakened the armies of the West all over, is led by crook who cooperates with terrorists. American and French intelligence agree that they would have been able to detect the attacks in California and Paris, if not for encryption they can’t break. The master mind in Paris was a celebrity terrorist of the Islamist State, who had dragged bodies on video. He could come and go in Europe, communicating with accomplices, because of encryption. Last time he came in, that was with ninety (90) others, some in the refugee flow. To organize all this, communications through encrypted phones were essential.

Why Apple And Its Ilk Are So Rich: Because They Are Thieves, Not Because They Are Geniuses

All and any person facilitating the terrorist activities of mass murderers actual or potential, should be arrested immediately (lest spying on them allows to  find their accomplices). There has been enough tergiversation. Certainly the CEO of Apple seems to be such a criminal. In California, where Apple is located, a loser stealing a pizza slice have gone to prison for life, for stealing that pizza slice. Others were not that lucky, and were outright executed by the police for just looking suspicious.

I have myself witnessed several cases of police ready to shoot losers just for a traffic stop. The media has documented fatal cases. That Apple and its ilk are thieves is beyond questioning: it had 1.6 billion Euros in back taxes, in France alone. Fines were applied, because it was culprit. That it got help in this criminal scheme from the British government is besides the point.

Under Obama, the patent system was changed to help the big monopolistic corporations (the so-called tech giants). Now the giant plutocratic corporations can steal an invention legally. Because the inventor who has been stolen has to demonstrate that he or she suffered “economic damage” also irreparable harm”. So if Google steals you car, you now have to demonstrate that it hindered you economically, it’s not just a question of being stolen. This is the Obama presidency for you.

Apple lost at the ITC, a branch of the Federal Government in Washington DC (they were infringing patents of other companies). Then Obama overrode the ITC order, because he thought Apple was all-important, needed the world to have iphones.

Obama flew dozens of times to the San Francisco Bay Area to get money and further orders from his sponsors there, whom he rigged the system for (the head of Apple came several times at the White House).

Make no mistake: I am more pro-tech than anyone. And that’s precisely why I am for protecting inventors and motivating them with potential riches. Instead the present system is rigged towards the growth of plutocracy, at the cost of revolutionary technology.

Global Plutocratic Thievery Rests On Encryption And Secrecy

Terrorist mass murderers as in San Bernardino or Paris should have NO privacy RIGHT, WHATSOEVER. Besides, they are dead (except for one), rightly executed by the police, or themselves. Some have objected that Apple defends the “4th amendment” of the US Constitution. Not so.

What Does the Fourth Amendment Mean?
The Constitution, through the Fourth Amendment, protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. The Fourth Amendment, however, is not a guarantee against all searches and seizures, but only those that are deemed unreasonable under the law.
Whether a particular type of search is considered reasonable in the eyes of the law, is determined by balancing two important interests. On one side of the scale is the intrusion on an individual’s Fourth Amendment rights. On the other side of the scale are legitimate government interests, such as public safety.

The extent to which an individual is protected by the Fourth Amendment depends, in part, on the location of the search or seizure. Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83 (1998).

I guess it depends what one means by “people” and “reasonable” and “protect”.

Apple makes its money by paying tiny money for the companies which made its devices in Asia. This is a form of labor, and economic laws evasion. Presidential candidate Donald Trump has suggested a 45% tax on Chinese imports to compensate. That would make a lot of his fellow plutocrats very unhappy.

SILICON VALLEY CATCHES YOU WITH HONEY:

For years the so-called “tech giants” have led a symphony of lies. Some firms are real inventor, for example Intel, and smaller firms you have never heard of. However the firms making the most money are technology integrators which are basically arms of the American government as a worldwide plutocracy. The great opposition of Apple Inc. is part of that act. It’s all a big manipulation to make us believe they are the opposite of what it is. It’s not because the Polar Bear, Ursus Maritimus, is white that it is pure as the driven snow. Actually it is white, and apparently innocent, so it can eat you.

In related news, Silicon valley plutocrats have started to push for a “basic income”, European style. That’s just a smokescreen to avoid the real conversation, which should be that Silicon Valley should be paying its taxes, and should be paying for our services, when it sells our data, unbeknownst to us. It is true that Silicon Valley uses our data. So it should pay us for it. That it does not want to do so, speaks volumes.

Basic income is necessary for the indigent. However, basic income is not a new idea. It is as old as imperial Rome, where it was implemented. Thus, basic income has more to do with a system friendly with slavery.

The argument has been made by Silicon Valley that no one should know our data, thus the need for absolute encryption. That’s hypocritical: as I said, they use our data. Thus they say: fear the thieves, while stealing us.

Paul Handover worries that:”Millions of people with nothing to hide are, nonetheless, deeply concerned about a general loss of personal privacy.” That’s ironical, considering what the tech monopolies are doing with our data.

If people have nothing to hide, they have nothing to hide. They can stand in plain view of the governments. So they should not do what the tech giants want them to do. They should not behave as if they were plutocrats, and had something to hide. If they have something to hide, that nothingness should be exposed. And if the government cannot be trusted, it should be fixed. Right now, as it is, the tech giants of the USA, giants in unlawful profits, of the USA, are completely entangled with the government in Washington, DC. That should be exposed, made transparent, revealed, dismantled.

I have nothing to hide, the government can follow me all day long. What I fear is terrorists: I was attacked several times, and even bombed by right wing fascists in Europe, and got death threats. None of these attacks or threats ever came from a government, although I lived in Algeria, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mauritania, Niger, Mali, Peru, Bolivia, Iran, Mexico, Canada, USA, the EU, etc. Yet, everywhere I went, I did not keep my mouth in my pocket.

Transparency is not something we should fear. It is something we need. We need it for two main reasons:

1. Organized crime, such as global plutocracy, thrives on secrecy. This is what really worry Apple and its billionaire share holders: once its worldwide cheating shenanigans are exposed, it will not be able to enjoy them anymore.
2. As technologies forges ahead, weapons of mass destruction will be feasible in all cellars. The Islamist State, for example, has made chemical weapons. (It’s not just Assad!)

Our future world will be transparent, or it will not be. The Roman Republic, since inception, was friendly to the rich.

However, the same Roman Republic blocked the rise of plutocracy absolutely, by limiting how much power individuals could control. In particular, the wealth of the richest families was capped absolutely. How did the Roman Republic do this? With the Cadastrum, the registry of all private property.

Right now, there is no world cadastrum. The plutocrats hide their money in various ways, mostly through anonymous companies. Some treasures islands have several times more anonymous companies registered than they have inhabitants. (It’s no coincidence that these treasure islands are often British, or Dutch owned, that is why the UK is so rich. And this part of the reason why it is so hard to change.)

The plutocrats want others to live in misery: this is how they feel like Gods. San Jose, the USA’s richest large city is a place, partly of utmost madness, destitution and people living in garbage. This what the Silicon Valley cool billionaires in jeans organized. Here you go, and it’s the same squalor all over the Bay Area, except in the billionaires’ enclaves:

San Jose, 2014. While Billionaires Fill Their Jumbo Jets At Government’s Expense, Normal People Can See Such Scenes Everyday, A Few Miles Away

[People walk along a thrash-lined trail at the Silicon Valley homeless encampment known as The Jungle, Monday, Dec. 1, 2014, in San Jose, Calif. City officials began posting notices on hand built structures, tents and tree trunks warning the 200 residents of what is likely the nation’s largest homeless encampment that the bulldozers are coming. People living in the Silicon Valley camp had to be out by Thursday, Dec. 4 or face arrest for trespassing. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)]

In the greatest scheme of things, it is plutocracy and the world of organized crime which has brought worldwide instability and terrorism (I have explained how in hundreds of essays, going along many threads; it’s the main story of the twentieth century). Should we not apply the brakes now, things will get much worse (think middle ages with nukes, spaceships and engineered life forms). Nazism was greatly a product of German plutocracy, aided and abaited by plutocrats from the USA. Should we want to repeat fully the performance, it would be much worse. Last time felt like the apocalypse, but it was just a warning.

Ordinary people commit, at most, tiny little crime. The plutocrats who “lead” the world (into the abyss) commit gigantic crimes, they depend upon the lack of transparency to operate. As Quantum encryption (completely unbreakable) is on the rise, it’s urgent to require a transparent world. Moral people have nothing to fear, crooks, plutocrats, and criminals, everything.

Patrice Ayme’

No Force, No Moral

Abstract: Why didn’t Obama outright jail the Crook of Apple Inc., on the ground of aiding and abetting terrorism? For the same reason as he became lupine Putin’s obsequious butler. Morality, the Roman mores, depends upon force always. However, masters’ servants are not reputed for the creative application of force.

***

The universe is created by force. Giant supernovae explode, generating the heavy elements which can then combine and create chemistry. Some want to say the universe is not about force, just harmony, love, etc. Yes, the universe, the human universe, is also about love and harmony. But fundamentally, it’s a balance of forces.

Unbalancing those forces lead to holocausts. Or, as we can now clearly see, even worse.

Did Obama Understand What His Primary Mission Was?

… Or is it that the job of the leaders in Washington is to let the world down, so that they can come on top? (And New York’s Daily News is not cynical enough.)

The universe, and our knowledge of it, is not just about force, violence, but also about chance, serendipity.

The new LIGO observatory of space deformations detected gravitational waves when it had just been turned on for its first engineering run, after being closed for improvements, during five long years. It was supposed to officially open four days later. The observed Black Holes have masses too large for usual astrophysics. Collapsing stars are supposed to give BH no more than 11 solar masses (long story), a third of what was observed here. This is an important new riddle emerging.

There is a brand new ceasefire in Syria. Putin rules, Obama cleans his shoes (some will say that’s what, for psychological reasons, this is to be expected: after all, Putin is a wilful white man, a killer, a conqueror, an invader, not a self-important, obsequious butler).

In 2013, The French Republic was ready to strike Assad. Assad had crossed the ‘red line’ of massive, blatant usage of nerve gas (in a suburb of Damas). Who had set the ‘red line’? The USA. The President of the USA had declared, solemnly, that if Assad used chemical weapons on its own people, the USA would take him out. Indeed, the war in Syria had started with peaceful protests. Assad reacted with gunfire, and then unleashing, and feeding (by buying its oil), the Islamist State. So Assad, son of his dictator father, was as culprit as possible.

The legitimacy of it all? 1) Human Rights. 2) Syria is within the European defense zone, so to speak (as demonstrated by the refugee problem). 3)Syria as a French Protectorate (given by the SDN, after the Turkish empire got ejected). 4) Further back, Syria was part of the “Oriental Part” of the Roman empire for seven centuries, until it was invaded by the Muslim Arab army which killed all males of weapon bearing age.

One can view the latter invasion as an UNJUST war, and such wars can be reversed.

The Roman Republic rightly made a big deal of JUST wars, which were basically defense wars: Rome was attacked, and then the aggressor was taken out. This is what happened, until the Third Punic war (in which Carthage was in the right, and the right-wing, plutocratic fanatics in the Senate, in the wrong). The next problem was Caesar’s Bellum Gallicum, where there again, Caesar’s adversaries pointed out that he, Caesar, had been the aggressor in Gaul (although the situation was complex, since the (misled) Helvetii had attacked, and Caesar initially intervened to help allies against the (future) Swiss. But then Caesar and his ten legions exceeded the mandate…

In any case, re-establishing democracy and republic in places which knew these under Rome is, arguably a just war.

Instead, Obama showed the defense of human rights by the USA was a lot of hot air. Putin invaded Ukraine 6 months later. Now he is making Syria into a client state. If he follows his model in Chechnya, he will kill up to 15% of the population, to install firmly his own Pluto.

(Said Pluto in Chechnya would have killed Boris Nemtsov, exactly a year ago to the day, with four bullets in the back, below the Kremlin; that’s convenient, as the Chechen Pluto is head of state, so hard to prosecute.)

Now that it is established the USA is hot air, nobody fears it. China is promptly installing radars on islands just off the Philippines, that it just created. Obama will punish the Chinese dictatorship by looking haughty until Mr. Xi and his goons surrender.

Where does Obama’s mentality comes from? Well, European pacifists are pretty much to be accused. The only European country defending Europe’s Lebensraum (vital space in German; a term Hitler used; that does not mean it never has any validity), is the French Republic, with troops on the ground in combat in Syria, Libya, Mali, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, CAR, etc. This sort of pacifism caused two extended world wars which ravaged Europe.

In World War One, the Netherlands, with its accomplice the USA, extended the war by three years by breaking the Franco-British embargo. In World War Two, Sweden, the Netherlands and Belgium helped considerably in the defeat of France in 1940, and the subsequent French-Nazi ceasefire (which lasted, in practice, less than two years; yet, the evil was done, and dozens of millions died).

Obama’s lack of spine is not just about refusing to confront the Russian Caesar. Now the dark Pluto heading Apple refuses to release the communications of a mass murdering Islamist State terrorist. Why was that crook not charged with aiding and abetting mass murdering terrorism? Because such people are supposed to lead the world, and not be led by the world.

Were I president, I would arrest the crook, and apply the Patriot Act to him. He would then disappear from view. Then I would ask the same question to the second in command at Apple, five minutes later. Upon refusal, he would also be on his way to Guantanamo or somewhere. And so on down the line in the next hour, until one could crack the codes in the damn phone.

Instead we have the sorry spectacle that Apple makes the laws. Just like Apple gets its profits, hundreds of billions of them through the British Virgin Islands, to pay no tax whatsoever, Apple is supposed to keep on deciding what the law is.

It’s a matter of knowing what dominates: the law of We The People, with its equality of taxation, or the law of Them The Plutocrats, with the principle that Plutocrats decide what the law is.

Instead, civilization made laws in accordance with ethology, where all human beings are equal. Civilization arose from force, and so did the imposition of morality, which is not viable, without.

Don’t ask Obama, he is a lost little boy, in a land of big Plutos roaming, who are everything, whereas he is not much, and he needs to love them, should he want a job, next year.

The more sinister, and deeper level of analysis, of course, is that the USA’s plutocracy profited immensely from the weakening of European democracies in the Twentieth Century. Thus, cynics will argue, the morally lazy Obama is actually in the tradition of the most efficient American patriots: paying lip service to the morally correct, while implementing the dirtiest. But then, of course, most European leaders are accomplices to that… A curiosity explained by the nature of global plutocracy, and its Anglo-Saxon headquarters (including Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, etc.) Several European leaders were partners at Goldman Sachs, and, one would gather, are still partners with Goldman Sachs. That may explain why the leaders of Goldman Sachs were not arrested for cooking the books in Greece.

What is most interesting in all this, is that common people are starting to notice that something is askew: most Americans think the country is “heading in the wrong direction”…

Patrice Ayme’

On The Insolence, & Power, of Plutocrats

The American NSA and French intelligence have agreed that the Paris attacks were made possible by unbreakable phone encryption. Their preparations would have been detected otherwise, as they involved communications between a number of countries and were prepared proximally from Belgium.

Apple Inc, whose boss is a dark clad plutocrat named Cook has refused, in spite of a judge’s order to allow the FBI to know the secrets inside Islamist State (inspired) terrorists in San Bernardino, California, who killed many.

The insolence, and impudence, of plutocrats knows no bounds.

Disunion Jack? Nice Flag, Too Bad The Craziness

Let me remind plutocrats that we have not yet formally switched to… plutocracy. They don’t command.

Apparently Apple believes it is Big Brother. But who elected them? Money? The State is supposed to represent We The People. Maybe the present state does not do this well, but then it can be modified. Putting plutocrats and tax avoiding ultra wealthy corporations in charge, is no solution.

By protecting the communications of mass murderers, Apple Inc. has clearly gone off the deep end.

In other news, a European conference among the principals is doing “all it can” (“Alles tun” said Frau Kanzler Merkel) to keep Great Britain in the EU. Well, Europe may be better without British obstruction and day-dreaming. Many of the English who fear Europe are typically losers who drank the imperial kool aid of an empire which is no more. The empire, now, however weak, is Europe, not the British empire.

Fear what you ask for. The problem of the millions of Brits who live outside of the United Kingdom and who would be left stranded by “Brexit” is easy to solve: they should be given expeditious ways to acquire the citizenship of their country of residence.

Thus a British citizen whose family lives in France, and who works in London should be offered French citizenship, and Great Britain forced to accept the same sort of treaties that France has with Switzerland.

The latest polls give 54% for Brexit, the British Exit. PM Cameron thunders that his intent is clear: to stay inside the European Union. Then why the vote in 127 days? It’s not like the Brits did not already vote. They did, at 67%. Everybody is angry against the European Commission in Brussels. Well, then, fix it.

But behaving as if Britain, or, more exactly, England, could set sail to somewhere southeast of New Zealand is beyond grotesque.

And how did we get there? The plutocrats who increasingly rule Britain, just as those who rule the USA, or the world (they are all the same), continually accuse the European Commission in Brussels of malfeasance… to hide their own. The EC is just the executive arm of the EU, and it is increasingly directed by the European Parliament, let alone the continual meetings of the European elected leaders with each other (as they are doing today with the British case). The EC has tended to bother cheese makers, rather than the plutocrats who pull the strings. This can all, and should be, fixed.

Countless plutocratic corporations, including Apple, have avoided taxation, and the EC has let it happen all too long. It just woke up to the fact IKEA forgot to pay a billion Euros in taxes. Well…

All what the plutocratic corporations tend to do is to bog down society in useless years of litigation against democracy. Apple Inc. wants to protect dead terrorists, and the psycho plots of plutocrats would only bring years of litigation between the EU and the UK, and between Brits and their own government, all this to end with an independent Scotland joining the EU, while England finds it does not enjoy the affection Switzerland got through 600 treaties with the EU… However, lunacy is the best way for the mighty to lead We The People by the nose.

A great part of English wealth, at this point, comes precisely from immigration of other Europeans to Britain, and, even more, from Franco-Germania closing its collective eyes to the general tax evasion and financial manipulations centered on London, while it profits of a nebulous galaxy of semi-dominions such as the isles of Man, and Jersey, or the British Virgin islands, or making financial conspiracies so dark and outrageous, that they are unlawful in New York. If Brexit happens, don’t expect that Franco-Germania will tolerate it anymore.

And this is why, precisely, and unfortunately, Brexit will not happen. I guess. But the law of unfortunate consequences all too often rules. Norway, or Switzerland, are not members of the European Union (although they are members of Schengen, the passport free area, which the UK does not belong to). However, they both contribute to the European Union budget. The fools who will vote for Britain to get out of the EU do not seem to realize this: Norway and Switzerland are still in Europe, and have to make do with the European superpower (Franco-Germania). Brexit will make Franco-Germania stronger, and thus Britain weaker (projections are that the UK will lose 3% of GDP, Germany, just .3%).

Well, whatever. The Europe empire, the ability of Europeans to command to the crooks of giant corporations, has to rise. English plutocracy is in the way: sweep it out there, and make compost with it.

NSA ought to be under WE THE PEOPLE’s Command (Imperium in Latin). That is not, is extremely deplorable. But it has to be fixed. Snowden should not perhaps get the Order of Merit, fleeing to Putin and what not, but some of what it did is extremely important, and commendable.

Apple has amply demonstrated, that, in spirit, it’s not just plutocratic (Crook is filthy rich), but an outlaw (literally). Apple outlawed profit processing, & that of other pluto corporations, depends upon total secrecy in how it makes money circulate thru filth. We The People can only rule if we can see what the criminals are plotting. Apple, and its ilk, have for business model, though, secrecy. To escape taxes, pay politicians serving them, violating the spirit of the law, and trampling human rights by feeding inequality to the point of inequity… Plus selling personal information, and manipulating public opinion to the point of madness (see the Iraq invasion, the inability of people to comprehend that the Clintons sold them to financiers, the sleight of hand of the 2008 crash, when Transfer of Assets to Rich People was effected, Brexit, etc.).

We The People should have every right in the world to extend the tendrils of surveillance all over. OUR surveillance, under OUR watch. It’s now technically possible, having access to Uranium ore, to make a nuclear bomb in a basement (with laser separation). Let alone make ricin in a tiny lab, etc… Actually since 9/11, the water networks, in countries such as France are watched exquisitely.

Immense powers require now immense surveillance, and we should start with spying all the phones of all the plutocratic corporations, to find out where they hid all the money, they stole from us, and who they pay, among our so-called leaders who are busy bossing us around, and spying on us illegally.

Plutocracy without secrecy is an apple without cyanide: not lethal, delicious to eat. The secret of Brexit: a plutocratic plot so twisted it is turning into its own demise.

We live in a wonderful world: everyday our power on the physical world augments. But that means the power of corporations, and of the richest, augments ever more. We have to watch them carefully to check they are not violating the spirit of the laws. And the same goes for individuals. Freedom and surveillance are two aspects of the same coin.

Surveillance is a direct consequence of the advancement of technology, and, thus, of liberty. Liberty means power, power means surveillance.

Patrice  Ayme’

Government Defines Profit

Abstract; Free market fundamentalists ignore a paradox of economics: defining what a “profit” is can only be done by the government! Thus, when only profit seems to reign, as now, the real government is hiding. Hiding in plain sight, just as the Saudi criminal organization, manipulating the absence of global legal jurisdiction to implement criminal propaganda, or grand theft. Thus, Apple, Google, etc. have all too much in common with terrorist networks. Understanding much of this, the Japanese PM is suddenly behaving as if he led China. (Precisely because he has his eye on the PRC…)

***

Sometimes progress is all about rediscovering what was known for millennia. Sometimes progress is all about unlearning outrageous propaganda. An example? The public is increasingly stuck in the West. From a very deep lack of understanding.

The richer the lords, the poorer the commons.

The degeneracy of the public is directly related to a lack of philosophical definition of what “profit” means. If one does not have a philosophical definition, one has no practical definition, either.

The graph of profits above is, in a sense, a joke; Apple, to single the typical case of the most prominent corporation, has tremendous profits in one sense, for would-be share holders, and none for fiscal authorities.

That lack of definition of “profit”, in turn leads to fiscal imbalances, that lead to rising plutocracy, its accompanying rising unemployment, and general impoverishment of the commons while our lords thrive ever more.

There are still more than four times as many long-term unemployed workers in the USA as there were before the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Europe’s economy is back in recession, and has grown less over the past six years than it did between 1929 and 1935 (yes, that includes Thatcherian Great Britain!), while hitting ever higher highs for unemployment.

Yet there is no major change in policy in sight. Savage, even criminal, austerity programs are imposed by Brussels and Berlin on the most indebted nations. Children go hungry, life expectancies are going down.

Why the unfolding disaster? The way the role of government in economics is looked at is key.

In his first inaugural address, Ronald Reagan said: “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. From time to time we’ve been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. Well, if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else? All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden.”

Neofascists have misused that quote ever since, extracting from it the aphorism that government was the problem. Worse: under Clinton, Bush Jr., and Obama, they put that scheme into action, deciding that finance would be self regulating.

Ever since the Medes-Persian empire of Darius and contemporaneous Athens, all serious countries acknowledged the overwhelming, domineering role of government in economics. The rise of Frankish Europe of the High Middle Ages, England 1066, or the Italian republics, France in 1600 (Henri IV’s “chicken in every pot”), or Great Britain, later, were all tied in to massive redefinitions of the socio-economy by the government.

(Anglo-Saxon academics love to throw in the word “Keynes” at this point, but Keynes’ suggestions were minimal relative to what serious governments have done in economics for millennia before him, or even since! The only thing about Keynes is that he lived in the 20C and spoke English, enough for simple minds to adulate.)

The government does two things, ever since serious civilization has been instituted: first, government insures enough fundamental economics, to make the basic functions of society possible: defense, police, justice, and basic food and water procurement possible.

Secondly, the government determines and regulates the arena of the “free” market. In other words, there is no “free” market, just a market the government decides is free.

Unfortunately, rogue economists, in the last 35 years have imposed a view, in South America, the USA, and the UK, and then Russia, and worldwide, according to which the free market determines everything, including the government, that it, somehow self generates. One may as well let a headless chicken guide us all.

Mr. Abe was Prime Minister of Japan seven years ago. Illness forced him to resign after a year. Now he is back, with more impulse. Although a conservative politician, he understands well that, when the economy is stuck it needs to be stimulated directly by the government. Abe’s 100 billion dollars stimulus would be equal to roughly 300 billion in the USA. That big stimulus does not contradict a loose monetary policy. Nor does it contradict extinguishing Japan’s more than 200% debt/GDP, because for governments, only growth (or default) can extinguish debt.

The first results of Mr. Abe’s policies have been very encouraging (after a 55% rise, a sharp correction in the stock market was caused by fears that the central bank would not keep on giving enough money to the financially starving economy.)

So why does not the rest of the Western world copy Mr. Abe? After all, is not Mr. Abe just trying to do what China has been doing ever since Deng Tsiao Ping decided that “getting rich was glorious“? That has worked splendidly: open the free market in full, and the governmental stimulus too. It’s actually what the Western governments did after 1945, for thirty years, when they were obsessed by growing the economy (before getting obsessed by fighting inflation).

Why is the rest of the Western world insisting upon guidance by the headless chicken of the free market? Simply because plutocracy is the new world order, and that’s best insured by restricting access to money to the very richest. Austerity is not about balancing the books, as much as it is about restricting the money going to the populace (hence the power it disposes of).

The “Chicago Boys” (followers of Hayek and Friedman) proclaimed that profit was the optimal organizing principle of society. Their students were the perfect decoys for neofascist plutocrats to take control in Chili, Argentina, Brazil. in the 1990s Jeffrey Sachs and Larry Summers went to Moscow to teach that greed was the royal road to progress, and they had an eager audience among the new potentates, who loved to hear that plutocracy was morally correct, and economically optimal.

However, this is all hogwash. The foundational work has not been done well enough.

“Profit” means augmenting “property”. Yet, “PROPERTY” CAN ONLY BE DEFINED BY GOVERNMENT.

For example, the Babylonian state, the Roman state, 15 centuries later, and the USA, 33 centuries after, allowed to own people as “property”. However the rights of those slaves were vastly different: Babylonian slavery was not “racially” based, and slaves could become immensely richer than their owners…

In the Roman Republic, for five centuries, “property” was defined as land, and as such, it was limited, by law. In other words, Roman plutocracy was strictly limited by law. Thereof the secret of the success and longevity of the Roman republic.

However, the rise to Rome into a global empire, beyond the jurisdiction of the city of Rome, exploded both the application of the law and its relevance. Plutocracy got unchained, and wrecked its natural enemy, the Republic.

The present situation is technically similar to what happened to Rome when it went global: armed forces, finance and the economy have gone global, but NOT LEGAL JURISDICTION.

Western civilization has got global, but not its root, the rule of democratic law. One may as well transplant a giant tree in the desert, leaving its roots behind where they grew. This is not going to work.

The problem of international terrorism has two faces: international finance and the bombs it (indirectly) plants.

Indirect action can be extensive, along vast causal chains. For example giant kelp forests are disappearing off Alaska. Why? Because of (over)fishing.

How does that work? Extensive indirect causality. Human overfishing makes orcas hungry. The killer whales then go eat sea otters. Then urchins, now uneaten by sea otters, proliferate, and eat the kelp. hence the apparition of a lot of clear coastal waters off Alaska. Pretty, but not what the ecology used to be.

Indirect causality chains relate and entangle religious and financial terrorism. And they have a common cause: no global legal jurisdiction.  

Consider Salafist terrorism, as exemplified in Toulouse, France (killing of Jewish children and adults by a Salafist fanatic), or in the USA (killings by Salafist fanatics within the army, or in Boston), or in London (several times). How is it related to the tax terrorism practiced by Apple Inc, or Google, IBM, etc.?

In all these cases, it’s the limitation of legal jurisdiction that allows the growth of the criminal activity. The Salafists get their ideas according to what plutocrats in Saudi Arabia want them to have. The ideas the Saudis, a family of gangsters who have given their name to a country, wanted people to have are conveyed by considerable amounts of money. The Saudis pose as the guardians of Salafism (the way of the old ones). They actually seized power, 90 years ago, by spilling oceans of blood.

The promotion of bloody ideas and ideals the Saudis extol should all be illegal, and those instigating plutocrats ought to be put in prison. However, Western law does not reach within Saudi Arabia, for the exact same reason that it does not reach within global corporations.

The Saudis are, arguably, the world’s largest and most criminal corporation. (Qatar is only an also ran.)

Global corporations’ main business model consists in claiming to have no, or little, profits, outside of tiny jurisdictions that basically don’t tax them. Others claim to be made of subsidiaries that are citizens of nowhere (that’s Apple’s method).  Apple ferries more than 100 billions of profits through the British Virgin islands. The British Virgin islands have 20,000 citizens, and more than 500,000 global companies registered there.

As the Wall Street Journal just noticed, global corporations are now even hiding the thousands of subsidiaries they own, and through which they ferry profits, thanks to new USA laws. Many of the biggest USA companies have removed hundreds of offshore subsidiaries from their publicly disclosed financial filings over recent years. They are taking advantage of SEC rules that demand disclosure only when subsidiary operations are “significant” (meaning siphoning 105 of the business)

Oracle, for instance, disclosed more than 400 subsidiaries in its 2010 annual report. By 2012 the list had been whittled to eight—five of which were located in Ireland. Similar decreases in the number of disclosed subsidiaries were found in filings by Google, FedEx, Raytheon and Microsoft. Presto, no more traceable profits!

In the European Union alone, tax evasion by large crooks is evaluated at more than a trillion dollars, much more than all the national deficits combined.

Apple makes billions in the United Kingdom, while using services there provided by British society, still does not contribute to pay for any of what it exploits. It apparently pays a 2% global tax in Ireland alone. Amazon does something similar, paying basically no tax, while devouring local bookstores, which, submitted to local jurisdiction, pay huge taxes (thus have to sell their books at a much higher price).

Governments, all over the West, having learned their masters’ lesson well, have defined profits of said masters are inexistent, fiscally, while the masters are making the greatest profits ever, and unemployment is at a fifty year high in the West.

 It’s also striking that, although the greatest heists ever, have been revealed since 2007, no one, absolutely no one, has gone to jail for this. A striking example is the LIBOR CONSPIRACY. Many billions were stolen, however, none of the bosses of what is, therefore, twenty of the world’s largest criminal organizations, went to jail. It seems the largest thievery is perfectly profitable. 80% of financial derivative trading is through tax havens, and thus is hidden too.

Who profits from the new world order is becoming something to hide, and that has gone deep underground, all the way to Hades. The Sicilian mafia does not behave any differently.

Thus one can see that the neoconservatives advocates of predatory finance harbor contradictory notions; they claim profits should rule, but then their heroes, wealthy corporations and individuals, hide them as much as they can, just as predators hide their excrements. So what are profits about? Heavenly stuff, or something one cannot speak of?

The economy should not rest on what its beneficiaries want to hide.

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Patrice Ayme