I disagreed strongly with G.W. Bush’s lies and folly in Iraq. Presto, my web site disappeared from USA search engines. I was ridiculed by Silicon Alley “friends”: information wants to be free, search engines were beyond any suspicion, did not care about ants such as me. Fast forward to 2012: Google hissed it will be “constrained” to “no longer reference French websites“. Admire the hypocrisy. So much for not manipulating searches. Here is the object of Google’s ire:
Google Slaying French Culture Minister: Brains & Style.
Aurélie Filippetti ministers to advanced culture.
“I’m a little surprised by the tone of this correspondence, which is akin to a threat. You do not deal with a democratically elected government through threats.” Warns the French Culture Minister.
What do Google guys know about democracy?
Aurélie Filippetti has (basically) a PhD in classical literature, published books translated in many languages, is a Member of Parliament, and France’s Culture Minister. In France the culture ministry is traditionally very important. It covers, among others, the information technology ministry. Filippetti, the daughter of an emigrant miner, belongs to a class vastly superior to the mostly uneducated, unelected Silicon Valley filthy rich conspirators.
French newspaper publishers asked the government in September for a bill compelling search engines, to pay them each time a user reads an article by clicking through to their websites.
Let’s go the crux of the matter: Google makes money out of clicks (from advertizing revenue). Click to what? Authors. Are these authors Google employees? No, Google does not pay those authors. So Google is making profits from the work of others that it does not pay for.
Google makes money by using other people’s work, without compensation. When an owner does not pay people for the work that makes him rich, it’s slavery. It’s the first order definition of slavery.
Europe has seen that movie before. More than 1,000 years ago. Bathilde queen of the Franks, herself an ex-escaped slave, outlawed making a slave (“servus“) of any citizen of the Imperium Francorum (to be rebaptized 150 years later the “Renovated Roman Empire”).
Nevertheless, in the following centuries, many a freeman came “to be a slave” (“servire“) through force or necessity. Sometimes freeholders or allodial owners were intimidated into dependency by the greater physical or legal force of a local plutocrat or magnate. Crop failure, a war or brigandage left a farmer unable to survive on his own. A bargain was struck with a plutocrat, or mighty knight (lord of a manor, to pay for the very expensive weapons and training).
In exchange for protection from the knight, service was required, in cash, produce or with labor, or a combination thereof. These bargains were formalized in a ceremony known as “bondage” in which a serf placed his head in the lord’s hands, similar to the ceremony of homage where a vassal placed his hands between those of his overlord (or kissed his boot). Such people came to be known as “serfs”. “Serf” was a modification of the Latin word for slave, just like the condition of bondage was different, but also viewed as related to slavery. Being a serf was hereditary, but could be exited by staying away thirty days (during which time the lord could hunt down his recalcitrant serf).
England was about 20% slaves until 1066 CE, when the conquering Franks outlawed slavery.
The key enabling concept here is intimidation. Very rich persons intimidated the population into plutocracy. Very rich people, or great plutocratic institutions, had attributed themselves, without any constitutional basis, illegitimate powers, through the sheer power of intimidation. An unintimidated serf who fled to a city, taking the law in his own hands, was thereafter free.
Finally, central governments, unintimidated, grabbed back those illegitimate powers. It took a while, and the central government had to play dirty: Philippe IV Le Bel broke both the Templars and the Papacy shortly after 1300 CE, but it’s only with the mighty efforts of Louis XI and his daughter, the regent queen Anne de France, that France got definitively united as a country under an effective, all mighty national government, shortly before the official discovery of the Americas. (Thus inaugurating the archtypical modern nation-state.)
Google’s slave masters, apparently unaware of 30 centuries of rather ferocious history, are trying to intimidate the French Republic into submission. Not knowing, from full ignorance of the great classics, that few passions give more pleasure to the French and their Gallic ancestors than to put a shining armor on, condemn, and charge evil doers.
Here is a friend of mine, the USA born Amna Shiekh, giving us what all too many in Wall Street admiring circles will consider to be the obvious argument:
“The difference between these French people who are crying thievery and myself – I am GRATEFUL that Google provides a service allowing my websites to be found through keywords…. At no cost to me. My websites would have no chance of being found otherwise. There is a service being provided here. And if you don’t want to contribute to it, then don’t cry when it’s taken away? Very simple!”
Patrice Ayme: “Me me me me me me me me me, or, as Mick Jagger would have it in Gloom & Doom: meeeeeeeeeee is, indeed, the best explanation most people have found, under most circumstances. A generalization of me me me me me me, is us us us us us, also known as nationalism. Being GRATEFUL to the Lords is also most wise, for the commoners, and those who, like worms, like to burrow underground. Slave masters were, are, also providing a service, they always have been, always do. Many love to be punished, it makes them feel important.
Around 1800 CE, it has been evaluated that three quarters of humankind lived in some form of slavery.
The ubiquitousness of slavery explains much of the submitted, and impoverished state, most of the world was in, until recently. (By comparison the French Revolution of 1789 made most French allodial owners, that is, supreme sovereigns on their land… which is still not the case in Great Britain (all land is the Crown’s, all Brits are…vassals)… nor in the USA (“eminent domain” being rather relaxed there)).
Nobody is advocating doing without search engines. They existed well before Google. (And, besides having Sequoia Capital and their associates backing up Google, I do not see what Google brought to search that did not exist before). Because searches are manipulated, search engines are a matter of national security. The fact that an obviously plutocratic organization has achieved a world monopoly on searches is obviously a worry for democracy.
When Francia outlawed slavery, in 655 CE, it was to make the median individual more potent. Not because it was easy, but because it short-circuited plutocracy, the accumulation of ever greater wealth, be it through unfair means (Google, Buffet), or even by any means (hence the Frankish Salian law equalitarianism, preventing the growth of extreme power for the few).
Outlawing slavery reconstituted the mood and power of the early Roman republic, and allowed to rise huge republican armies when the so far undefeated Arab and Berber armies invaded France in 721 CE.
In democracy, humanity in full is in power. That makes democracy, all else been equal, the mightiest social organization in brains and war.
Plutocracy says only an oligarchy of individuals, emotions and ideas are in power. It’s a form of mutilation, parasitism, a malaria of the mind.
Humanity in full is more powerful, and that is why the Franks were able to break the “Germani”, the Arab Muslim invaders (721 CE-750 CE), the Avars, the Vikings, and, with their descendant regimes (such as England, or Spain) conquer much of the world militarily, and all of it, philosophically (at least formally: even Al Assad leads a “republic”). Nowadays the main Frankish philosophical drive is basically the United Nations Charter. Outlawing slavery is its core.
Slavery is why the management of Greco-Roman civilization by the Greco-Romans failed, and why management transferred to the Franks, and their simple idea of synchronizing polity and humanity, by outlawing it. (In other words, on a giant civilizational scale, what Obama failed to do on his teeny tiny scale, as he left the slavery inducing Wall Street of 2008 in power, throughout his fateful reign, and its symbols are Summers and Geithner… but I digress, although reckoning is at hand…)
Amna Shiekh: “Yes, I do think the French who agree with you are crying me me me me me me me – though I don’t think it’s very effective. Maybe when we were five years old this tactic worked quite well….your slave master analogy doesn’t work either. Google isn’t providing a necessary means to live (food, shelter, safety, etc.) that forces me to agree with them…they are not offering something I cannot easily refuse….in other words, your analogy fails.”
Patrice Ayme: Living without the Internet (and its searches) is becoming increasingly impossible. So Google provides with a necessary service.
Google does not pay the people they use to make money, for their work. That’s the definition of slavery. You point out that you profit. Some, no doubt, profit. From slavery some always profited, otherwise slavery would not have come to be. In Rome, some companies specialized in catching escaped slaves, and others in torturing, or executing slaves. Such companies no doubt cried a river when the Franks made their work unlawful. It’s not because you can easily refuse to partake in murder, than murder should not be illegal.
Google whined that their business model was threatened with extinction if France went on with making them pay taxes. Well, too bad. If Google charged for air, and refused to pay taxes, it should be driven out of business too.
French newspaper publishers asked the French government to intervene against Google in September. Newspapers, journalists, editorialists create ideas (hopefully).
But, fundamentally, Google creates… nothing independently of that substrate of ideas it helps search for, but did not create. (I know Google goes around with cars, taking pictures; but so doing is not creating ideas; if Google did not do it, volunteers certainly would do so, it’s very easy with modern technology.)
This is the general problem with the world economy right now: many manipulators have seized command, when they create nothing fundamental. They are like the Duchess of Cambridge, the Duchesse of Hypocrisy, going around, busy making their celebrity and parasitism fundamental, thanks to their symbiosis with a perverted established order of damnation, dragging not just civilization, but the entire biosphere, into oblivion.
Google leaders should have realized that, by being the world’s largest search engine, they had a moral duty, a fiduciary position, and it was only cautious corporate governance, to behave as an exemplary corporate world citizen. When Google threatened to boycott all and any French sites, it showed, not just its ugly nature, but the fact that it imagines itself as a dangerous, all powerful monopoly. Of course, it will become something of this sort, only if the French Republic let it do as it pleases (we do not expect anything from the White House, for the usual reasons, re-hashed by the end of this essay!). If France can bring down the crafty homicidal maniac Kadafi, its enormous army and secret services, plus connection with USA oil companies, she can cut Google down to size.
In 1936, Hitler decided to kill the Spanish republic, and the Nazi dictator carried by air the rebel Spanish Moroccan army (led by rogue general Franco) into Spain. He did this, thanks to oil from Texaco, a Texas based oil company (the fact were later determined by the Congress of the USA, Texaco got a symbolic fine, so they are a matter of official USA history).
By the way, this explains why the French Front Populaire, then in power, and led by Prime Minister Leon Blum, a Jew, was leery to intervene massively in Spain. Blum knew very well that plutocrats from the USA and their evil corporations were the enablers of Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, and that the French and Spanish Republics were under systematic attack by the united forces of plutocracy. (And that war is still going on, with different puppets, Karzai one of them… But the strings pulled from the same establishment and mood. A case in point being Harvard, still central now, as it was in the 1920s and 1930s, making Nazi songs really inspiring.)
Nowadays, this sort of things ought to be meditated more carefully than ever: Hitler pretty much became all he could be, from the help of co-investing plutocratic corporations of the USA. To this day, IBM got away with graciously leasing to all Nazi extermination camps computers, servicing them everyday. The entire Shoah was driven by up to 10,000 computers managed directly by IBM New York, through Geneva. And that is just one case out of many crucial aids to Naziland.
Nowadays, as I said, three quarters of world finance is just the largest mafia the world has ever known. That Google thinks it can get giant profits from the sweat of real mental creators, without any compensation to them whatsoever is typical of the plutocratic mentality, namely everything for a few, in exchange for nothing, but insults.
Some will object that evil obsessed companies such as Google, or Apple made the success of the USA. Indeed: both companies have nearly a trillion dollars of market capitalization, more than the GDP of most countries. (I own a Mc Air, which works very nicely with its solid state drive; Steve Jobs honestly admitted that his company pretty much stole everybody in sight). OK. Fair enough: Apple is a technology integrator (by contrast with a real creator such as Intel). However, the real inventors have got to be rewarded. Neither Apple, nor Google are fundamental innovators (as, say, Intel, or the recent Nobel Laureates in physics and biology are). They are just playing some on TV.
A notorious case, long ago, was the neon tube: the real inventors were not rewarded. The fact that they were French is no excuse: by not rewarding real inventors, one discourages new and future real innovators.
Are vultures evil, do we need them in the real economy? The sixth point of the 10-point corporate philosophy of Google says “You can make money without doing evil.” So why being evil then? To make much more money than society can sustain?
There are two more bones of contention between Google and the French republic: Google’s confidentiality policy, which the French governmental institution Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) considers violate French and European law. Basically Google buys and sells people’s lives, another way it behaves like a slave master.
When confronted to France, USA plutophiles generally scoff and evoke cheese eating surrender monkeys (exhibiting their ignorance of military history). However France is building the European Union as a French Republic amplification machine (Germany works best when getting orders from above).
In this particular case, organizations similar to CNIL in 29 other European countries (that’s more than half a billion citizens) have mandated the French CNIL to look into Google’s confidentiality policies.
The CNIL found that Google behavior MUST be modified (“doit etre modifie'”). The CNIL found that the selling and “finalities” of personal data could not be justified on security or legitimate Google grounds, or contract, or people’s consent. The Asia Pacific Privacy Authority and Canada are also supporting the CNIL. In other words, France is transmogrifying into the hard point of a worldwide Google modification effort. No wonder silicon minds are freaking out.
And not least: Google pays no tax on all the money it earns from French based companies.
As Sarkozy, the fired French president, not exactly a socialist, pointed out about Google:“It is not permissible that they realize a turnover of several billion euros in France without contributing to tax”.
Silicon dark alley types such as the young Google zillionaires and the old venture capital foxes behind them are not educated in the classical way. The human side of the economy escapes them totally, that’s how they made it. And they have this in common with crocodiles.
But how hard is it to understand? If you make billions in France, you have to pay tax in France. And yes, that could mean billions in taxes. And if you keep on not understanding this, the Republic will use force against you, it is as simple as that. Evil uses force, and only a greater force can dispose of evil.
And what evil is that? It’s not just Google’s hypocrisy shows with its slogan: Don’t be evil (We are in charge of that!), and its worldwide machinations, its tax avoidance. Google can fix all these things overnight.
The problem is much larger, much older, than that. Why does the government of the USA close its collective eyes on this sort of behavior? Why is it that it is the French Republic which has to set straight an American corporation?
As Google’s anti-democratic threat makes pretty obvious, the same sort of plutocracy of the USA which, 80 years ago, was all fired up, and ready to help impose Adolf Hitler onto the world, is still viewed as an asset by Washington. Only the naive would believe that companies such as those which helped Hitler got away with so much, for so long, operated without a particularly Dark Will of a political nature behind them. The same will is still here, 80 years after its Hitlerian triumph. Generations pass away, systems of thought perdure.
Will is a mighty thing, especially when it’s all about grabbing territory. It’s fascinating to see Rome, rendered completely senile by centuries of plutocracy, still rabid about conquering the world, when it had lost all power to do so, in the Third Century. That’s when Rome made several full invasion of Mesopotamia, all the way to the Persian Gulf, and into North West Iran, all the way to the Caspian Sea. A full century after emperor Valerian had been captured (treacherously, during peace talks), his army destroyed, Julian (the emperor elected in and by Paris) was killed in Mesopotamia (with catastrophic consequences).
(Shades of Hitler moving decisively ghost armies around Berlin in April 1945.) The immense riches that people who are nothing (such as the pseudo “founders” of Google, Brin and Page), just because their company pays no taxes, is symptomatic of a system that uses corporations for building an empire, the way Rome used Christianity to expand further than its sword could reach.
So the will to let rogue corporations of the USA conduct their own foreign policy and exploitation of the world is still here, as it was in the 1920 s and 1930s, building up Nazism.
All the more as that method, to use criminal businessmen to leverage even greater criminality was extremely successful in connection with the Nazi adventure, and the Stalin venture, with its near fatal weakening of Europe, and the Muslim Fundamentalist venture, with its resource procurement, etc.
Thanks to the rogue corporation strategy, the USA went from a provincial power (a bit like Australia nowadays) to the world superpower, within a few years. No wonder the rogue corporation models keeps on being applied. All the way to Afghanistan…
A militarized plutocratic Rome kept on invading Mesopotamia, for two centuries, when it was not civilized enough, not republican, nor democratic enough, to cling to it. In a similar fashion, the USA has not comprehended that other nations and peoples are starting to understand exactly what’s going on. Obama’s soporific Cairo speech hypocritically celebrating Islam had a short shelf life.
While I get accused of metastatic conspiracy theorizing, let me smile through an article in a major Arabic newspaper, which “reveals” in depth one of my preferred obsession, and allegation, namely the entanglement between dark operators in Washington, and the worst Muslim Fundamentalism.
As I have explained over the years, that entanglement of evil dates all the way back to Adolf Hitler and its minions, and, lo and behold, that’s exactly what the article observes. Hopefully I will write something on this, while Obama and his Machiavellian sycophants cruise to their well deserved doom and gloom.
Tell the truth long enough, and sometimes it ends up setting evil on fire!
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Patrice Ayme
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Why the servus of the Romans came to be called “slaves”? Simple: it was illegal to enslave Franks (by 600 CE everybody was a “Frank”, and by 700 CE, they came to be called “Europeans”). But it was not illegal to enslave Slavs… Charlemagne let the Venitian Republic, a sort of subsidiary of the Renovated Roman Empire, engage, with her mighty fleet, in a prodigious slave trading to the Muslim empire of the Southern Mediterranean.
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