Secularism is the religion of the age ("age", as a period of 120 years, is what "seculum" means). It can tolerate superstition, or many, but just that way: as tolerance.
What we have instead in Iran is a superstition masquerading as a republic. But the public ought to be free to think about whatever, in whichever way, and conduct its life accordingly, after democratic debate, whereas the superstition orders them to believe in its arbitrary credo. Moreover, that arbitrary credo is so incredibly primitive, so tribal, obscurantist, sexist and anti-intellectual that it makes the European Middle Ages seem more enlightened in many ways. Thus, there can be no compromise. The Qur'an, which contains some horribly fascist orders, has to release its grip on the Iranian public.
Once this is done, or on its way, France, and, or the USA, or, better, both together, should formally guarantee the secular Iranian republic its security, with a formal defense treaty, including the nuclear weapons umbrella.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Profit madness...
Statements such as “For one, the private economy invests each dollar of earnings more efficiently than the government spends the taxes collected. have to be put in context[”http://learningfromdogs.com/2009/12/29/government-spending-and-hamburgers]. Always.
Say the “private enterprise” is a casino in Las Vegas. So is it “more efficient” to put up another massive tower in Vegas than to give money to researchers at NIH looking for a cure for cancer or aging? Is it more efficient to send Vegas money to some tax heaven, than to have the Federal government pay some private enterprise to make thousands of millimetric bodyscanners, and pay for more efficient intelligence services?
I am very far from a statist fanatic. The US gov should not have saved General Motors, for example. It should be sold to Renault (if the later is still interested by devouring it).
But, ultimately, in a democracy, it’s the government that calls the shots, not the rich. In the later case, when the Rich calls the shots, all the shots, it’s called a PLUTOCRACY. And, in the fullness of time, it does not work as well. History, and theory, show.
PA
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Say the “private enterprise” is a casino in Las Vegas. So is it “more efficient” to put up another massive tower in Vegas than to give money to researchers at NIH looking for a cure for cancer or aging? Is it more efficient to send Vegas money to some tax heaven, than to have the Federal government pay some private enterprise to make thousands of millimetric bodyscanners, and pay for more efficient intelligence services?
I am very far from a statist fanatic. The US gov should not have saved General Motors, for example. It should be sold to Renault (if the later is still interested by devouring it).
But, ultimately, in a democracy, it’s the government that calls the shots, not the rich. In the later case, when the Rich calls the shots, all the shots, it’s called a PLUTOCRACY. And, in the fullness of time, it does not work as well. History, and theory, show.
PA
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
GOLD MAN SACKS AND SAYS: CLAP AND TREAD.
(Similar but larger essay on Wordpress to come soon)
GOLD MAN SAYS: CLAP AND TREAD. OFF WITH ITS HEAD!
Obama's USA, right now, intends to reduce emissions only with a "Cap and Trade" system. "Cap and Trade" was used, supposedly successfully, in the USA, to reduce acid rain. However, Europe controlled its acid problem without "Cap and Trade". Regulations can work better. After all, there are just regulations for toys, cars, house appliances and medical drugs. One does not do "Cap and Trade" with carcinogens. why to do it with something even more dangerous?
Oh, we shall cap the number of slaves to one million, and then trade them? No, we shall not. Why? Because trading slaves is bad, that's why. This is what happened in Europe: too many free pollution permits were given, well, for free. That was embarrassing. Europe was saved by its enormous pre-existing energy taxes and regulations.
Then "Cap and Trade" has been used in the European Union for 5 years, for CO2 reductions, and it has been hard to implement. Many a European company turned it into an outrageous subsidy (sometimes through elaborated misrepresentation of their previous emissions). "Cap and Trade", in Europe, is a second order effect on the reduction of CO2 production, the main effect being regulations, and taxes on fuel, energy, and now carbon (in France for the later).
The great advantage of "Cap and Trade", for the USA, is that it is a subsidy to the usual suspects, led, of course, by Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs, also known as "Government Sachs", is the true government of the USA, motivated not by what the American rabble wants, but by the profit motive. "Cap and Trade" will make Gold Man richer, so Gold Man is all for it, so it will happen. What should progressives do? Well, denounce loudly but support meekly, because a bit of progress is better than none.
SELLING OUT:
But then here comes Paul Krugman. Among many raging American "conservatives" Krugman has an extreme leftist reputation, but many of the policies he has advocated recently, or opinions he has presented, the elected leaders of the European right would reject with horror as intolerably right wing. An example is the zero interest rate policy, a lamentable give away to banks. Krugman supports it, in spite of its disastrous effects on the saving rate, American seniors, the dollar, stable currency rates, and the unfair cheapening of the USA.
So now Krugman has turned into a herald for Goldman Sachs (See the annex below on Gold Man Sacks and Cap & Trade). In Unhelpful Hansen
James Hansen is a great climate scientist. He was the first to warn about the climate crisis; I take what he says about coal, in particular, very seriously.
Unfortunately, while I defer to him on all matters climate, today’s op-ed article suggests that he really hasn’t made any effort to understand the economics of emissions control. And that’s not a small matter, because he’s now engaged in a misguided crusade against cap and trade, which is — let’s face it — the only form of action against greenhouse gas emissions we have any chance of taking before catastrophe becomes inevitable.
With all due respect, you are making an Americano-American reasoning here. Hansen is right, you are not. "We have no chance of getting a carbon tax for the foreseeable future", you say. Who is "we"? WE, all of use, have just one planet, one biosphere, and the USA, or more exactly the American oligarchs and plutocrats and their factories in China are polluting it to death.
The average American produces 24 tons of CO2 per person, the average French produces 6 tons. The French don't live four times better, but close. It's directly related. When all you do is waste, all you get is hate.
The rest of the world has implemented plenty of various taxes, for example on gasoline, etc. Even China has augmented enormously its gasoline tax in the last 18 months. Moreover, China has made its own increasingly stringent European laws on carbon emissions (although an electric car in China will emit 231 grams of CO2 per kilometer, whereas it would emit only 21 grams in France; American cars emit, in the average 333 grams, and the latest european regulation are for 120 grams…)
France, not content with its formidable taxes on energy, is introducing a carbon tax, on top of them, January 1, 2010, in 3 weeks. If the USA will not listen to reason, it goes without saying that carbon taxation on imports could be used as a way to demolish the industry of the USA, or whatever is left of it, after the Obama administration has subsidized it to death (this is an allusion to the 70 billion dollars injected by Obama in thoroughly inept General Motors… Ah, long gone are the days when an astute GM and a Jew hating Ford worked for Hitler, producing most of some of the types of vehicles Hitler's armed forces used, while naïve American GIs battled them on the ground… Where is the subtlety of old gone? Wall Street's world control is slipping, dissipating as carbon smoke in thin air…)
Europe introduced colossal taxes on energy long ago. Even Norway, which produces more oil per person than Saudi Arabia, has colossal energy taxes. In many European countries the price of gas is close to ten dollars a gallon (although oil is intrinsically cheaper there, being closer to cheap production centers).
Europe had "Cap and Trade" for years. It was a formidable subsidy for polluters. The carbon market is based in Paris. Even then, the French regulators were unable to prevent various misuses of the system. In the USA, Goldman Sachs will be in charge. Great. You will get the usual "Clap and Tread". Everybody applauding Gold Man Sacks treading on the people.
Praying at the feet of Goldman Sachs does not help. The rest of the world is increasingly fed up with the American attitude. I will expand my complaint on my site.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
GOLD MAN SAYS: CLAP AND TREAD. OFF WITH ITS HEAD!
Obama's USA, right now, intends to reduce emissions only with a "Cap and Trade" system. "Cap and Trade" was used, supposedly successfully, in the USA, to reduce acid rain. However, Europe controlled its acid problem without "Cap and Trade". Regulations can work better. After all, there are just regulations for toys, cars, house appliances and medical drugs. One does not do "Cap and Trade" with carcinogens. why to do it with something even more dangerous?
Oh, we shall cap the number of slaves to one million, and then trade them? No, we shall not. Why? Because trading slaves is bad, that's why. This is what happened in Europe: too many free pollution permits were given, well, for free. That was embarrassing. Europe was saved by its enormous pre-existing energy taxes and regulations.
Then "Cap and Trade" has been used in the European Union for 5 years, for CO2 reductions, and it has been hard to implement. Many a European company turned it into an outrageous subsidy (sometimes through elaborated misrepresentation of their previous emissions). "Cap and Trade", in Europe, is a second order effect on the reduction of CO2 production, the main effect being regulations, and taxes on fuel, energy, and now carbon (in France for the later).
The great advantage of "Cap and Trade", for the USA, is that it is a subsidy to the usual suspects, led, of course, by Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs, also known as "Government Sachs", is the true government of the USA, motivated not by what the American rabble wants, but by the profit motive. "Cap and Trade" will make Gold Man richer, so Gold Man is all for it, so it will happen. What should progressives do? Well, denounce loudly but support meekly, because a bit of progress is better than none.
SELLING OUT:
But then here comes Paul Krugman. Among many raging American "conservatives" Krugman has an extreme leftist reputation, but many of the policies he has advocated recently, or opinions he has presented, the elected leaders of the European right would reject with horror as intolerably right wing. An example is the zero interest rate policy, a lamentable give away to banks. Krugman supports it, in spite of its disastrous effects on the saving rate, American seniors, the dollar, stable currency rates, and the unfair cheapening of the USA.
So now Krugman has turned into a herald for Goldman Sachs (See the annex below on Gold Man Sacks and Cap & Trade). In Unhelpful Hansen
James Hansen is a great climate scientist. He was the first to warn about the climate crisis; I take what he says about coal, in particular, very seriously.
Unfortunately, while I defer to him on all matters climate, today’s op-ed article suggests that he really hasn’t made any effort to understand the economics of emissions control. And that’s not a small matter, because he’s now engaged in a misguided crusade against cap and trade, which is — let’s face it — the only form of action against greenhouse gas emissions we have any chance of taking before catastrophe becomes inevitable.
With all due respect, you are making an Americano-American reasoning here. Hansen is right, you are not. "We have no chance of getting a carbon tax for the foreseeable future", you say. Who is "we"? WE, all of use, have just one planet, one biosphere, and the USA, or more exactly the American oligarchs and plutocrats and their factories in China are polluting it to death.
The average American produces 24 tons of CO2 per person, the average French produces 6 tons. The French don't live four times better, but close. It's directly related. When all you do is waste, all you get is hate.
The rest of the world has implemented plenty of various taxes, for example on gasoline, etc. Even China has augmented enormously its gasoline tax in the last 18 months. Moreover, China has made its own increasingly stringent European laws on carbon emissions (although an electric car in China will emit 231 grams of CO2 per kilometer, whereas it would emit only 21 grams in France; American cars emit, in the average 333 grams, and the latest european regulation are for 120 grams…)
France, not content with its formidable taxes on energy, is introducing a carbon tax, on top of them, January 1, 2010, in 3 weeks. If the USA will not listen to reason, it goes without saying that carbon taxation on imports could be used as a way to demolish the industry of the USA, or whatever is left of it, after the Obama administration has subsidized it to death (this is an allusion to the 70 billion dollars injected by Obama in thoroughly inept General Motors… Ah, long gone are the days when an astute GM and a Jew hating Ford worked for Hitler, producing most of some of the types of vehicles Hitler's armed forces used, while naïve American GIs battled them on the ground… Where is the subtlety of old gone? Wall Street's world control is slipping, dissipating as carbon smoke in thin air…)
Europe introduced colossal taxes on energy long ago. Even Norway, which produces more oil per person than Saudi Arabia, has colossal energy taxes. In many European countries the price of gas is close to ten dollars a gallon (although oil is intrinsically cheaper there, being closer to cheap production centers).
Europe had "Cap and Trade" for years. It was a formidable subsidy for polluters. The carbon market is based in Paris. Even then, the French regulators were unable to prevent various misuses of the system. In the USA, Goldman Sachs will be in charge. Great. You will get the usual "Clap and Tread". Everybody applauding Gold Man Sacks treading on the people.
Praying at the feet of Goldman Sachs does not help. The rest of the world is increasingly fed up with the American attitude. I will expand my complaint on my site.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Thursday, November 26, 2009
WHAT TOO BIG OUGHT TO MEAN.
An amendment to the Financial Stability Improvement Act (currently before the House Financial Services Committee):
..." would empower federal regulators to rein in and dismantle financial firms that are so large, inter-connected, or risky that their collapse would put at risk the entire American economic system, even if those firms currently appear to be well-capitalized and healthy."
Some have proposed thus to limit each single bank to 1%, or 2% of GDP. This is not enough, not to say outright naive.
Indeed, however small, if the banks all conspire, and are all allowed to invest in the same non productive derivatives, they will still divert capital away from the real economy to imaginary profits justifying indecent and damaging bonuses, while starving the real economy.
The notion of integration in the mathematical sense has to be introduced. This is a known problem with carcinogens. To limit each given carcinogen below a threshold is not enough. By piling up carcinogens under the threshold, one can get large carcinogenicity. Thus Germany has introduced an overall integrated carcinogenicity limit. France, and the EU will soon follow suit (under scientific pressure).
So, by analogy, what should be limited is the overall risk to the system, and that should evaluated by checking how much risk is in the global system. An obvious way out is to regulate derivatives by limiting leverage, certifying each and every single derivative, and distinguishing commercial operators from speculators (who should be more limited in leverage).
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
..." would empower federal regulators to rein in and dismantle financial firms that are so large, inter-connected, or risky that their collapse would put at risk the entire American economic system, even if those firms currently appear to be well-capitalized and healthy."
Some have proposed thus to limit each single bank to 1%, or 2% of GDP. This is not enough, not to say outright naive.
Indeed, however small, if the banks all conspire, and are all allowed to invest in the same non productive derivatives, they will still divert capital away from the real economy to imaginary profits justifying indecent and damaging bonuses, while starving the real economy.
The notion of integration in the mathematical sense has to be introduced. This is a known problem with carcinogens. To limit each given carcinogen below a threshold is not enough. By piling up carcinogens under the threshold, one can get large carcinogenicity. Thus Germany has introduced an overall integrated carcinogenicity limit. France, and the EU will soon follow suit (under scientific pressure).
So, by analogy, what should be limited is the overall risk to the system, and that should evaluated by checking how much risk is in the global system. An obvious way out is to regulate derivatives by limiting leverage, certifying each and every single derivative, and distinguishing commercial operators from speculators (who should be more limited in leverage).
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Saturday, October 17, 2009
ESSENCE OF THE FINANCIAL CRISIS
For millennia, the STATE controlled the currency. Now, though, most of the currency is controlled by a few private individuals, the bankers. The fractional reserve system is set up that way. This is actually a devolution of civilization.
And it happened before: the French Ancient Regime let private individuals be in charge of taxation, the Fermiers Generaux ("General Farmers"). This led directly to the French revolution of 1789. I have developed this theme, and many related issues, on my sites.
Now, again, this has got to stop. Bankers cannot just create the currency, and lend it to their friends and themselves, with the connivance of the government, artificially boosting GDP, joining insult to injury, has is the case now. Enough is enough.
Now, of course, this is not all what is wrong with the economy. There is a global economic crisis due to globalization (a form of re-colonization), one caused by increasing energy and ecological problems, and one caused by insufficient technological and scientific progress, considering the piling up of problems, and one caused by the related dissemination of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
And it happened before: the French Ancient Regime let private individuals be in charge of taxation, the Fermiers Generaux ("General Farmers"). This led directly to the French revolution of 1789. I have developed this theme, and many related issues, on my sites.
Now, again, this has got to stop. Bankers cannot just create the currency, and lend it to their friends and themselves, with the connivance of the government, artificially boosting GDP, joining insult to injury, has is the case now. Enough is enough.
Now, of course, this is not all what is wrong with the economy. There is a global economic crisis due to globalization (a form of re-colonization), one caused by increasing energy and ecological problems, and one caused by insufficient technological and scientific progress, considering the piling up of problems, and one caused by the related dissemination of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Saturday, September 26, 2009
FRAYING IN AFFRAYING AFGHANISTAN
Bob Herbert correctly notice in the NYT: "The difference between the public’s take on Afghanistan and that of the nation’s top leadership is both stunning and ominous. A clash is coming."
As I have argued on my sites, to win a war, one needs first to know what one is fighting for. Or then have an immense military superiority. We do not have the later: scaling up what the French did in Algeria to the populations, we would need 500,000 [# of French soldiers] times 36 [population Afghanistan] divided by 6 [population Algerians at the time], namely three million men.
The French won militarily in Algeria, and, although "Algeria is France" (as used to be said), they left. They were just plain tired of waging a conflict, and argue about superstition.
So are we going to send three million men to dominate 36 million Afghans? So we can lose a few years later?
Unlikely.
Obama does not know what he is doing in Afghanistan, as shown by his completely self contradictory statements about Islam there (which is, according to him, and the fact of the Afghan constitution, what we are defending there, he means, what he views as the good Islam, except he does not like the law about raping women, and forcing them to enjoy it officially...)
The drain of this grotesque war on treasure, morals, morality, and logical coherence, let alone lives and limbs cannot be sustained...
As I have argued, the war is waged not because of Al Qaeda, or the Taliban: these are just pretexts. But the truth can only be left unsaid...
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
As I have argued on my sites, to win a war, one needs first to know what one is fighting for. Or then have an immense military superiority. We do not have the later: scaling up what the French did in Algeria to the populations, we would need 500,000 [# of French soldiers] times 36 [population Afghanistan] divided by 6 [population Algerians at the time], namely three million men.
The French won militarily in Algeria, and, although "Algeria is France" (as used to be said), they left. They were just plain tired of waging a conflict, and argue about superstition.
So are we going to send three million men to dominate 36 million Afghans? So we can lose a few years later?
Unlikely.
Obama does not know what he is doing in Afghanistan, as shown by his completely self contradictory statements about Islam there (which is, according to him, and the fact of the Afghan constitution, what we are defending there, he means, what he views as the good Islam, except he does not like the law about raping women, and forcing them to enjoy it officially...)
The drain of this grotesque war on treasure, morals, morality, and logical coherence, let alone lives and limbs cannot be sustained...
As I have argued, the war is waged not because of Al Qaeda, or the Taliban: these are just pretexts. But the truth can only be left unsaid...
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
PECK ON BECK NOT
Krugman observes that: "I’d say that Feldstein was channeling Glenn Beck, except that since the Feldstein piece came first, it’s the other way around. So as I said, maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on Mr. Beck."
[Marty Feldstein, a well known economist has been going around, saying, and writing in prestigious editorials that one could not afford to fight the greenhouse effect.]
Beck had an excellent piece on the influence of big bankers, in particular Goldman Sachs, on the political process, in particular the White House. He was standing at the blackboard, and drew an elaborated diagram, which was correct, as far as I knew.
I also know that it required a lot of courage to do so. In my own microcosme, I was harassed and punished by bankers-with-bonuses, just because I emitted similar truths (they threatened and insulted me through email and the Internet, and got me banned from websites). I had to pinch myself to observe that was really happening, and not just a nightmare.
So I can understand the sort of risk that Beck took by drawing that diagram, and going on a long piece about plutocrats. He got many bonus points from me then.
I can understand that Beck wants to depict himself as a clown to divert attention from his grave objections to an ancient regime which is going straight towards the wall of the tsunami of rising seas… He can always justify himself by saying later that he said whatever, being a clown, and thus innocent of any gravitas versus big bankers with offices in the White House (Rahm Emanuel, and various Golman officers...)
Nevermind that Beck is ironical about global warming when it snows in New York. It is an amusing contrast. It is to scientists to explain, and pound down on, the point that the warming is mostly concentrated in the polar regions, and that there is the Achilles Heel of the entire climate: if you bust the frig, the temps are going to shoot up. And the seas will follow…
PA
[Marty Feldstein, a well known economist has been going around, saying, and writing in prestigious editorials that one could not afford to fight the greenhouse effect.]
Beck had an excellent piece on the influence of big bankers, in particular Goldman Sachs, on the political process, in particular the White House. He was standing at the blackboard, and drew an elaborated diagram, which was correct, as far as I knew.
I also know that it required a lot of courage to do so. In my own microcosme, I was harassed and punished by bankers-with-bonuses, just because I emitted similar truths (they threatened and insulted me through email and the Internet, and got me banned from websites). I had to pinch myself to observe that was really happening, and not just a nightmare.
So I can understand the sort of risk that Beck took by drawing that diagram, and going on a long piece about plutocrats. He got many bonus points from me then.
I can understand that Beck wants to depict himself as a clown to divert attention from his grave objections to an ancient regime which is going straight towards the wall of the tsunami of rising seas… He can always justify himself by saying later that he said whatever, being a clown, and thus innocent of any gravitas versus big bankers with offices in the White House (Rahm Emanuel, and various Golman officers...)
Nevermind that Beck is ironical about global warming when it snows in New York. It is an amusing contrast. It is to scientists to explain, and pound down on, the point that the warming is mostly concentrated in the polar regions, and that there is the Achilles Heel of the entire climate: if you bust the frig, the temps are going to shoot up. And the seas will follow…
PA
Sunday, September 20, 2009
WHEN OUTRAGE IS NOT ENOUGH...
PLAIN OLD RAGE IS RECOMMENDED...
In "Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day", Frank Rich (NYT, Sunday Sept. 20, 2009) declares that: President Obama — and our political system — are being tested by a populist rage that is no less real for being shouted by a demagogue from Fox.
When the People has good reason to be enraged, does that mean the the slightly pejorative "populist rage" should be used?
Well, what is being tested is systems of thought that are erroneous.
Clinton, Larry Summers and his fellow conspirators at Goldman Sachs, the White House, and the like, dismantled (crucial parts of) Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Congress work elaborated in 1933 to keep the financial exploiters at bay, once and for all. These are the people that ought to be denounced. And Beck denounced them (a bit). That's good.
Anybody exploiting so called racial differences to self advance, or not, is playing the racist card, that is also a fact one should bear in mind. One can be funny about it as Lula, the president of Brazil, has been, and that is sort of tolerable, perhaps even necessary, sometimes.
Anyway, people should talk about \"race\" where it counts. Such as: are the budget cuts in California racist and pro-plutocratic? But the brush with which one paints things has to be precise enough to write something meaningful. That Beck does occasionally, and it's hard to do.
So the problem is at the White House, and in Congress, not Beck's studio. Beck does the job that is needed, calling a cat a cat, and the thief, even a large one, a thief.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
In "Even Glenn Beck Is Right Twice a Day", Frank Rich (NYT, Sunday Sept. 20, 2009) declares that: President Obama — and our political system — are being tested by a populist rage that is no less real for being shouted by a demagogue from Fox.
When the People has good reason to be enraged, does that mean the the slightly pejorative "populist rage" should be used?
Well, what is being tested is systems of thought that are erroneous.
Clinton, Larry Summers and his fellow conspirators at Goldman Sachs, the White House, and the like, dismantled (crucial parts of) Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Congress work elaborated in 1933 to keep the financial exploiters at bay, once and for all. These are the people that ought to be denounced. And Beck denounced them (a bit). That's good.
Anybody exploiting so called racial differences to self advance, or not, is playing the racist card, that is also a fact one should bear in mind. One can be funny about it as Lula, the president of Brazil, has been, and that is sort of tolerable, perhaps even necessary, sometimes.
Anyway, people should talk about \"race\" where it counts. Such as: are the budget cuts in California racist and pro-plutocratic? But the brush with which one paints things has to be precise enough to write something meaningful. That Beck does occasionally, and it's hard to do.
So the problem is at the White House, and in Congress, not Beck's studio. Beck does the job that is needed, calling a cat a cat, and the thief, even a large one, a thief.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Monday, September 7, 2009
BLAME THE CAUSE.
[Published on the Roger Cohen blog, NYT, September 6, 2009].
***
The Egyptian cultural minister responded in 2008, in the following fashion to a deputy of the Egyptian parliament who was alarmed that Israeli books could be introduced into the Alexandria Library: “Burn these books; if there are any there, I will myself burn them in front of you”?
Now he is leading candidate for UNESCO, to the alarm of Claude Lanzmann (author of the documentary "Shoah"), Bernard-Henri Lévy (philosopher) and Elie WieselNobel (prize winner in literature). They want "to prevent the irreparable".
But are they barking up the wrong tree?
***
When confronting a single statement, or just a few statements, one has to be cautious about the context that brought them up. This is what happens when people joke: people utter statements that make no sense in a more global context, and the logical incoherence gives pleasure (probably a way evolution has found to encourage the imagination, the source of mental insight).
But statements that make no sense in a more general, but intended context, can happen in other situations too, and not just to amuse, but to instruct directly. Maybe Hosny was trying to shake things up, while giving a few rhetoric morsels to opponents. That is what his "solemn" excuses seem to indicate.
"Anti-Semitism" has come to mean "Anti-Judaism". "Anti-Judaism" originated with Christianism, the so called Catholic Orthodoxy of emperor Constantine and many of his imperial, superstitious, fanatical and extremely atrocious successors.
At the time, the Catholics were busy killing everybody they disagreed with, and they disagreed with whoever had the slightest different philosophy about anything. The Jews barely escaped with their lives as a culture and religion, others were so thoroughly exterminated, nearly nobody knows their names (Arians, Nestorians, Gnostics, etc...). Three centuries later, the concept of fanatical Anti-Judaism was picked up by those who wrote the Qur'an (a bunch of military men under Caliph Uthman, ~ 645 CE).
The Qur'an is violently against the "Jews". OK, not as ferociously as it is for the extermination of some other categories of unbelievers. But I do not see Elie Wiesel, Claude Lanzmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy protesting against the blatant hatred of the Jews in the Qur'an. Why? All the more troubling since Adolf Hitler expressed his admiration for, and knowledge of Islam many times (let alone made more than friends with the Mufti of Jerusalem!)
It seems clear to me that, as long as the Qur'an will be viewed as "holy", all what is inside will be viewed as "holy". Many statements in the Qur'an can be interpreted as calling for the death of Jews and saying they refused God, and Muhammad, and are unbelievers, etc... All these categories of thinkers the Qur'an calls to kill. Shocking but true.
I know this sort of observation on the text of a superstition is viewed as "racist" by people with little brainpower. But it is not anymore racist than observing that the Christian superstition's highest authorities tortured to death millions of Jews and other "heretics" over the centuries. In that sense the catholic Hitler was just the bouquet final of attempted Jewish holocausts(and Hitler was, indeed, not so discreetly supported by the Pope himself).
The hadiths of Muhammad, another sacred text of Islam go even further than the Qur'an: "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him'".(Sahih al-Bukhari 4:52:177) This hadith has been quoted countless times, and it has become a part of the charter of Hamas.
So let those lions of justice and courage, Elie Wiesel, Claude Lanzmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy, lay the blame where it mostly lays. Differently from Hosny, they are better protected, so we expect more from them.
***
Patrice Ayme
***
[A much longer and elaborated version, filling in a lot of savory details, will hopefully be put on:
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/]
***
The Egyptian cultural minister responded in 2008, in the following fashion to a deputy of the Egyptian parliament who was alarmed that Israeli books could be introduced into the Alexandria Library: “Burn these books; if there are any there, I will myself burn them in front of you”?
Now he is leading candidate for UNESCO, to the alarm of Claude Lanzmann (author of the documentary "Shoah"), Bernard-Henri Lévy (philosopher) and Elie WieselNobel (prize winner in literature). They want "to prevent the irreparable".
But are they barking up the wrong tree?
***
When confronting a single statement, or just a few statements, one has to be cautious about the context that brought them up. This is what happens when people joke: people utter statements that make no sense in a more global context, and the logical incoherence gives pleasure (probably a way evolution has found to encourage the imagination, the source of mental insight).
But statements that make no sense in a more general, but intended context, can happen in other situations too, and not just to amuse, but to instruct directly. Maybe Hosny was trying to shake things up, while giving a few rhetoric morsels to opponents. That is what his "solemn" excuses seem to indicate.
"Anti-Semitism" has come to mean "Anti-Judaism". "Anti-Judaism" originated with Christianism, the so called Catholic Orthodoxy of emperor Constantine and many of his imperial, superstitious, fanatical and extremely atrocious successors.
At the time, the Catholics were busy killing everybody they disagreed with, and they disagreed with whoever had the slightest different philosophy about anything. The Jews barely escaped with their lives as a culture and religion, others were so thoroughly exterminated, nearly nobody knows their names (Arians, Nestorians, Gnostics, etc...). Three centuries later, the concept of fanatical Anti-Judaism was picked up by those who wrote the Qur'an (a bunch of military men under Caliph Uthman, ~ 645 CE).
The Qur'an is violently against the "Jews". OK, not as ferociously as it is for the extermination of some other categories of unbelievers. But I do not see Elie Wiesel, Claude Lanzmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy protesting against the blatant hatred of the Jews in the Qur'an. Why? All the more troubling since Adolf Hitler expressed his admiration for, and knowledge of Islam many times (let alone made more than friends with the Mufti of Jerusalem!)
It seems clear to me that, as long as the Qur'an will be viewed as "holy", all what is inside will be viewed as "holy". Many statements in the Qur'an can be interpreted as calling for the death of Jews and saying they refused God, and Muhammad, and are unbelievers, etc... All these categories of thinkers the Qur'an calls to kill. Shocking but true.
I know this sort of observation on the text of a superstition is viewed as "racist" by people with little brainpower. But it is not anymore racist than observing that the Christian superstition's highest authorities tortured to death millions of Jews and other "heretics" over the centuries. In that sense the catholic Hitler was just the bouquet final of attempted Jewish holocausts(and Hitler was, indeed, not so discreetly supported by the Pope himself).
The hadiths of Muhammad, another sacred text of Islam go even further than the Qur'an: "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him'".(Sahih al-Bukhari 4:52:177) This hadith has been quoted countless times, and it has become a part of the charter of Hamas.
So let those lions of justice and courage, Elie Wiesel, Claude Lanzmann and Bernard-Henri Lévy, lay the blame where it mostly lays. Differently from Hosny, they are better protected, so we expect more from them.
***
Patrice Ayme
***
[A much longer and elaborated version, filling in a lot of savory details, will hopefully be put on:
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/]
Friday, September 4, 2009
THE ROAD TO CARBONIFEROUS HELL.
Sarkozy (the president of France, would I add for the cognitively challenged) declared yesterday that, as far as he was concerned, as long as unemployment was going up, the crisis was still worsening.
The real crisis was well started under Clinton: an increasingly unbalanced, unsustainable economy, with rising unemployment in real jobs (I know that Reagan said that being a shoe shiner was as honorable, as real a job as being a rocket scientist, but that is only illustrative of Reagan’s lack of grasp of what constitutes an economy).
That Americans are getting enraged maybe a good, necessary, although counterintuitive first step. Americans are reduced to rage because rage lessens pain (a scientific study just came out showing that cursing measurably reduced pain). It is the first step towards revolt: cursing helps.
The French have long learned to express their own rage creatively. It is not so dumb; since, in France, the higher ups can be seized at any moment by the vengeful People, they think more carefully at the broad scheme of things. Hence Sarkozy’s many correct insights. The French government made a deal with the French population that it would confront Obama with an ultimatum about banksters’ bonuses.
Of course, many American bankers will scoff: what can France do? Well, France will introduce a carbon tax in 2010. That sounds i nnocent enough. But then the European Union will have to follow. And then of course it could be applied to imports. China is probably guessing this, and making a massive move towards renewables, using the might of her communist command and control of her capitalist free economy.
Applying the carbon tax to imports will be a powerful blow against the international plutocracy that seems to animate the USA as a living skeleton inside. Indeed the delocalized American industry in nice locales such as China will be struck by ruinous taxes (as deserved). It will of course help the European industrial base (still mostly in Europe, thanks to vociferous European protesters).
At this point the USA could be put on the ropes: its plutocracy would be collapsing, its industrial base will have long disappeared, and the worldwide carbon tax will strike hard all heavy users of carbon, including air travel. Only the Hamish will look smart. OK, it’s 10 years down the road to hell, but the situation is clear: since the USA did not want to clean its act, it will be cleaned whether it cooperates, or not.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
The real crisis was well started under Clinton: an increasingly unbalanced, unsustainable economy, with rising unemployment in real jobs (I know that Reagan said that being a shoe shiner was as honorable, as real a job as being a rocket scientist, but that is only illustrative of Reagan’s lack of grasp of what constitutes an economy).
That Americans are getting enraged maybe a good, necessary, although counterintuitive first step. Americans are reduced to rage because rage lessens pain (a scientific study just came out showing that cursing measurably reduced pain). It is the first step towards revolt: cursing helps.
The French have long learned to express their own rage creatively. It is not so dumb; since, in France, the higher ups can be seized at any moment by the vengeful People, they think more carefully at the broad scheme of things. Hence Sarkozy’s many correct insights. The French government made a deal with the French population that it would confront Obama with an ultimatum about banksters’ bonuses.
Of course, many American bankers will scoff: what can France do? Well, France will introduce a carbon tax in 2010. That sounds i nnocent enough. But then the European Union will have to follow. And then of course it could be applied to imports. China is probably guessing this, and making a massive move towards renewables, using the might of her communist command and control of her capitalist free economy.
Applying the carbon tax to imports will be a powerful blow against the international plutocracy that seems to animate the USA as a living skeleton inside. Indeed the delocalized American industry in nice locales such as China will be struck by ruinous taxes (as deserved). It will of course help the European industrial base (still mostly in Europe, thanks to vociferous European protesters).
At this point the USA could be put on the ropes: its plutocracy would be collapsing, its industrial base will have long disappeared, and the worldwide carbon tax will strike hard all heavy users of carbon, including air travel. Only the Hamish will look smart. OK, it’s 10 years down the road to hell, but the situation is clear: since the USA did not want to clean its act, it will be cleaned whether it cooperates, or not.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
WHAT AMERICAN HEALTH CARE IS BEST AT.
Health care is a huge profit center for the hyper rich in the USA. Warren Buffet made personally 8 billion dollars from health insurance at some point. Still, Obama called him his "friend", many times over. Does Obama want everybody to emulate Buffet and divert funds from health care to obscene profits so as to be able to buy oneself a fleet of private jets, as Warren Buffet did? With friends like that do you get a jet too?
In the USA, all too often, when people make big money, they are viewed as right, deep, just and altruistic.
So Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama got hundreds of thousands of dollars from a hospital, although they are not trained in medicine or hospital administration. In a country such as France, the public health insurance system, which watches over the cost of the entire medical system, would have sued them for corruption.
But in the USA, they made big money, so they are just, right, deep, and incarnate American health care: a way to make big bucks for the few, the best, the wisest, and most altruistic. And Valerie Jarrett is there in the front lines, with her vision of health care for everybody.
No doubt that involves paying more so she can get more funds for a bigger mansion on Martha's Vineyard for herself. In other countries health spending is for health, in the USA it is for the rich to live like kings on Martha's Vineyard.
PA
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
In the USA, all too often, when people make big money, they are viewed as right, deep, just and altruistic.
So Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama got hundreds of thousands of dollars from a hospital, although they are not trained in medicine or hospital administration. In a country such as France, the public health insurance system, which watches over the cost of the entire medical system, would have sued them for corruption.
But in the USA, they made big money, so they are just, right, deep, and incarnate American health care: a way to make big bucks for the few, the best, the wisest, and most altruistic. And Valerie Jarrett is there in the front lines, with her vision of health care for everybody.
No doubt that involves paying more so she can get more funds for a bigger mansion on Martha's Vineyard for herself. In other countries health spending is for health, in the USA it is for the rich to live like kings on Martha's Vineyard.
PA
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
CONSPIRING TO DISTRACT? OR WORSE?
From the New York Times: "A new report by the top commander in Afghanistan detailing the deteriorating situation there confronts President Obama with the politically perilous decision of whether to deepen American involvement in the eight-year-old war amid shrinking public support at home."
Politically perilous? Is "politics" all there ever is? What about morally devastating, philosophically self defeating and strategically erroneous?
The war in Afghanistan is so blatantly absurd at this point that one cannot escape a feeling that it is a deliberate distraction, among other things. Another possibility, explored here, is that some deeper computation is at work, and it has nothing to do with Islamist terrorists.
For example Obama, a past drug user himself, makes a big deal about the planting in Afghanistan of plants that can be used for drugs. As if it were his business.
This is a new height in hypocrisy.Poppy planting is legal, for medicinal purposes, all around the world, including Turkey, France and Australia.
This war is going nowhere nice. The fact that it is going nowhere allows to justify lots of military spending, though... Having a full grown man such as Obama in need of handlers to tell him which fight to engage in is pathetic.
Why so much bravado in Afghanistan, and so little with bankers and health care vultures?
Now, of course, there may be deeper reasons to stay forever in Afghanistan. Such as being in the front line when the unavoidable thermonuclear war between india and Pakistan occurs, 15 years down the drain... But then it may be more clever, democratic and civilizationally progressive to say it, and to talk about that. Instead the present strategy of taking deliberately erroneous decisions so that the war last another 15 years is a freely chosen tactic to make a bad situation worse.
Peoples, in Europe and America, may not approve much longer...
Patrice Ayme
[A more elaborated version of this post will be found on patriceayme.wordpress.com]
Politically perilous? Is "politics" all there ever is? What about morally devastating, philosophically self defeating and strategically erroneous?
The war in Afghanistan is so blatantly absurd at this point that one cannot escape a feeling that it is a deliberate distraction, among other things. Another possibility, explored here, is that some deeper computation is at work, and it has nothing to do with Islamist terrorists.
For example Obama, a past drug user himself, makes a big deal about the planting in Afghanistan of plants that can be used for drugs. As if it were his business.
This is a new height in hypocrisy.Poppy planting is legal, for medicinal purposes, all around the world, including Turkey, France and Australia.
This war is going nowhere nice. The fact that it is going nowhere allows to justify lots of military spending, though... Having a full grown man such as Obama in need of handlers to tell him which fight to engage in is pathetic.
Why so much bravado in Afghanistan, and so little with bankers and health care vultures?
Now, of course, there may be deeper reasons to stay forever in Afghanistan. Such as being in the front line when the unavoidable thermonuclear war between india and Pakistan occurs, 15 years down the drain... But then it may be more clever, democratic and civilizationally progressive to say it, and to talk about that. Instead the present strategy of taking deliberately erroneous decisions so that the war last another 15 years is a freely chosen tactic to make a bad situation worse.
Peoples, in Europe and America, may not approve much longer...
Patrice Ayme
[A more elaborated version of this post will be found on patriceayme.wordpress.com]
THINKING IS A MUST, CARICATURE IS NOT.
(In my not so humble opinion) FALSELY REPORTING THE HEALTH CARE DEBATE DOES NOT HELP, BE IT ON THE RIGHT, OR ON THE LEFT:
***
Paul Krugman offered the following opinion on his blog:
"Back in 2004 I looked at TV reports on health care plans, and found not a single segment actually explaining the candidates’ plans. This time the WaPo ombud looks at his own paper’s reporting, and it’s not much better.
Why does this happen? I suspect several reasons.
1. It’s easier to research horse-race stuff. To report on policy, a reporter has to master the policy issues fairly well. That’s not easy...
...Newsweek’s Sharon Begley wrote a piece about what actually is and isn’t in Obamacare, and got mail from readers denouncing her and wishing her an early death. As I pointed out the other day, I’m getting a lot of hate mail — and I mean obscenities, death wishes, and all that, not strongly worded disagreements — for writing about Swiss health care and budget arithmetic. Much safer to report on ups and downs in the conventional wisdom.
The upshot, of course, is that we’re having a crucial national policy debate in which the great bulk of the news coverage tells people nothing at all about the policy issues."
***
I do agree with the overall gists of Paul's arguments. Nevertheless, in the haste to depict opponents to (some aspects?) of putative health care proposals as bad, the proponents of health care reform (whatever is meant by that)are also dishonest. An example is provided here. I sent the commentary below to Krugman's blog, very early on. Now the blog had the kindness to publish me many times. But not this time. Why? Well, you judge. Apparently, being caricatural is a must, and the New York Times is firmly decided to protect me from directing abrasive criticism against the presumed hero of health care. Here is my unelected comment:
***
I have appreciated Sharon Begley very much, ever since she was covering science at the Wall Street Journal. I bought her book, long ago. But her Newsweek piece is the first one I have seen of her that is content empty. For example, I know that Sarah Palin is whatever she is, and to remind me of that does not advance the debate.
But Obama has no plan we can see. Slogans are not a plan. There are 3 or 4 bills in Congress, none of them with Obama's signature on it.
The Grand Ma-does-not-need-a-hip talk was started by him, Obama. In the New York Times (May 2009).
Of course republicans were going to jump on the grand mother does-not-need-care issue. Of course Obama could predict that. And of course laying supine as republicans ran all over him was not going to improve any chance at health reform.
So the question has long been: what does Obama want? Staying friend with the health insurance king Warren Buffet?
As I stated many times, it ought to have taken 3 days to boost and improve Medicare, and pass the legislation (with the existing democratic majorities). Further tinkering could have squeezed the private life insurers' abuse. It would have been easy to find an egregious case resulting in death, and for the government to sue for homicide. That would make juriprudence, squeezing the insurers for-profit lifestyle out. Medicare could have grown.
Oops, I forgot that "friend" Warren would certainly not have been happy, with such an easy outcome...
If we do not want to do just horse race reporting, we have to stop treating Obama as a horse. Surely, he is more intelligent than that. But then how come so dumb in health care? After being so dumb with the banks? Not enough hay in the old barn?
Patrice Ayme
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
***
Paul Krugman offered the following opinion on his blog:
"Back in 2004 I looked at TV reports on health care plans, and found not a single segment actually explaining the candidates’ plans. This time the WaPo ombud looks at his own paper’s reporting, and it’s not much better.
Why does this happen? I suspect several reasons.
1. It’s easier to research horse-race stuff. To report on policy, a reporter has to master the policy issues fairly well. That’s not easy...
...Newsweek’s Sharon Begley wrote a piece about what actually is and isn’t in Obamacare, and got mail from readers denouncing her and wishing her an early death. As I pointed out the other day, I’m getting a lot of hate mail — and I mean obscenities, death wishes, and all that, not strongly worded disagreements — for writing about Swiss health care and budget arithmetic. Much safer to report on ups and downs in the conventional wisdom.
The upshot, of course, is that we’re having a crucial national policy debate in which the great bulk of the news coverage tells people nothing at all about the policy issues."
***
I do agree with the overall gists of Paul's arguments. Nevertheless, in the haste to depict opponents to (some aspects?) of putative health care proposals as bad, the proponents of health care reform (whatever is meant by that)are also dishonest. An example is provided here. I sent the commentary below to Krugman's blog, very early on. Now the blog had the kindness to publish me many times. But not this time. Why? Well, you judge. Apparently, being caricatural is a must, and the New York Times is firmly decided to protect me from directing abrasive criticism against the presumed hero of health care. Here is my unelected comment:
***
I have appreciated Sharon Begley very much, ever since she was covering science at the Wall Street Journal. I bought her book, long ago. But her Newsweek piece is the first one I have seen of her that is content empty. For example, I know that Sarah Palin is whatever she is, and to remind me of that does not advance the debate.
But Obama has no plan we can see. Slogans are not a plan. There are 3 or 4 bills in Congress, none of them with Obama's signature on it.
The Grand Ma-does-not-need-a-hip talk was started by him, Obama. In the New York Times (May 2009).
Of course republicans were going to jump on the grand mother does-not-need-care issue. Of course Obama could predict that. And of course laying supine as republicans ran all over him was not going to improve any chance at health reform.
So the question has long been: what does Obama want? Staying friend with the health insurance king Warren Buffet?
As I stated many times, it ought to have taken 3 days to boost and improve Medicare, and pass the legislation (with the existing democratic majorities). Further tinkering could have squeezed the private life insurers' abuse. It would have been easy to find an egregious case resulting in death, and for the government to sue for homicide. That would make juriprudence, squeezing the insurers for-profit lifestyle out. Medicare could have grown.
Oops, I forgot that "friend" Warren would certainly not have been happy, with such an easy outcome...
If we do not want to do just horse race reporting, we have to stop treating Obama as a horse. Surely, he is more intelligent than that. But then how come so dumb in health care? After being so dumb with the banks? Not enough hay in the old barn?
Patrice Ayme
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Friday, August 28, 2009
QUESTION AUTHORITY, DON'T BEG FOR IT.
A question frequently asked: "Do you have a bio somewhere on the web that could be read?"
There is a crying need for intellectuals to constitute a worldwide network. We are living in unique times, when good thinking can be broadcasted to the entire planet, as never before.
Naturally people searching for a better grasp on reality, look for authority, but that is more than a bit self contradictory. Authority is so yesterday, because, as long as there is progress, authority comes short, and this is good.
Denying authority is related to the biography question. I deliberately do not provide with a bio. I am motivated by thinking, and the product of my thoughts ought to stand on its own, even if I am small and ridiculous, green with yellow spots, hermaphrodite, young, old, of Aztec descent, or a Tagalong speaker... I am tired, and I would like other people to be tired from the nationalism, religionism, sexism, ageism, etc. (Also there is a security aspect: somewhat incredibly, I was assaulted with lethal violence more than once. Contrarily to my friend Obama, I am not provided with bodyguards)
To get to the truth, it is necessary to avoid arguments based on authority. There is a number of reasons for this:
1) Yesterday's glory does not reveal necessarily tomorrow's truth. In the most important, cases, quite the opposite; yesterday's certainty is, all too often, tomorrow's lie.
2) Having satisfied previous authority, or authorities, is generally the way to become an authority, in turn. Feynman contemptfully noticed that the business of deciding who would become an authority was the Academy of Science's main activity. Then he resigned.
Those authorities may, or may not, be endowed with higher values. For example if a head of state elevates someone to a position of authority, that does not mean generally it is deserved, or even that the head of state ought to be an authority. Even Ernst Roehm contested Hitlers' authority in the matter of Nazism (Hitler therefore visited Roehm in the cell he had imprisoned him in, and shot him to death, a sure way to terminate the socialist interpretation of national-socialism.).
3) There is a psychological characteristic in human being, a desire to be economical, a trick from billions of years of evolution. Some call it lazyness. Brain work consists into brain rebuilding, and thus is energy intensive. Believing saves energy, comparatively to verifying things. Thus people often prefer instead to believe vast mental schemes rather than checking where they logically came from. So people are drawn to live at the feet of authority rather than in a dialogue with thinking. Both forms contradict each other, and one has to chose, whether to become, emotionally, a believer rather than a criticizer.
To believe with the heart is often the best choice, but then the next question is which kind of heart. The naive and touching heart Pascal found solace with, of the haughty mien of the Athenians at the pinnacle of their power?
To destroy the authority argument, Socrates used to say that he knew nothing, a polite way to say that they knew nothing. I am a bit more honest, and will humbly recognize that I know plenty of things. But I will not publish a bio. Lest it looks authoritative, I guess...
My way to destroy the authority argument is just to argue. People have to learn to distinguish between the plausible, and what is not so. A form of meta learning.
PA
There is a crying need for intellectuals to constitute a worldwide network. We are living in unique times, when good thinking can be broadcasted to the entire planet, as never before.
Naturally people searching for a better grasp on reality, look for authority, but that is more than a bit self contradictory. Authority is so yesterday, because, as long as there is progress, authority comes short, and this is good.
Denying authority is related to the biography question. I deliberately do not provide with a bio. I am motivated by thinking, and the product of my thoughts ought to stand on its own, even if I am small and ridiculous, green with yellow spots, hermaphrodite, young, old, of Aztec descent, or a Tagalong speaker... I am tired, and I would like other people to be tired from the nationalism, religionism, sexism, ageism, etc. (Also there is a security aspect: somewhat incredibly, I was assaulted with lethal violence more than once. Contrarily to my friend Obama, I am not provided with bodyguards)
To get to the truth, it is necessary to avoid arguments based on authority. There is a number of reasons for this:
1) Yesterday's glory does not reveal necessarily tomorrow's truth. In the most important, cases, quite the opposite; yesterday's certainty is, all too often, tomorrow's lie.
2) Having satisfied previous authority, or authorities, is generally the way to become an authority, in turn. Feynman contemptfully noticed that the business of deciding who would become an authority was the Academy of Science's main activity. Then he resigned.
Those authorities may, or may not, be endowed with higher values. For example if a head of state elevates someone to a position of authority, that does not mean generally it is deserved, or even that the head of state ought to be an authority. Even Ernst Roehm contested Hitlers' authority in the matter of Nazism (Hitler therefore visited Roehm in the cell he had imprisoned him in, and shot him to death, a sure way to terminate the socialist interpretation of national-socialism.).
3) There is a psychological characteristic in human being, a desire to be economical, a trick from billions of years of evolution. Some call it lazyness. Brain work consists into brain rebuilding, and thus is energy intensive. Believing saves energy, comparatively to verifying things. Thus people often prefer instead to believe vast mental schemes rather than checking where they logically came from. So people are drawn to live at the feet of authority rather than in a dialogue with thinking. Both forms contradict each other, and one has to chose, whether to become, emotionally, a believer rather than a criticizer.
To believe with the heart is often the best choice, but then the next question is which kind of heart. The naive and touching heart Pascal found solace with, of the haughty mien of the Athenians at the pinnacle of their power?
To destroy the authority argument, Socrates used to say that he knew nothing, a polite way to say that they knew nothing. I am a bit more honest, and will humbly recognize that I know plenty of things. But I will not publish a bio. Lest it looks authoritative, I guess...
My way to destroy the authority argument is just to argue. People have to learn to distinguish between the plausible, and what is not so. A form of meta learning.
PA
Friday, August 21, 2009
WHY GDP IS UP WHILE EMPLOYMENT IS DOWN
From Paul Krugman's excellent blog (August 21, 2009):
"Barara Kiviat asks, is this a recovery or isn’t it? The answer is yes.
I’ve been pointing out for a long time — well before the crisis hit full steam — that recoveries ain’t what they used to be. Basically, the standard definition of a recovery is that it’s when GDP starts to rise; but “jobless recoveries”, in which unemployment keeps worsening long after GDP has turned around, have become the new normal. Bill Clinton was able to run on the economy, stupid, well into an alleged economic recovery; the 2001 recession formally ended in Nov. of that year, but it didn’t feel like a recovery until the second half of 2003.
I really don’t understand why anyone is surprised that it’s happening again."
***
Here is my own take on it, to explain that apparently strange phenomenon:
As the hyper rich gets ever hyper, more and more of the rise in GDP is absorbed by them. So, recovery after recovery, the hyper rich climb up the ladder of owning more and more of everything. This is in part caused by the ever greater "efficiency" of the economy, meaning the decent jobs of yesteryear are gone to developing nations. Every down cycle is a pretext to augment said "efficiency", and sending more jobs away, or diminishing their cost.
Hence the effect that is observed, of recovering GDP ever more accompanied by sluggish recovery in employment and its quality.
It would be good to look at median income instead of GDP to evaluate the depth and nature of economic crises. My bet is that, averaged over all and any twenty year periods, the present crisis of median income would reveal itself to be greater than the one centered around the 1930s...
This will go on, until it is understood by the People who vote that plutocracy is global, although law is only local. Thus global plutocracy can "navigate" (a concept Barack Obama loves), around local law, just as any long wavelength wave can navigate around small isolated obstacles...
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
"Barara Kiviat asks, is this a recovery or isn’t it? The answer is yes.
I’ve been pointing out for a long time — well before the crisis hit full steam — that recoveries ain’t what they used to be. Basically, the standard definition of a recovery is that it’s when GDP starts to rise; but “jobless recoveries”, in which unemployment keeps worsening long after GDP has turned around, have become the new normal. Bill Clinton was able to run on the economy, stupid, well into an alleged economic recovery; the 2001 recession formally ended in Nov. of that year, but it didn’t feel like a recovery until the second half of 2003.
I really don’t understand why anyone is surprised that it’s happening again."
***
Here is my own take on it, to explain that apparently strange phenomenon:
As the hyper rich gets ever hyper, more and more of the rise in GDP is absorbed by them. So, recovery after recovery, the hyper rich climb up the ladder of owning more and more of everything. This is in part caused by the ever greater "efficiency" of the economy, meaning the decent jobs of yesteryear are gone to developing nations. Every down cycle is a pretext to augment said "efficiency", and sending more jobs away, or diminishing their cost.
Hence the effect that is observed, of recovering GDP ever more accompanied by sluggish recovery in employment and its quality.
It would be good to look at median income instead of GDP to evaluate the depth and nature of economic crises. My bet is that, averaged over all and any twenty year periods, the present crisis of median income would reveal itself to be greater than the one centered around the 1930s...
This will go on, until it is understood by the People who vote that plutocracy is global, although law is only local. Thus global plutocracy can "navigate" (a concept Barack Obama loves), around local law, just as any long wavelength wave can navigate around small isolated obstacles...
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Thursday, August 20, 2009
AWE, NOT GDP!
WHY THE USA IS IN A GREAT DEPRESSION NOW.
(Although the upper class will get out of it in a few months!)
***
It is high time to use more sophisticated measures than GDP.
In particular GDP does not consider efficiency (traffic jams augment it). I proposed to use AWE (Absolute Worth Energy).
Meanwhile it may be good to consider the median income. It has been going down for a very long time in the USA, on a real basis (including the inflation in the cost of everything, not just the CPI). Looked at it that way, on a 20 year period, the present times compare unfavorably with any period centered around the 1930s.
In this light, the great depression is now.
Globalization without global law will lead to convergence of the income distribution, on a worldwide basis, thus the USA's wealth pyramid will look more like India, in the long run, than that of the 1950s America.
King Louis XV of France used to say: "Apres moi, le deluge!" After me, the flood... He did not care. Plutocrats tend to reason that way, because all the money to them now is the balm they use for their absence of worthy passions. The vision thing is no tool they enjoy, as it would reveal them to be empty inside.
"No drama Obama" converges towards the exact same psychological profile... Meanwhile the society and economy is losing its essential substance, California, for example throwing, literally the baby out, rather than the putrid bath...
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
(Although the upper class will get out of it in a few months!)
***
It is high time to use more sophisticated measures than GDP.
In particular GDP does not consider efficiency (traffic jams augment it). I proposed to use AWE (Absolute Worth Energy).
Meanwhile it may be good to consider the median income. It has been going down for a very long time in the USA, on a real basis (including the inflation in the cost of everything, not just the CPI). Looked at it that way, on a 20 year period, the present times compare unfavorably with any period centered around the 1930s.
In this light, the great depression is now.
Globalization without global law will lead to convergence of the income distribution, on a worldwide basis, thus the USA's wealth pyramid will look more like India, in the long run, than that of the 1950s America.
King Louis XV of France used to say: "Apres moi, le deluge!" After me, the flood... He did not care. Plutocrats tend to reason that way, because all the money to them now is the balm they use for their absence of worthy passions. The vision thing is no tool they enjoy, as it would reveal them to be empty inside.
"No drama Obama" converges towards the exact same psychological profile... Meanwhile the society and economy is losing its essential substance, California, for example throwing, literally the baby out, rather than the putrid bath...
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
DEBATE ON FREE WILL MODIFIED.
We do not know whether electrons have free will.
It looks as if they could. I do not believe they do, but it looks as if they could, from all what we presently know.
In the famous 2 slit experiment, the quintessential Quantum experiment, electrons have a more or less greater probability to land here or there, but, within those expansive bounds, it looks as if they do what they please...
The age old debate on free will has thus been modified. Before we can address the problem of human free will, we have to address the problem of electronic free will, because our body contains 10,000 trillion trillions electrons.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
It looks as if they could. I do not believe they do, but it looks as if they could, from all what we presently know.
In the famous 2 slit experiment, the quintessential Quantum experiment, electrons have a more or less greater probability to land here or there, but, within those expansive bounds, it looks as if they do what they please...
The age old debate on free will has thus been modified. Before we can address the problem of human free will, we have to address the problem of electronic free will, because our body contains 10,000 trillion trillions electrons.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
FASCISM AT HARVARD.
WHEN HARVARD PROFESSORS PLAGIARIZE FROM ADOLF HITLER HIMSELF.
***
Paul Krugman in his blog, August 17, 2009:
"I really had no intention of writing more about Niall Ferguson. Regular readers may recall that he wrote an article in the Financial Times that began,
President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky. And that pretty much sums up the 44th president of the US …"
***
OK. I have bought some of Ferguson's books, in hardback form, as they came out. I also have a serious problem with Professor Ferguson (and, by extension, Harvard university).
The following was sent to Krugman's blog, and I am trying to write a much expanded version for http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/. But days have only so many hours...
***
Ferguson is a historian in the sense that Hitler was a historian. The former follows the later closely. Ferguson’s thesis about WWI is that it would have been better if Britain had stayed out of the war. It is not new: Russel invented it, was condemned to spent 18 months in jail during WWI for advertizing it. Hitler had been given guarantees, by Ferguson-like British traitors, that Britain would stay out of France’s offensive maneuvers in 1939. He could not believe it when Britain joined France, and declared war to the Nazis. Apparently, not enough Brits had been taught by Ferguson-like professors.
This thesis, that Britain ought to have betrayed her sister democracy, France, is grotesque and deeply offensive to the spirit of democracy.
The day after Imperial fascist Germany had attacked several democracies deliberately (becoming the first country to fire a shot in WWI), Earl Grey, the British foreign minister, delivered an excellent discourse to the Commons explaining why Britain had to get into the war. It is not that Britain was anxious to go to war, foaming at the mouth. As the Secretary of State for War, Field-Marshal Kitchener, pointed out with relish: "I am proud to stand with such courageous men as my colleagues in the Cabinet. They have no Army and have declared war against the mightiest military nation in the world."
It is no mystery that Imperial fascist Germany had engaged in a holocaust in Namibia (led by Goering, father of Herman). White supremacists loved fascist Germany just for this general inclination of being willing to free vast swathes of the planet for the white “Western” man of the Germanic variety, after exterminating the natives.
Hitler pursued that work. Ferguson is sad, because, according to him, the West, by not adopting fascism, has degenerated. All people of the same persuasion will find this sort of “historical work” very good. I hold, though, that this mentality got 100 million people killed, among other nefarious effects.
By the same standard, I will suggest that the same sort people who find Ferguson so good should consider the remarkable historical work of Adolf Hitler (this is meant to be ironical), as found in “Mein Kampf”.
That such people are allowed to teach the young in the most prestigious places is testimony to the power of plutocracy, and the fact that it is racist and fascist at heart.
So, let me repeat: it is not France and Britain, the two and only very large democracies in Europe, which created the terrible war of 1914-1945. France (with Belgium, Luxembourg, Russia) was attacked by the fascists, by surprise. Everybody knew that Britain and France had been in the process of getting reunited and operating as a unit for a century, leading them to joint military operations (invasions of China and Russia, among others). This close relationship had crystallized more recently with an explicit alliance (”Entente Cordiale”).
What created the First World War was the fascist, racist spirit that penetrated imperial fascist Germany.
That spirit had not been crushed by WWI. So it revived right away. The failure of the intervening Weimar republic was partly due to the fact that it conceded all the main points to the fascist opposition, preferring to accuse France, and Britain having chosen the wrong side. Much better to create gigantic inflation, rather than standing on principle in the internal German debate. (This is a bit similar to Barack Obama conceding to Big Pharma and eschewing the public plan before even starting negotiations on health care.)
Ferguson says that civilization would have been improved by accepting that this fascist spirit triumphed. It is a misunderstanding about what advances civilization most. Civilization profits more from democracy, not oligarchy. Civilization was made to benefit from the mindwork, and physical work of the many. But then, Ferguson is an oligarchic product (elite private school, etc.), and therein his bread and butter. He does what he is paid for.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
***
Paul Krugman in his blog, August 17, 2009:
"I really had no intention of writing more about Niall Ferguson. Regular readers may recall that he wrote an article in the Financial Times that began,
President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky. And that pretty much sums up the 44th president of the US …"
***
OK. I have bought some of Ferguson's books, in hardback form, as they came out. I also have a serious problem with Professor Ferguson (and, by extension, Harvard university).
The following was sent to Krugman's blog, and I am trying to write a much expanded version for http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/. But days have only so many hours...
***
Ferguson is a historian in the sense that Hitler was a historian. The former follows the later closely. Ferguson’s thesis about WWI is that it would have been better if Britain had stayed out of the war. It is not new: Russel invented it, was condemned to spent 18 months in jail during WWI for advertizing it. Hitler had been given guarantees, by Ferguson-like British traitors, that Britain would stay out of France’s offensive maneuvers in 1939. He could not believe it when Britain joined France, and declared war to the Nazis. Apparently, not enough Brits had been taught by Ferguson-like professors.
This thesis, that Britain ought to have betrayed her sister democracy, France, is grotesque and deeply offensive to the spirit of democracy.
The day after Imperial fascist Germany had attacked several democracies deliberately (becoming the first country to fire a shot in WWI), Earl Grey, the British foreign minister, delivered an excellent discourse to the Commons explaining why Britain had to get into the war. It is not that Britain was anxious to go to war, foaming at the mouth. As the Secretary of State for War, Field-Marshal Kitchener, pointed out with relish: "I am proud to stand with such courageous men as my colleagues in the Cabinet. They have no Army and have declared war against the mightiest military nation in the world."
It is no mystery that Imperial fascist Germany had engaged in a holocaust in Namibia (led by Goering, father of Herman). White supremacists loved fascist Germany just for this general inclination of being willing to free vast swathes of the planet for the white “Western” man of the Germanic variety, after exterminating the natives.
Hitler pursued that work. Ferguson is sad, because, according to him, the West, by not adopting fascism, has degenerated. All people of the same persuasion will find this sort of “historical work” very good. I hold, though, that this mentality got 100 million people killed, among other nefarious effects.
By the same standard, I will suggest that the same sort people who find Ferguson so good should consider the remarkable historical work of Adolf Hitler (this is meant to be ironical), as found in “Mein Kampf”.
That such people are allowed to teach the young in the most prestigious places is testimony to the power of plutocracy, and the fact that it is racist and fascist at heart.
So, let me repeat: it is not France and Britain, the two and only very large democracies in Europe, which created the terrible war of 1914-1945. France (with Belgium, Luxembourg, Russia) was attacked by the fascists, by surprise. Everybody knew that Britain and France had been in the process of getting reunited and operating as a unit for a century, leading them to joint military operations (invasions of China and Russia, among others). This close relationship had crystallized more recently with an explicit alliance (”Entente Cordiale”).
What created the First World War was the fascist, racist spirit that penetrated imperial fascist Germany.
That spirit had not been crushed by WWI. So it revived right away. The failure of the intervening Weimar republic was partly due to the fact that it conceded all the main points to the fascist opposition, preferring to accuse France, and Britain having chosen the wrong side. Much better to create gigantic inflation, rather than standing on principle in the internal German debate. (This is a bit similar to Barack Obama conceding to Big Pharma and eschewing the public plan before even starting negotiations on health care.)
Ferguson says that civilization would have been improved by accepting that this fascist spirit triumphed. It is a misunderstanding about what advances civilization most. Civilization profits more from democracy, not oligarchy. Civilization was made to benefit from the mindwork, and physical work of the many. But then, Ferguson is an oligarchic product (elite private school, etc.), and therein his bread and butter. He does what he is paid for.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Saturday, August 8, 2009
HEALTH SCARE?
GIVEN ENOUGH CORRUPTION, A MORAL BLACK HOLE FORMS...
***
FRANK RICH wonders: "Is Obama Punking Us?" As Rich abstracts it: "While it’s unlikely that the chorus of President Obama’s most strident doomsayers will be proven right, there is growing cause for concern that the president is not the reformer he promised to be."And the NYT invited me to "Share your thoughts." So here it is:
***
The day after his election, Obama went to work at a hedge fund. At this point, I had a sinking feeling: Obama did not even try to hide the truth about himself. That brazen display was right in the middle of the collapse of finance, most of it caused by HEDGE FUND LIKE ACTIVITIES by a handful of major bankers and a few traders in conspiracies such as AIG and Goldman Sachs. These activities involved enormous leverage of public money, thanks to the fact that banks are mysteriously allowed by the government to create money, and give it to whoever they want (surprisingly, they start with themselves and their friends).
Then Obama brought in the biggest Goldman Sachs team that ever was, the Rubin team. It had been busy, under Clinton, demolishing Roosevelt's great financial architecture (The Banking Act of 1933). After bearing fruits, and receiving their rich rewards under Bush, Summers and company were back at work, apparently to push things much further. This time money was directly taken from the People, no need for subtilities anymore.
And here we are, a year later. Summers was already, de facto, in power a year ago, all what was done in the meantime, the 24,000 billion dollars given, lent or promised to their corrupt friends in finance (what Obama calls the "financial system", in a surrealistic touch), was accomplished in accord with Rubin, and the Rubin team. Geithner was already second in command behind Paulson, when they acted on their Goldman Sacks plot, destroying Lehman (instead of nationalizing it), Goldman's competitor, while setting up a machination with AIG.
So we are here a year later, and the People has been enslaved with higher spending and borrowing, and there is strictly nothing to show for it which is positive. The thieves are getting tax payer money for their mansions, private jets and tax heavens. And Obama celebrates this as "saving the financial system".
Without debate, Obama expanded the war in Afghanistan. Never mind that he is sending people to die for a Muslim constitution there (a blatant violation of the separation of church and state).
Obama now says cost has to be contained in the health care system. But his wife Michelle, and friend, Valerie Jarrett, were sitting on an hospital board, raking up a fortune. They are just lawyers. They are not doctors of medicine, just lawyers. In a country such as France, they would be on trial for corruption. In, the USA, they sit in the White House, looking pretty.
The spouse of the ex-mayor of Paris got $30,000 for a 40 page report; last week she got condemned to 9 months in jail, on the ground that $30,000 for 40 pages was obvious corruption. Obama and Jarrett, named by politicians through what would be called in France political "influence trafficking", got millions playing doctors on a hospital board, and then people wonder why health care is so expensive in the USA? Just put one Jarrett and one Obama per hospital board, and you break the health care system.
Two other advisers of Obama on health care are calling for cuts in health care. No, they are not accusing corruption and lawyers paid by corrupt hospitals to play doctors, and raking millions in their uneducated hands.
One of Obama's advisers says that health care cost too much, because there is too much research, and he proposes to cut back on new treatments, and research. He claims two-thirds of the augmentation of cost comes from there. New medical technology. But that was always the case, so what is he truly saying?
The other health adviser of Obama is outright saying that he wants to give medical treatment according to a "priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated". He gave lots of statements about refusing treatment to infant and older people. No doubt that this will improve the mortality rates of infants, which are already abysmal in the USA, all the way down to Hades.
Even the Nazis never dared say anything of the sort in public. I am not exaggerating: this Ezekiel Emanuel made an outright attack against the Hippocratic oath. His brother the Chief of Staff today said that progressives were "f..king stupid" to not see how right all of this was. (Rahm the Chief made 16 million from a bank in 2 years: his children will survive the cuts.)
Killing children for money, as Emanuel proposes to do, is also a form of racism, because no doubt those who the plutocratic system has made filthy rich will have no trouble paying doctors to save their babies.
A week ago, I was laughing with everybody when a gentleman insisted that "government takes its hands out of my Medicare". But now I have encountered Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. Dr. Emanuel would have done better to stay discrete and silent, like his predecessor, Dr. Mengele. And I am not laughing anymore. Emanuel makes Rubin look like a humanist, and Goldman Sacks like a charity. Once again, and to my dismay, the warning signs are there.
Details, with plenty of quotes of the "health" advisers, will be put on my site ASAP. I do not know why this is all happening. Obama talks the talk, but he walks into Hades. Things such as these have happened in history before. Let's not forget that Mussolini had a long career as a socialist, before getting to power. Once there he tried to fight Hitler. In the end he finished as the exact opposite of all he had initially claimed he stood for. Hitler himself claimed to be a socialist (but, secretly he was the exact opposite, and he was financed, organized and supported by some of the richest families in Germany and the USA).
Who is financing Obama, already? Well, if you believe it's the small people, as the propaganda has it, you may have dementia. And people with dementia do not get health care, in the "complete lives system" of the good Doctor Emanuel. Your prognostic is not good.
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
***
FRANK RICH wonders: "Is Obama Punking Us?" As Rich abstracts it: "While it’s unlikely that the chorus of President Obama’s most strident doomsayers will be proven right, there is growing cause for concern that the president is not the reformer he promised to be."And the NYT invited me to "Share your thoughts." So here it is:
***
The day after his election, Obama went to work at a hedge fund. At this point, I had a sinking feeling: Obama did not even try to hide the truth about himself. That brazen display was right in the middle of the collapse of finance, most of it caused by HEDGE FUND LIKE ACTIVITIES by a handful of major bankers and a few traders in conspiracies such as AIG and Goldman Sachs. These activities involved enormous leverage of public money, thanks to the fact that banks are mysteriously allowed by the government to create money, and give it to whoever they want (surprisingly, they start with themselves and their friends).
Then Obama brought in the biggest Goldman Sachs team that ever was, the Rubin team. It had been busy, under Clinton, demolishing Roosevelt's great financial architecture (The Banking Act of 1933). After bearing fruits, and receiving their rich rewards under Bush, Summers and company were back at work, apparently to push things much further. This time money was directly taken from the People, no need for subtilities anymore.
And here we are, a year later. Summers was already, de facto, in power a year ago, all what was done in the meantime, the 24,000 billion dollars given, lent or promised to their corrupt friends in finance (what Obama calls the "financial system", in a surrealistic touch), was accomplished in accord with Rubin, and the Rubin team. Geithner was already second in command behind Paulson, when they acted on their Goldman Sacks plot, destroying Lehman (instead of nationalizing it), Goldman's competitor, while setting up a machination with AIG.
So we are here a year later, and the People has been enslaved with higher spending and borrowing, and there is strictly nothing to show for it which is positive. The thieves are getting tax payer money for their mansions, private jets and tax heavens. And Obama celebrates this as "saving the financial system".
Without debate, Obama expanded the war in Afghanistan. Never mind that he is sending people to die for a Muslim constitution there (a blatant violation of the separation of church and state).
Obama now says cost has to be contained in the health care system. But his wife Michelle, and friend, Valerie Jarrett, were sitting on an hospital board, raking up a fortune. They are just lawyers. They are not doctors of medicine, just lawyers. In a country such as France, they would be on trial for corruption. In, the USA, they sit in the White House, looking pretty.
The spouse of the ex-mayor of Paris got $30,000 for a 40 page report; last week she got condemned to 9 months in jail, on the ground that $30,000 for 40 pages was obvious corruption. Obama and Jarrett, named by politicians through what would be called in France political "influence trafficking", got millions playing doctors on a hospital board, and then people wonder why health care is so expensive in the USA? Just put one Jarrett and one Obama per hospital board, and you break the health care system.
Two other advisers of Obama on health care are calling for cuts in health care. No, they are not accusing corruption and lawyers paid by corrupt hospitals to play doctors, and raking millions in their uneducated hands.
One of Obama's advisers says that health care cost too much, because there is too much research, and he proposes to cut back on new treatments, and research. He claims two-thirds of the augmentation of cost comes from there. New medical technology. But that was always the case, so what is he truly saying?
The other health adviser of Obama is outright saying that he wants to give medical treatment according to a "priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated". He gave lots of statements about refusing treatment to infant and older people. No doubt that this will improve the mortality rates of infants, which are already abysmal in the USA, all the way down to Hades.
Even the Nazis never dared say anything of the sort in public. I am not exaggerating: this Ezekiel Emanuel made an outright attack against the Hippocratic oath. His brother the Chief of Staff today said that progressives were "f..king stupid" to not see how right all of this was. (Rahm the Chief made 16 million from a bank in 2 years: his children will survive the cuts.)
Killing children for money, as Emanuel proposes to do, is also a form of racism, because no doubt those who the plutocratic system has made filthy rich will have no trouble paying doctors to save their babies.
A week ago, I was laughing with everybody when a gentleman insisted that "government takes its hands out of my Medicare". But now I have encountered Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel. Dr. Emanuel would have done better to stay discrete and silent, like his predecessor, Dr. Mengele. And I am not laughing anymore. Emanuel makes Rubin look like a humanist, and Goldman Sacks like a charity. Once again, and to my dismay, the warning signs are there.
Details, with plenty of quotes of the "health" advisers, will be put on my site ASAP. I do not know why this is all happening. Obama talks the talk, but he walks into Hades. Things such as these have happened in history before. Let's not forget that Mussolini had a long career as a socialist, before getting to power. Once there he tried to fight Hitler. In the end he finished as the exact opposite of all he had initially claimed he stood for. Hitler himself claimed to be a socialist (but, secretly he was the exact opposite, and he was financed, organized and supported by some of the richest families in Germany and the USA).
Who is financing Obama, already? Well, if you believe it's the small people, as the propaganda has it, you may have dementia. And people with dementia do not get health care, in the "complete lives system" of the good Doctor Emanuel. Your prognostic is not good.
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Thursday, August 6, 2009
ANGER WITH A CAUSE IS REASON WITH A FUTURE.
DO NOT SAY THAT ANGER IS BAD, THINK ABOUT WHY THEY GOT ANGRY.
***
Paul Krugman hopefully opines that:"A close look at recent protesters indicates that cynical political operators are exploiting cultural and racial anxiety in the health care reform debate."
Unfortunately, there is much more to it, and Obama and his happy crew can only blame themselves. I am 100% for universal health care, but these leaders are doing everything wrong, and the People sense it. Let me explain a bit.
***
Well, human beings do not act out of logical chains only. Those logical chains (neuron inter connects: axons, etc.) are built through glial activity. Glial cells are more emotional. They direct neuronal (hence logical) growth. Emotions first, diffusely, then logics to give it a skeleton.
So emotions build up first. And Obama, unfortunately, did a lot of things to make both his supporters and his opponents angry.
On health care we have Dr. Emanuel, the brother of the Emanuel who made 16 million dollars from a bank, between two political jobs, in 2 years. That second Emanuel is Obama’s Chief of Staff. Emanuel the brother is a doctor . He apparently uttered talk which was clearly intent on rationing the elderly (compare with Bush, who brought medical drugs to the elderly). There are no words to qualify how despicable such talk is.
Obama had no problem promising those who destroyed the economy 24,000 billion dollars, so that they could keep their haughty commandeering of American destiny, and giant incomes. But then Obama said health care had to be fully paid for. Although, once subtracted some present give away to private companies, the Obama plan would cost only 50 billion dollars a year, or so.
Obama has no problem borrowing like a drunken sailor so that his Muslims can win over the “extremist” Muslims he does not like in Afghanistan. Never mind that he spends 5 billion a week, and that the war will be lost. Killing Afghans should be free, curing American should be expensive.
I am for universal health care, as all really civilized countries have. It's indeed a quation of civilization. But, for Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama, it was a question of money. Big money, for themselves. Big influence, for themselves. Taking care of others? Perhaps. But of themselves? Surely, big time. Never mind that they were not qualified.
France, full of elderly citizens, and attached to the concept of humanity, would never limit care for the elderly (I saw this with many elderly members of my family). Any politician uttering anything that way, or in the way of reducing care, would be out of politics in France immediately. Even if the president (there would be riots marching on the presidency, which would probably burn down, and the police would not interfere).
I am thoroughly familiar with the French and US health care system, my best friend is a US doctor. But the US system stinks to high heavens, and it stinks of money. And what do we see around Obama? People who, although not doctors, and having no medical background, got paid enormously to sit on private hospital boards.
Such people, in France, would be on trial. In the USA, they sit in the White House. So people are angry? Well, may be they sense something French justice has learned to recognize.
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
***
Paul Krugman hopefully opines that:"A close look at recent protesters indicates that cynical political operators are exploiting cultural and racial anxiety in the health care reform debate."
Unfortunately, there is much more to it, and Obama and his happy crew can only blame themselves. I am 100% for universal health care, but these leaders are doing everything wrong, and the People sense it. Let me explain a bit.
***
Well, human beings do not act out of logical chains only. Those logical chains (neuron inter connects: axons, etc.) are built through glial activity. Glial cells are more emotional. They direct neuronal (hence logical) growth. Emotions first, diffusely, then logics to give it a skeleton.
So emotions build up first. And Obama, unfortunately, did a lot of things to make both his supporters and his opponents angry.
On health care we have Dr. Emanuel, the brother of the Emanuel who made 16 million dollars from a bank, between two political jobs, in 2 years. That second Emanuel is Obama’s Chief of Staff. Emanuel the brother is a doctor . He apparently uttered talk which was clearly intent on rationing the elderly (compare with Bush, who brought medical drugs to the elderly). There are no words to qualify how despicable such talk is.
Obama had no problem promising those who destroyed the economy 24,000 billion dollars, so that they could keep their haughty commandeering of American destiny, and giant incomes. But then Obama said health care had to be fully paid for. Although, once subtracted some present give away to private companies, the Obama plan would cost only 50 billion dollars a year, or so.
Obama has no problem borrowing like a drunken sailor so that his Muslims can win over the “extremist” Muslims he does not like in Afghanistan. Never mind that he spends 5 billion a week, and that the war will be lost. Killing Afghans should be free, curing American should be expensive.
I am for universal health care, as all really civilized countries have. It's indeed a quation of civilization. But, for Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama, it was a question of money. Big money, for themselves. Big influence, for themselves. Taking care of others? Perhaps. But of themselves? Surely, big time. Never mind that they were not qualified.
France, full of elderly citizens, and attached to the concept of humanity, would never limit care for the elderly (I saw this with many elderly members of my family). Any politician uttering anything that way, or in the way of reducing care, would be out of politics in France immediately. Even if the president (there would be riots marching on the presidency, which would probably burn down, and the police would not interfere).
I am thoroughly familiar with the French and US health care system, my best friend is a US doctor. But the US system stinks to high heavens, and it stinks of money. And what do we see around Obama? People who, although not doctors, and having no medical background, got paid enormously to sit on private hospital boards.
Such people, in France, would be on trial. In the USA, they sit in the White House. So people are angry? Well, may be they sense something French justice has learned to recognize.
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
AN IDEA AMERICAN CLUNKERS CAN CASH ON
WHY NOT GET REAL SMART, AND DO AS IF OTHER PEOPLE HAD BRAINS TOO?
Cash for clunkers is an old FRENCH idea. It was used several times in France over the last decade, with great success. It's used presently, with lots of variants (primes for very low CO2 emission cars, for cars more than 10 years old, etc...). The present clunker French program is supposed to expire at the end of 2009.
Cash for clunkers was long derided as typical French "Colbertism", or "dirigisme" (Colbert was a famous French finance and industry minister of the 17th century; some of the capitalist firms he helped then are still around today, and profitable, such as the giant Saint Gobain).
German governments long detested the cash for clunkers idea, viewing it as a French crutch, and other Europeans tried to block it as unfair business practice. This year, though, with its car industry dying, Germany adopted it with elan, splurging with enormous payments for every single vehicle. It was a resounding success: the German car industry is reviving.
This brings us to a more general point: why does not the government of the USA just study what is being done in Europe, on the other side of the pond, especially by the big countries?
In Europe the big countries themselves spend a huge amount of effort trying to duplicate successful strategies of smaller countries.
There is no shame in using others' solutions. There is shame in thinking the USA has it all figured out, though. The USA could gather enormous inspiration, by just studying French society and government in detail (France, for a number of reasons, including the long republican and revolutionary traditions in common, is the closest, more easily imitable model for the USA.)
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Cash for clunkers is an old FRENCH idea. It was used several times in France over the last decade, with great success. It's used presently, with lots of variants (primes for very low CO2 emission cars, for cars more than 10 years old, etc...). The present clunker French program is supposed to expire at the end of 2009.
Cash for clunkers was long derided as typical French "Colbertism", or "dirigisme" (Colbert was a famous French finance and industry minister of the 17th century; some of the capitalist firms he helped then are still around today, and profitable, such as the giant Saint Gobain).
German governments long detested the cash for clunkers idea, viewing it as a French crutch, and other Europeans tried to block it as unfair business practice. This year, though, with its car industry dying, Germany adopted it with elan, splurging with enormous payments for every single vehicle. It was a resounding success: the German car industry is reviving.
This brings us to a more general point: why does not the government of the USA just study what is being done in Europe, on the other side of the pond, especially by the big countries?
In Europe the big countries themselves spend a huge amount of effort trying to duplicate successful strategies of smaller countries.
There is no shame in using others' solutions. There is shame in thinking the USA has it all figured out, though. The USA could gather enormous inspiration, by just studying French society and government in detail (France, for a number of reasons, including the long republican and revolutionary traditions in common, is the closest, more easily imitable model for the USA.)
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Friday, July 31, 2009
HEALTH: FRANCE VERSUS NIXON.
FAIR HEALTH CARE OUGHT TO BE A DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTION.
Justice is an institution. It is separated from other branches of government. In theory at least (but not really since Obama has been interfering with Holder's sword of justice).
France has the best health care in the world, according to international evaluations. Friends of the American health care private profiteering scheme scoff that the French are subject to their government. It will come as a surprise to typically misinformed Americans that private health care insurance covers more than 90% of French subjects. Proportionally more than in the USA!
Not just that, but French insurance companies are doing great: one them, AXA, not content with owning a giant tower in... Manhattan, is building the highest one in Paris, as if there never had been a crash, and so it is for AXA's profits.
So what is going on?
The French "PUBLIC HEALTH" system functions as a single payer for all basic health care, with greater efficiency than a private system, because it does not have to pay managers and owners handsome amounts of money to keep them more interested by the health of their citizens than by exploiting workers in China.
The French "Public Health" negotiates with pharmaceutical companies as a single dealer. The companies make excellent profits, because they do not have huge marketing costs. Their financial maneuvers are watched over, so they can use their capital to make research, not fortunes for third parties. And so on.
The French Public Health actually is self regulated, and is, de facto, an independent democratic institution. It's the government, only in the sense that the justice system is the government.
And what of private insurance in all this?
Well, because basic dental crowns, as reimbursed by "Public Health" do not have that translucent quality you can get from a real artiste, and because, if the doctor prescribes going to a four star resort, and, considering that the Public Health system is cutting down on those... then private insurance steps in.
There is nothing anti-American about the French Public Health system. But there is definitively something anti-American about the present health care plutocracy in the USA. And no wonder: Nixon created it. With tax dollars.
Much more details on my site...http://patriceayme.wordpress.com
***
Patrice Ayme
Justice is an institution. It is separated from other branches of government. In theory at least (but not really since Obama has been interfering with Holder's sword of justice).
France has the best health care in the world, according to international evaluations. Friends of the American health care private profiteering scheme scoff that the French are subject to their government. It will come as a surprise to typically misinformed Americans that private health care insurance covers more than 90% of French subjects. Proportionally more than in the USA!
Not just that, but French insurance companies are doing great: one them, AXA, not content with owning a giant tower in... Manhattan, is building the highest one in Paris, as if there never had been a crash, and so it is for AXA's profits.
So what is going on?
The French "PUBLIC HEALTH" system functions as a single payer for all basic health care, with greater efficiency than a private system, because it does not have to pay managers and owners handsome amounts of money to keep them more interested by the health of their citizens than by exploiting workers in China.
The French "Public Health" negotiates with pharmaceutical companies as a single dealer. The companies make excellent profits, because they do not have huge marketing costs. Their financial maneuvers are watched over, so they can use their capital to make research, not fortunes for third parties. And so on.
The French Public Health actually is self regulated, and is, de facto, an independent democratic institution. It's the government, only in the sense that the justice system is the government.
And what of private insurance in all this?
Well, because basic dental crowns, as reimbursed by "Public Health" do not have that translucent quality you can get from a real artiste, and because, if the doctor prescribes going to a four star resort, and, considering that the Public Health system is cutting down on those... then private insurance steps in.
There is nothing anti-American about the French Public Health system. But there is definitively something anti-American about the present health care plutocracy in the USA. And no wonder: Nixon created it. With tax dollars.
Much more details on my site...http://patriceayme.wordpress.com
***
Patrice Ayme
Monday, July 27, 2009
HEALTH CARE IN PROFIT CONTEXT ALWAYS?
WHEN PROFITS IN THE POCKETS DO NOT PROFIT HEALTH AND MINDS:
Interesting: Here we had on CNBC, Maria Bartiromo (the mile a minute talking head with partially eye occulting hairdo, friend and party to the plutocracy) interviewing the head of the "Cleveland Clinic" .
The later clinic is one of these private contraptions given as an example of excellent private health care for the People. With a third interviewee in tow, Maria and the private head concluded in a chorus that a "public plan" would kill the private sector by offering lower premiums. That, in turn would kill innovation in new treatments and drugs, they all took turns to howl to the sky.
Maria led the howling about the USA having the best health care, the best drugs, the best everything, that the Public would savagely tear apart, etc... The Res-Publica, the Public Thing as a threat to goodness...
This is all the wind of lucre howling... This can be pointed at quantitatively by looking at new drug production.
The creation of drugs in the last twenty years ought to have followed the productivity of computers, and being multiplied by hundreds (the potential for new drugs from natural products is known to be in the millions: countless natural biological products are known to have very strong, very targeted physiological effects, meaning they could be made into drugs). Instead it was divided by three. coming down to a trickle. The production of new antibiotics outright stopped for a decade (now it's starting again a tiny bit). As I pointed on "Too Sick To Care?" (patriceayme.wordpress.com), this has been caused by pharmaceutical companies spending most of their disposable capital in financial maneuvers.
Graphs could be produced, with drug development spending plummeting, while financial maneuvers spending soared, in a zero sum game.
So here we had the example everybody brandishes, and Obama himself brandishes, the Cleveland Clinic, and the discourse was blatantly unbalanced toward the plutocratic, for profit context. No care context. All profit context. And to sugar pill it all, ludicrous chest thumping about the health care of the USA being the best, so far.
As long as it was just having 50 million Americans without health insurance, and many others being driven to bankruptcy from their health problems (as health failure is the # 1 cause of that), it ought to have been fine for the hyper rich. After all they are not known for their altruism, and they were not the ones dying or getting morbid from lack of potential care. Or so they thought.
But now even those rarefied few should get alarmed: the loss of potential improvement in health, even for the plutocracy itself, is enormous, and getting greater every year. The statistics are clear: I am sure that even Paris Hilton could teach them.
***
Patrice Ayme
wordpress.com
Interesting: Here we had on CNBC, Maria Bartiromo (the mile a minute talking head with partially eye occulting hairdo, friend and party to the plutocracy) interviewing the head of the "Cleveland Clinic" .
The later clinic is one of these private contraptions given as an example of excellent private health care for the People. With a third interviewee in tow, Maria and the private head concluded in a chorus that a "public plan" would kill the private sector by offering lower premiums. That, in turn would kill innovation in new treatments and drugs, they all took turns to howl to the sky.
Maria led the howling about the USA having the best health care, the best drugs, the best everything, that the Public would savagely tear apart, etc... The Res-Publica, the Public Thing as a threat to goodness...
This is all the wind of lucre howling... This can be pointed at quantitatively by looking at new drug production.
The creation of drugs in the last twenty years ought to have followed the productivity of computers, and being multiplied by hundreds (the potential for new drugs from natural products is known to be in the millions: countless natural biological products are known to have very strong, very targeted physiological effects, meaning they could be made into drugs). Instead it was divided by three. coming down to a trickle. The production of new antibiotics outright stopped for a decade (now it's starting again a tiny bit). As I pointed on "Too Sick To Care?" (patriceayme.wordpress.com), this has been caused by pharmaceutical companies spending most of their disposable capital in financial maneuvers.
Graphs could be produced, with drug development spending plummeting, while financial maneuvers spending soared, in a zero sum game.
So here we had the example everybody brandishes, and Obama himself brandishes, the Cleveland Clinic, and the discourse was blatantly unbalanced toward the plutocratic, for profit context. No care context. All profit context. And to sugar pill it all, ludicrous chest thumping about the health care of the USA being the best, so far.
As long as it was just having 50 million Americans without health insurance, and many others being driven to bankruptcy from their health problems (as health failure is the # 1 cause of that), it ought to have been fine for the hyper rich. After all they are not known for their altruism, and they were not the ones dying or getting morbid from lack of potential care. Or so they thought.
But now even those rarefied few should get alarmed: the loss of potential improvement in health, even for the plutocracy itself, is enormous, and getting greater every year. The statistics are clear: I am sure that even Paris Hilton could teach them.
***
Patrice Ayme
wordpress.com
Friday, July 24, 2009
THEY SINK, THEREFORE THEY CARE NOUGHT.
(Published by NYT, 23 July 2009)
*
The talking heads in the media have whined. Not enough "folksy anecdotes" in the analysis of health care during Obama's conference on health care, for them? So they claim.
There is a deeper problem. And that is that enforced stupidity has become an instrument of deliberate oppression.
Talking heads in the media and their public have learned to be like children: they want to be told bed time stories, so that their tired little minds can go to sleep.
They cannot handle culture and logic, they are not trained for it. All what appeals to them is what would appeal to little children talking to each other, little anecdotes with a strong imaginary component.
As the Roman republic went down, culture and art went down, and they went down well ahead of the military and economic capabilities. Rome became idiotic first, and then , several decades later, it became completely incapacitated in all ways. Only then did the Huns moved in, from distant Mongolia.
Why did Rome become idiotic? Because the Roman republic had been kidnapped by the hyper rich "Senatorial" class. The hyper rich quickly learned that they ruled best over dummies, and bleating sheep. During the transition to generalized idiocy, those who refused to cooperate were killed. The philosopher and Consul Cicero, saw the hands he was writing with chopped off, and nailed to the Senate door. And that is not an imaginary anecdote a la Reagan. This atrocity was meant to impress those too willing to keep on writing down smart, progressive thoughts.
Finally the plutocracy mixed up with the theocrats, and any knowledge or thinking was denounced as an insult to "God". This episode is now called the Dark Ages. But it started with the rise of the stupid, paid by the hyper rich to extinguish c ulture and intelligence.
This is exactly what is going in the media today. The venality and stupidity of the "debate" on health care is deliberate, it is made to encourage stupidity, it teaches stupidity, it celebrates stupidity.
In truth, if anything should escape the profit motive, it is compassion. The obsession with profits and costs (not just the profits and costs of a financial, but also those of a legal, business, or marketing character) perverts the entire health care system in the USA. And not just for medical decisions.
For example, a peer reviewed article in Science Magazine explains that fewer and fewer drugs are brought to market (down to less than 30 from a peak triple this twenty years ago), because pharmaceutical companies are playing Wall Street. In truth MILLIONS of drugs could be brought to market, from natural products alone, says Science.
And so on. The health care insurance industry exists in a country such as France (with the best health care according to the WHO), but it does not insure the life threatening conditions' basic treatments. That is automatic (even for sick or hurt Americans who would happen to pass through France). Private health care in France insures only added comfort or plastic surgery type treatments. The moral position that an industry can thrive according to the modus operandi:"Your money, or your life!" is untenable in this civilization, and has been rejected in all advanced countries, except the USA.
At this point the extravagant portion of GDP given to those who profit financially from the bad health of others has become a strategic threat to the USA.
Wisely, Obama is gambling that he can defeat the stupidity head on, by rising the mental level of the debate. If he fails, the USA will keep on collapsing mentally, and the rest will follow. After all, the financial crisis, and the way it was solved (replenishing with20public money, the private perpetrators themselves, without any strings attached) is the sort of idiocy that history shows change the fate of civilizations, and not for the best.
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
*
The talking heads in the media have whined. Not enough "folksy anecdotes" in the analysis of health care during Obama's conference on health care, for them? So they claim.
There is a deeper problem. And that is that enforced stupidity has become an instrument of deliberate oppression.
Talking heads in the media and their public have learned to be like children: they want to be told bed time stories, so that their tired little minds can go to sleep.
They cannot handle culture and logic, they are not trained for it. All what appeals to them is what would appeal to little children talking to each other, little anecdotes with a strong imaginary component.
As the Roman republic went down, culture and art went down, and they went down well ahead of the military and economic capabilities. Rome became idiotic first, and then , several decades later, it became completely incapacitated in all ways. Only then did the Huns moved in, from distant Mongolia.
Why did Rome become idiotic? Because the Roman republic had been kidnapped by the hyper rich "Senatorial" class. The hyper rich quickly learned that they ruled best over dummies, and bleating sheep. During the transition to generalized idiocy, those who refused to cooperate were killed. The philosopher and Consul Cicero, saw the hands he was writing with chopped off, and nailed to the Senate door. And that is not an imaginary anecdote a la Reagan. This atrocity was meant to impress those too willing to keep on writing down smart, progressive thoughts.
Finally the plutocracy mixed up with the theocrats, and any knowledge or thinking was denounced as an insult to "God". This episode is now called the Dark Ages. But it started with the rise of the stupid, paid by the hyper rich to extinguish c ulture and intelligence.
This is exactly what is going in the media today. The venality and stupidity of the "debate" on health care is deliberate, it is made to encourage stupidity, it teaches stupidity, it celebrates stupidity.
In truth, if anything should escape the profit motive, it is compassion. The obsession with profits and costs (not just the profits and costs of a financial, but also those of a legal, business, or marketing character) perverts the entire health care system in the USA. And not just for medical decisions.
For example, a peer reviewed article in Science Magazine explains that fewer and fewer drugs are brought to market (down to less than 30 from a peak triple this twenty years ago), because pharmaceutical companies are playing Wall Street. In truth MILLIONS of drugs could be brought to market, from natural products alone, says Science.
And so on. The health care insurance industry exists in a country such as France (with the best health care according to the WHO), but it does not insure the life threatening conditions' basic treatments. That is automatic (even for sick or hurt Americans who would happen to pass through France). Private health care in France insures only added comfort or plastic surgery type treatments. The moral position that an industry can thrive according to the modus operandi:"Your money, or your life!" is untenable in this civilization, and has been rejected in all advanced countries, except the USA.
At this point the extravagant portion of GDP given to those who profit financially from the bad health of others has become a strategic threat to the USA.
Wisely, Obama is gambling that he can defeat the stupidity head on, by rising the mental level of the debate. If he fails, the USA will keep on collapsing mentally, and the rest will follow. After all, the financial crisis, and the way it was solved (replenishing with20public money, the private perpetrators themselves, without any strings attached) is the sort of idiocy that history shows change the fate of civilizations, and not for the best.
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
WHAT AILS THE ARABS? [A foretaste.]
ZIONIST ENTITY VERSUS ISLAMIST ENTITY? OR JUST THE LATER?
"The Economist" disserts on Arabia (July 23, 2009). Another occasion for me to attack the subject with the sharp knife of unbowed philosophy, while proffering my usual incantations (please respect me as I practice my religion of universal critique). (A more detailed essay extending this will appear, hopefully, on wordpress, where many articles on the subject already exist, following those on patriceayme.com.)
***
"The Economist" comes back on the mysterious philosophico-political disease that afflicts Arab speaking nations, and turns around the problem like the wolf turns around the moose, not daring to bite, or even to come too close... No apparent desire to experience high explosives, or sharp blades, how to blame them?
An instant optimistic, "The Economist" opines in its lead editorial that:"A quiet revolution has begun in the Arab world; it will be complete only when the last failed dictatorship is voted out." Still "The Economist" wonders: "What ails the Arabs?", but it does not dare, or is unable to give one of these sharp answers it likes.
All it dares to do, is to hint at the nature of the disease:
..."more people, especially women, are becoming educated, and businessmen want a bigger say in economies dominated by the state. Above all, a revolution in satellite television has broken the spell of the state-run media and created a public that wants the rulers to explain and justify themselves as never before. On their own, none of these changes seems big enough to prompt a revolution. But taken together they are creating a great agitation under the surface. The old pattern of Arab government—corrupt, opaque and authoritarian—has failed on every level and does not deserve to survive."
In other words, according to "The Economist" what ails the Arabs is a cultural phenomenon.
Reading more carefully, one see that it has to do with Islam:
"Some in the West are wary of Arab elections, fearing that Islamists would exploit the chance to seize power on the principle of “one man, one vote, one time”. Yet Islamists seem to struggle to raise their support much above 20% of the electorate. Non-Arab Muslim countries like Turkey and Indonesia suggest that democracy is the best way to draw the poison of extremism. Repression only makes it more dangerous."
"The Economist" forgets to mention that such was the theory of the Islamists in Algeria, twenty years ago. After they won the first round of elections, the Algerian army had to seize power, and reset the (would-be) democratic system to zero. Otherwise Algeria would be now like Iran (or probably much worse, because there is so much Western European culture in Algeria, that there would have been an even more horrific civil war than what happened, with just a few hundred thousands killed).
"The Economist" forgets to mention also that in most countries where Islam cohabits with democracy nowadays, a very violent past cracked down on Islam, way back.
***
WE PRAY QUIETLY, THUS THEY CAN PREY MIGHTILY:
OK, enough with the wooden tongue, the one that is in the mouth, but does not quite work, due to rigidity and inappropriateness to the supple nature of thought.
Some Arabs would say it's the Zionist Entity, or colonialism, that afflicts Arabia, or... But rarely is the Islamist Entity evoked.
Islam is to blame for the friendliness of Arab countries to dictatorship. A command in Islam (a verse in the Qur'an) orders believers to follow their leaders without any question, as long as they are Muslim. To do otherwise is to disobey God.
Thus the problem is very simple, and not really different from the catastrophic fanaticism that caused the Dark Ages in the Roman empire.
Islam is actually a direct prolongation of it: Muhammad faithfully copied what he had below his nose, and that inspired him so much, the demented caesaropapism a la Justinian, which had immensely damaged the Roman empire and civilization itself, from a particular interpretation of Roman Catholicism, which was imposed by killing millions and oppressing even more (leading to a terrible war with Sassanid Persia).
What of countries which have Muslim majorities, and are not dictatorship? Well, they adopted enough of the Western European model in their political culture to fight off Islam. This is true for Turkey, or Indonesia, etc... In Iran, the father of the late Shah, founder of his dynasty, took even more terrible measures against Islam than Ataturk did. Simply something is left of that history today.
Here is the verse in the Qur'an:
“O YE WHO BELIEVE! Obey Allah, and obey the messenger and OBEY THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE IN POWER.” (Qur’an’s , Sura 4; verse 59).
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com
For more details please see:
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/
And also:
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/
"The Economist" disserts on Arabia (July 23, 2009). Another occasion for me to attack the subject with the sharp knife of unbowed philosophy, while proffering my usual incantations (please respect me as I practice my religion of universal critique). (A more detailed essay extending this will appear, hopefully, on wordpress, where many articles on the subject already exist, following those on patriceayme.com.)
***
"The Economist" comes back on the mysterious philosophico-political disease that afflicts Arab speaking nations, and turns around the problem like the wolf turns around the moose, not daring to bite, or even to come too close... No apparent desire to experience high explosives, or sharp blades, how to blame them?
An instant optimistic, "The Economist" opines in its lead editorial that:"A quiet revolution has begun in the Arab world; it will be complete only when the last failed dictatorship is voted out." Still "The Economist" wonders: "What ails the Arabs?", but it does not dare, or is unable to give one of these sharp answers it likes.
All it dares to do, is to hint at the nature of the disease:
..."more people, especially women, are becoming educated, and businessmen want a bigger say in economies dominated by the state. Above all, a revolution in satellite television has broken the spell of the state-run media and created a public that wants the rulers to explain and justify themselves as never before. On their own, none of these changes seems big enough to prompt a revolution. But taken together they are creating a great agitation under the surface. The old pattern of Arab government—corrupt, opaque and authoritarian—has failed on every level and does not deserve to survive."
In other words, according to "The Economist" what ails the Arabs is a cultural phenomenon.
Reading more carefully, one see that it has to do with Islam:
"Some in the West are wary of Arab elections, fearing that Islamists would exploit the chance to seize power on the principle of “one man, one vote, one time”. Yet Islamists seem to struggle to raise their support much above 20% of the electorate. Non-Arab Muslim countries like Turkey and Indonesia suggest that democracy is the best way to draw the poison of extremism. Repression only makes it more dangerous."
"The Economist" forgets to mention that such was the theory of the Islamists in Algeria, twenty years ago. After they won the first round of elections, the Algerian army had to seize power, and reset the (would-be) democratic system to zero. Otherwise Algeria would be now like Iran (or probably much worse, because there is so much Western European culture in Algeria, that there would have been an even more horrific civil war than what happened, with just a few hundred thousands killed).
"The Economist" forgets to mention also that in most countries where Islam cohabits with democracy nowadays, a very violent past cracked down on Islam, way back.
***
WE PRAY QUIETLY, THUS THEY CAN PREY MIGHTILY:
OK, enough with the wooden tongue, the one that is in the mouth, but does not quite work, due to rigidity and inappropriateness to the supple nature of thought.
Some Arabs would say it's the Zionist Entity, or colonialism, that afflicts Arabia, or... But rarely is the Islamist Entity evoked.
Islam is to blame for the friendliness of Arab countries to dictatorship. A command in Islam (a verse in the Qur'an) orders believers to follow their leaders without any question, as long as they are Muslim. To do otherwise is to disobey God.
Thus the problem is very simple, and not really different from the catastrophic fanaticism that caused the Dark Ages in the Roman empire.
Islam is actually a direct prolongation of it: Muhammad faithfully copied what he had below his nose, and that inspired him so much, the demented caesaropapism a la Justinian, which had immensely damaged the Roman empire and civilization itself, from a particular interpretation of Roman Catholicism, which was imposed by killing millions and oppressing even more (leading to a terrible war with Sassanid Persia).
What of countries which have Muslim majorities, and are not dictatorship? Well, they adopted enough of the Western European model in their political culture to fight off Islam. This is true for Turkey, or Indonesia, etc... In Iran, the father of the late Shah, founder of his dynasty, took even more terrible measures against Islam than Ataturk did. Simply something is left of that history today.
Here is the verse in the Qur'an:
“O YE WHO BELIEVE! Obey Allah, and obey the messenger and OBEY THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE IN POWER.” (Qur’an’s , Sura 4; verse 59).
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com
For more details please see:
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/
And also:
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/
Thursday, July 23, 2009
PLUTOCRACY REIGNS BEST OVER IDIOCY
ENFORCED STUPIDITY AS A TOOL OF DELIBERATE OPPRESSION.
Talking heads in the media complained that Obama did not tell just little anecdotes during his description of the problem of the health care system. Krugman opines that: "what are the talking heads really complaining about? It’s not what Obama didn’t do — it’s what he did, namely talk seriously about policy. How unpresidential of him!"
But there is a deeper problem. And that is that enforced stupidity has become an instrument of deliberate oppression.
Talking heads in the media and their public are like children: they want to be told bed time stories, so that their tired little minds can go to sleep.
They cannot handle culture and logic, they are not trained for it. All what appeals to them is what would appeal little children talking to each other, little anecdotes with a strong imaginary component.
As the Roman republic went down, culture and art went down, and they went down ahead of the military and economic capabilities. Rome became idiotic first, and then was progressively completely incapacitated.
Why did Rome become idiotic? Because the Roman republic had been kidnapped by the hyper rich "Senatorial" class. The hyper rich tolerated only dummies. During the transition to generalized idiocy, those who refused to cooperate were killed. The philosopher and Consul Cicero, saw the hands he was writing with chopped off, and nailed to the Senate door. And that is not an imaginary anecdote a la Reagan. It was meant to impress those too willing to keep on writing down smart, progressive thoughts.
Finally the plutocracy mixed up with the theocrats, and any knowledge or thinking was denounced as an insult to "God". This episode is called the Dark Ages. But it started with the rise of the stupid, paid to reign by the hyper rich.
This is exactly what is going in the media today. The venality and stupidity of the "debate" on health care is deliberate, it is made to encourage stupidity, it teaches stupidity. Wisely, Obama is gambling that he can defeat the stupidity head on, by rising the mental level. If he fails, the USA will keep on collapsing mentally, and the rest will follow. After all, the financial crisis, and the way it was solved (replenishing the perpetrators) is the sort of idiocy that history shows change the fate of civilization, and not for the best.
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
***
(published in Krugman's blog comments, #10)
***
Here is the full Krugman blog post.
July 23, 2009.
"What’s in a name?
OK, so let me get this straight. The initial reaction of the cable talking heads was that Obama blew it because he didn’t couch his argument in terms of personal anecdotes, Reagan-style. Then, when it was pointed out that he did, in fact, offer a number of specific examples of people harmed by our current system, the whine became that he didn’t give their names.
Now, it’s true that George Bush liked to give names of people who would benefit from his tax cuts; but Ronald Reagan’s anecdotes — about, say, the Cadillac-driving welfare queen — generally didn’t name names. And there was a good reason for that: with rare exceptions, Reagan’s folksy anecdotes weren’t true.
So what are the talking heads really complaining about? It’s not what Obama didn’t do — it’s what he did, namely talk seriously about policy. How unpresidential of him!"
Talking heads in the media complained that Obama did not tell just little anecdotes during his description of the problem of the health care system. Krugman opines that: "what are the talking heads really complaining about? It’s not what Obama didn’t do — it’s what he did, namely talk seriously about policy. How unpresidential of him!"
But there is a deeper problem. And that is that enforced stupidity has become an instrument of deliberate oppression.
Talking heads in the media and their public are like children: they want to be told bed time stories, so that their tired little minds can go to sleep.
They cannot handle culture and logic, they are not trained for it. All what appeals to them is what would appeal little children talking to each other, little anecdotes with a strong imaginary component.
As the Roman republic went down, culture and art went down, and they went down ahead of the military and economic capabilities. Rome became idiotic first, and then was progressively completely incapacitated.
Why did Rome become idiotic? Because the Roman republic had been kidnapped by the hyper rich "Senatorial" class. The hyper rich tolerated only dummies. During the transition to generalized idiocy, those who refused to cooperate were killed. The philosopher and Consul Cicero, saw the hands he was writing with chopped off, and nailed to the Senate door. And that is not an imaginary anecdote a la Reagan. It was meant to impress those too willing to keep on writing down smart, progressive thoughts.
Finally the plutocracy mixed up with the theocrats, and any knowledge or thinking was denounced as an insult to "God". This episode is called the Dark Ages. But it started with the rise of the stupid, paid to reign by the hyper rich.
This is exactly what is going in the media today. The venality and stupidity of the "debate" on health care is deliberate, it is made to encourage stupidity, it teaches stupidity. Wisely, Obama is gambling that he can defeat the stupidity head on, by rising the mental level. If he fails, the USA will keep on collapsing mentally, and the rest will follow. After all, the financial crisis, and the way it was solved (replenishing the perpetrators) is the sort of idiocy that history shows change the fate of civilization, and not for the best.
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
***
(published in Krugman's blog comments, #10)
***
Here is the full Krugman blog post.
July 23, 2009.
"What’s in a name?
OK, so let me get this straight. The initial reaction of the cable talking heads was that Obama blew it because he didn’t couch his argument in terms of personal anecdotes, Reagan-style. Then, when it was pointed out that he did, in fact, offer a number of specific examples of people harmed by our current system, the whine became that he didn’t give their names.
Now, it’s true that George Bush liked to give names of people who would benefit from his tax cuts; but Ronald Reagan’s anecdotes — about, say, the Cadillac-driving welfare queen — generally didn’t name names. And there was a good reason for that: with rare exceptions, Reagan’s folksy anecdotes weren’t true.
So what are the talking heads really complaining about? It’s not what Obama didn’t do — it’s what he did, namely talk seriously about policy. How unpresidential of him!"
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
THINKER IN CHIEF?
In his blog, Krugman reveals that Obama is the "Professor in chief": "I found Obama’s health care presentation so impressive — so much command of the issues — that it had me worried. If I really like a politicians’ speech, isn’t that an indication that he lacks the popular touch? (A couple of points off for “incentivize” — what ever happened to “encourage”? — but never mind.)
Seriously, it’s really good to see how much he gets it."
Yes, well, I particularly loved the sneak attacks against "the profit motive" delivered with great care and subtility, so as not to hurt and revolt, but just so as to leave a deep mark on the subconscious of the bleating media sheep (which seemed aware of their own mental short comings as they struggled to rise to the occasion, something I have observed with sheep in the wild, when they try to understand what to do). And, of course, that presentation was made to change the subconscious of the nation, as the dose of higher philosophy ("health care is not about profit, and actually the profit motive is toxic to health") was delivered twice with an extremely light touch, as if Obama himself was baffled by the idea, and was just trying to formulate modestly gathering thoughts...
Indeed, it's high time that "We The People" understands that stupidity is the road to hell in a waste basket. The popular obsession of mental retardation shrouded in sport scores, is not just ludicrous, it's an indecent threat to planetary survival.
In the present situation, the revolutionary reflex: "Off With Their Heads!, cannot even be evoked. Verily, before the people's heads could be cut off, they would need some. We may as have been dealing with sponges placidly bathing in plutocratic juice, but now Obama is showing them what a brain can do.
Obama's role is to be father of the nation, and he does that very well, because a father is someone who knows, and feels, more. It's easy to know more than children who have travelled nowhere. Obama has lived overseas, and not just overseas in an equivalent place such as Western Europe, but overseas in a (at the time) severely underdeveloped country of the Muslim type (my case exactly, by the way, but longer and deeper, making me fiercer).
So Obama is mentally deep (except in the waters where Larry Summers swim like a self assured globular sardine, while Obama is not hungry yet). It is good that the American People is exposed to some mental activity of the higher type, that's what the USA needs. The best profits are of the mental type. Learn.
By the way, there is a tradition in a country such as France, of presidents who actually know their stuff, and have the "vision thing" as Bush the First used to say, in one of his most notable efforts to form a sentence.
It is a particular grotesque behavior that American presidents have been overly dependent on "speech writers" to think. Obama is the Thinker In Chief, and powers to that! It is not just human, what man is all about, but it is also honest: instead of a plutocratic machine producing a figurehead actor, we get a human being thinking higher thougths.
So do not tremble, oh little Krugman, sheeps cannot devour minds.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Seriously, it’s really good to see how much he gets it."
Yes, well, I particularly loved the sneak attacks against "the profit motive" delivered with great care and subtility, so as not to hurt and revolt, but just so as to leave a deep mark on the subconscious of the bleating media sheep (which seemed aware of their own mental short comings as they struggled to rise to the occasion, something I have observed with sheep in the wild, when they try to understand what to do). And, of course, that presentation was made to change the subconscious of the nation, as the dose of higher philosophy ("health care is not about profit, and actually the profit motive is toxic to health") was delivered twice with an extremely light touch, as if Obama himself was baffled by the idea, and was just trying to formulate modestly gathering thoughts...
Indeed, it's high time that "We The People" understands that stupidity is the road to hell in a waste basket. The popular obsession of mental retardation shrouded in sport scores, is not just ludicrous, it's an indecent threat to planetary survival.
In the present situation, the revolutionary reflex: "Off With Their Heads!, cannot even be evoked. Verily, before the people's heads could be cut off, they would need some. We may as have been dealing with sponges placidly bathing in plutocratic juice, but now Obama is showing them what a brain can do.
Obama's role is to be father of the nation, and he does that very well, because a father is someone who knows, and feels, more. It's easy to know more than children who have travelled nowhere. Obama has lived overseas, and not just overseas in an equivalent place such as Western Europe, but overseas in a (at the time) severely underdeveloped country of the Muslim type (my case exactly, by the way, but longer and deeper, making me fiercer).
So Obama is mentally deep (except in the waters where Larry Summers swim like a self assured globular sardine, while Obama is not hungry yet). It is good that the American People is exposed to some mental activity of the higher type, that's what the USA needs. The best profits are of the mental type. Learn.
By the way, there is a tradition in a country such as France, of presidents who actually know their stuff, and have the "vision thing" as Bush the First used to say, in one of his most notable efforts to form a sentence.
It is a particular grotesque behavior that American presidents have been overly dependent on "speech writers" to think. Obama is the Thinker In Chief, and powers to that! It is not just human, what man is all about, but it is also honest: instead of a plutocratic machine producing a figurehead actor, we get a human being thinking higher thougths.
So do not tremble, oh little Krugman, sheeps cannot devour minds.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
FREE MARKETS FANATICS CRASH AND BURN.
AMERICAN ECONOMISTS AS UNIVERSAL MECHANICS:
Doctor Paul Krugman suddenly shows his true colors, from back when he was an adviser of Ronald Reagan, before he played progressive in the media, for his greater glory.
He writes in his blog, July 21, 2009: “The solution to climate change must rely... on market mechanisms — it’s too complex an issue to deal with using command-and-control. ”
Really? Another complex issue is air traffic control, which, thus, according to the good Dr. Krugman, "must rely on market mechanisms". Goldman Sachs could sell the right to land first to who will pay more in the instant. Then if someone pays even more, they could sell the right to land first to that one instead. And so on. Then they could sell bets on who will crash first.
No doubt, pretty soon, air travel would experience a final solution to the problem of its existence. Most planes having crashed, there would be no more carbon emission that way. The air travel industry would follow the American society into the ground. Or even below, where Pluto is located.
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
P/S 1: Of course high fossil fuel taxes is the way to conserve and force efficiencies. A carbon tax is the way to fix, worldwide the worst proble of globalization, which is that it gave ways for plutocracy to turn around legislation.
[P/S 2: The central argument above is too critical of the market concept as panacea, so the New York Times refused to publish it, pursuing a pattern of avoiding to publish my deepest critiques against the present economic system (they systematically refused to publish my observations about the private fractional reserve banking system, for example)...]
Doctor Paul Krugman suddenly shows his true colors, from back when he was an adviser of Ronald Reagan, before he played progressive in the media, for his greater glory.
He writes in his blog, July 21, 2009: “The solution to climate change must rely... on market mechanisms — it’s too complex an issue to deal with using command-and-control. ”
Really? Another complex issue is air traffic control, which, thus, according to the good Dr. Krugman, "must rely on market mechanisms". Goldman Sachs could sell the right to land first to who will pay more in the instant. Then if someone pays even more, they could sell the right to land first to that one instead. And so on. Then they could sell bets on who will crash first.
No doubt, pretty soon, air travel would experience a final solution to the problem of its existence. Most planes having crashed, there would be no more carbon emission that way. The air travel industry would follow the American society into the ground. Or even below, where Pluto is located.
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
P/S 1: Of course high fossil fuel taxes is the way to conserve and force efficiencies. A carbon tax is the way to fix, worldwide the worst proble of globalization, which is that it gave ways for plutocracy to turn around legislation.
[P/S 2: The central argument above is too critical of the market concept as panacea, so the New York Times refused to publish it, pursuing a pattern of avoiding to publish my deepest critiques against the present economic system (they systematically refused to publish my observations about the private fractional reserve banking system, for example)...]
Sunday, July 19, 2009
RUB IT IN: RUBIN FOREVER.
PLUS DE CHANGE, PLUS DE PLUTOCRACIE:
***
In his blog post, "Morning Joe" (July 19, 2009), Paul Krugman deplores the absence in the Obama administration of a great economist such as Stiglitz (and, implicitly, and naturally, himself). Paul makes a few observations:
"...the larger story is the absence of a progressive-economist wing. A lot of people supported Obama over Clinton in the primaries because they thought Clinton would bring back the Rubin team; and what Obama has done is … bring back the Rubin team. Even the advisory council, which is supposed to bring in skeptical views, does so by bringing in, um, Marty Feldstein..."
[Martin Feldstein is an extreme conservative (by European standards) economist, a partisan advising G. W. Bush to privatize social security, and a fanatical enemy of Europe, who views Europe as a natural enemy of the USA, and who naturally opposed the European currency in all ways.]
OK, let Paul finish his discourse:
"The point is that even if you think the leftish wing of economics doesn’t have all the answers, you’d expect some people from that wing to be at the table...
Joe Stiglitz stands out because in addition to being on the progressive wing, he’s also, as I said, a giant among academic economists. But I think the real story is more about excluded points of view than excluded people."
***
So I sent the following comment supporting Paul's views:
Indeed, many people supported Obama because they were sure that Clinton would bring back the Rubin team of plutocratic critters.
So Obama brought back the Rubin team, demonstrating that the plutocratic octopus is everywhere, and that there is something deep about Nader's insistence that the game is rigged.
Nader did not invent that line: it's the old saw that Communists and Socialists were using already a century ago.
After the Communists and Socialist made headway with that observation, the plutocrats produced the fascists who carefully imitated Communist and Socialist headlines with their own propaganda (Mussolini and Hitler said that they carefully did so).
So now, here we are. Just standing in place is called being part of the "progressive wing". Because what we are facing is a regressive movement. People who insist that destroying the earth is no worries of theirs, people who insist that worth is defined by financial profits, and that only a small oligarchy can have access to these financial profits, and that the entire population should pay to make it so, are not conserving any of the character of the republic.
In truth, they are regressives, who want to go back to the Middle Ages, and have already partly succeeded to do so. Why? Because they are turning into the new Lords. Politicians are motivated to help them achieve this status, because they are themselves rewarded the old fashion way, by being elevated to considerably greater riches as Clinton was (the average Congressman and Senator are already multi millionaire while they "serve" their mandates, namely themselves).
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
***
P/S: A president, though, contacted Stiglitz, and gave him a mission: try to define a better definition of GDP.
This has been one my war horses: to redefine GDP completely (and I have an elaborated solution, involving USING ENERGY AS CURRENCY, which allows to discard the inefficient part of GDP, and introduce in GDP what is very worthy, but not in the present GDP).
That president is located in Paris, he is the president of France, and his name is Sarkozy. It is instructive to realize that Merkel, Sarkozy, and even Brown, are way left of Obama, and are using American intellectual resources to progress. But, once one has realized that economically Obama is the Rubin team, that is not very surprising.
One thing that would surprise Americans, though, is the spite and anger, even among leaders, that the impudence of American plutocracy is causing overseas.
***
***
In his blog post, "Morning Joe" (July 19, 2009), Paul Krugman deplores the absence in the Obama administration of a great economist such as Stiglitz (and, implicitly, and naturally, himself). Paul makes a few observations:
"...the larger story is the absence of a progressive-economist wing. A lot of people supported Obama over Clinton in the primaries because they thought Clinton would bring back the Rubin team; and what Obama has done is … bring back the Rubin team. Even the advisory council, which is supposed to bring in skeptical views, does so by bringing in, um, Marty Feldstein..."
[Martin Feldstein is an extreme conservative (by European standards) economist, a partisan advising G. W. Bush to privatize social security, and a fanatical enemy of Europe, who views Europe as a natural enemy of the USA, and who naturally opposed the European currency in all ways.]
OK, let Paul finish his discourse:
"The point is that even if you think the leftish wing of economics doesn’t have all the answers, you’d expect some people from that wing to be at the table...
Joe Stiglitz stands out because in addition to being on the progressive wing, he’s also, as I said, a giant among academic economists. But I think the real story is more about excluded points of view than excluded people."
***
So I sent the following comment supporting Paul's views:
Indeed, many people supported Obama because they were sure that Clinton would bring back the Rubin team of plutocratic critters.
So Obama brought back the Rubin team, demonstrating that the plutocratic octopus is everywhere, and that there is something deep about Nader's insistence that the game is rigged.
Nader did not invent that line: it's the old saw that Communists and Socialists were using already a century ago.
After the Communists and Socialist made headway with that observation, the plutocrats produced the fascists who carefully imitated Communist and Socialist headlines with their own propaganda (Mussolini and Hitler said that they carefully did so).
So now, here we are. Just standing in place is called being part of the "progressive wing". Because what we are facing is a regressive movement. People who insist that destroying the earth is no worries of theirs, people who insist that worth is defined by financial profits, and that only a small oligarchy can have access to these financial profits, and that the entire population should pay to make it so, are not conserving any of the character of the republic.
In truth, they are regressives, who want to go back to the Middle Ages, and have already partly succeeded to do so. Why? Because they are turning into the new Lords. Politicians are motivated to help them achieve this status, because they are themselves rewarded the old fashion way, by being elevated to considerably greater riches as Clinton was (the average Congressman and Senator are already multi millionaire while they "serve" their mandates, namely themselves).
***
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
***
P/S: A president, though, contacted Stiglitz, and gave him a mission: try to define a better definition of GDP.
This has been one my war horses: to redefine GDP completely (and I have an elaborated solution, involving USING ENERGY AS CURRENCY, which allows to discard the inefficient part of GDP, and introduce in GDP what is very worthy, but not in the present GDP).
That president is located in Paris, he is the president of France, and his name is Sarkozy. It is instructive to realize that Merkel, Sarkozy, and even Brown, are way left of Obama, and are using American intellectual resources to progress. But, once one has realized that economically Obama is the Rubin team, that is not very surprising.
One thing that would surprise Americans, though, is the spite and anger, even among leaders, that the impudence of American plutocracy is causing overseas.
***
Friday, July 17, 2009
WHEREOF ONE CANNOT THINK, THEREOF ONE MUST NOT KILL.
Tyranosopher wrote:
July 18, 2009 5:39
What is the aim of the war in Afghanistan? For the Afghans, it is to get rid of the invaders. For Mr. Obama, it is to get rid of Al Qaeda. But Al Qaeda is not in Afghanistan anymore. So why is Mr. Obama truly sending more combat troops in Afghanistan and making more war? So that more people, and soldiers, will get killed?
It is more important to know why one is fighting a war than to fight it. Why one is fighting is the most important ingredient for victory, when the issue of a war is uncertain. When one bombs people's home, to kill them, one better make sure one's reasons are good. But the West is bombing people's homes, in Afghanistan, and its reasons are no good.
Neither the Taliban, nor Al Qaeda were created by Afghanistan, or by Afghans: both were created by the CIA, or by proxies of the CIA such as the ISI from Pakistan.
Mr. Obama heard that the Afghan government has confirmed a misogynistic law confirming that women, by law, can be raped by their husbands, but, by law, they have to enjoy it. He became indignant, asked for reconsideration. Why? Does Mr. Obama celebrate Islam? Has not he declared in Cairo he would be the defender of that faith? The Qur'an explicitly take the position confirmed by the Afghan legislature allowing men to rape women ("women are your fields, so men go into your fields however you want, etc..."). When he heard of this, Mr. Obama decided to fall silent, deciding suddenly to follow Wittgenstein's advice: " "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent".
The constitution of the Islamist Republic of Afghanistan is Islam (and thus the Qur'an). So far, so good. So what is NATO doing in Afghanistan? Defending the Afghan Islamist constitution. Against whom? Islamists. Mr. Obama made clear he loved Islamists, just not those. Those he wants to kill. Why? Because they kill people. Why does Mr. Obama go to Afghanistan to kill Islamists? Because that's where they live.
In other words, Western leadership has obviously gone crazy. The philosophical aim of the war has become to defend a peculiar view of Islam against a certain group of Islamists (thus it aims at establishing a particular religion, a characterized violation of the constitution of the USA).
To understand the Afghanistan war, at this point, G. Orwell' "!984" seems more important than American discourses. Time to go home.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
(Published in "The Economist")
July 18, 2009 5:39
What is the aim of the war in Afghanistan? For the Afghans, it is to get rid of the invaders. For Mr. Obama, it is to get rid of Al Qaeda. But Al Qaeda is not in Afghanistan anymore. So why is Mr. Obama truly sending more combat troops in Afghanistan and making more war? So that more people, and soldiers, will get killed?
It is more important to know why one is fighting a war than to fight it. Why one is fighting is the most important ingredient for victory, when the issue of a war is uncertain. When one bombs people's home, to kill them, one better make sure one's reasons are good. But the West is bombing people's homes, in Afghanistan, and its reasons are no good.
Neither the Taliban, nor Al Qaeda were created by Afghanistan, or by Afghans: both were created by the CIA, or by proxies of the CIA such as the ISI from Pakistan.
Mr. Obama heard that the Afghan government has confirmed a misogynistic law confirming that women, by law, can be raped by their husbands, but, by law, they have to enjoy it. He became indignant, asked for reconsideration. Why? Does Mr. Obama celebrate Islam? Has not he declared in Cairo he would be the defender of that faith? The Qur'an explicitly take the position confirmed by the Afghan legislature allowing men to rape women ("women are your fields, so men go into your fields however you want, etc..."). When he heard of this, Mr. Obama decided to fall silent, deciding suddenly to follow Wittgenstein's advice: " "whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent".
The constitution of the Islamist Republic of Afghanistan is Islam (and thus the Qur'an). So far, so good. So what is NATO doing in Afghanistan? Defending the Afghan Islamist constitution. Against whom? Islamists. Mr. Obama made clear he loved Islamists, just not those. Those he wants to kill. Why? Because they kill people. Why does Mr. Obama go to Afghanistan to kill Islamists? Because that's where they live.
In other words, Western leadership has obviously gone crazy. The philosophical aim of the war has become to defend a peculiar view of Islam against a certain group of Islamists (thus it aims at establishing a particular religion, a characterized violation of the constitution of the USA).
To understand the Afghanistan war, at this point, G. Orwell' "!984" seems more important than American discourses. Time to go home.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
(Published in "The Economist")
GOLD MAN SACKS
REFINED CENSORSHIP:
The comment below (after ***XXX***) was sent swiftly to the New York Times, after Krugman's editorial. My comment agreed with the editorial, but it went much further; for some reason, the NYT thought it was better not to publish it; now the strongest statement in my comment, was, by far, the attack against the Fractional Reserve Banking System; thus the conclusion I reach that it is viewed as a dangerous assault against the core of the system. Which it is. This shows the power and subtility of media control. This is not the first time this happens.)
***
THE PLUTO IN PLUTOCRACY:
In Russia one more courageous woman lawyer fighting for human rights was arrested by uniformed security forces, in full day light, and promptly shot to death. This is what happens when an oligarchy is even more out of control than the one in the USA today.
The criminal behavior of some fascist oligarchs in Russia is reminiscent,in its reckless disregard for a semblance of civilization, to the reckless behavior of some financiers in the USA. Or conversely.
Paul Krugman has joined the chorus against Goldman Sachs, a typical, ongoing financial conspiracy in the USA (before 2009, that conspiracy was called an "investment bank", now it's simply a "bank").
Says Krugman in his NYT editorial (July 17, 2009): "Goldman Sachs’s record quarterly profits show us that the investment bank is very good at what it does. Unfortunately, what it does is bad for America."
Here is my comment below (a more incisive version, "Gold Man Sucks", with sharper philosophy, will hopefully be posted on patriceayme.wordpress):
***XXX***
COMMENT ON GOLDMAN SACHS AND BANKING SPURNED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Goldman Sachs would not exist if not for the taxpayer. The taxpayer saved Goldman Sachs from extinction in 2008. To reward the taxpayer, Goldman Sachs is fully reestablishing its dominion.
Goldman Sachs got a 13 billion dollars gift through AIG, from the taxpayer, and probably much more, secretly, at some point through the secret operations of the Federal Reserve (unaudited by the US Congress). Just these $13 billion is about 25% of the stimulus distributed, so far, for more than 300 million Americans. But Goldman Sachs got it in 2008. Goldman gets first class service, and most of the service that exists. The USA seems to exist to serve Goldman.
China's economy is growing again close to 8% per year. Why? Because of a giant stimulus to its economy. In the USA, there has been an even much larger stimulus. But not a stimulus for the economy; that one is small: officially $787 billion but in truth a small fraction of this (once the AMT and the subventions to the crashing states have been removed).
No, the giant stimulus in the USA has been for the bankers, the same group of private individuals, some particular bankers, that caused the disaster to start with. All of Goldman Sachs is part of it. Banks should have been saved as institutions, no doubt. But should well organized criminals be saved too? Yes, it sounds like an unrelated question. So why did the government of the USA relate both propositions? Because there are always Goldman Sachs officers in the government of the USA? Does this have to do with Goldman Sachs' acumen in profiting from the disasters it itself advise periodically to engage in?
China has banks too. But the Chinese government gave guidelines about who and what should get money for its real stimulus to the economy, and that meant the real economy, not speculation.
How come China could achieve this, and not the USA? Because China is a People's republic. The Chinese government controls its bankers. In the USA, the bankers control the government.
Make no mistake: China is also a plutocracy. Children of Communist party officials control the economy to a great extent. official statistics show this. Simply, the USA is even more of a plutocracy, and thus, in that particular dimension, less of a republic.
In the fractional reserve system, bankers, private individuals, fabricate the money. It is time to realize that this FRACTIONAL RESERVE SYSTEM IS A DEVOLUTION OF CIVILIZATION. The only way out is to reestablish a greater control of banking, enforcing on bankers an ontology, an oath of office, and severe controls, to finally make them officially into the officers of the state they already are. It is part of the solution for allowing its rightful owners, the People,to repossess the State.
Indeed, right now, a particular group of private bankers and their business associates, rule the USA as their own private state, instead of letting the public do their own thing (which is what a republic is, supposedly).
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
The comment below (after ***XXX***) was sent swiftly to the New York Times, after Krugman's editorial. My comment agreed with the editorial, but it went much further; for some reason, the NYT thought it was better not to publish it; now the strongest statement in my comment, was, by far, the attack against the Fractional Reserve Banking System; thus the conclusion I reach that it is viewed as a dangerous assault against the core of the system. Which it is. This shows the power and subtility of media control. This is not the first time this happens.)
***
THE PLUTO IN PLUTOCRACY:
In Russia one more courageous woman lawyer fighting for human rights was arrested by uniformed security forces, in full day light, and promptly shot to death. This is what happens when an oligarchy is even more out of control than the one in the USA today.
The criminal behavior of some fascist oligarchs in Russia is reminiscent,in its reckless disregard for a semblance of civilization, to the reckless behavior of some financiers in the USA. Or conversely.
Paul Krugman has joined the chorus against Goldman Sachs, a typical, ongoing financial conspiracy in the USA (before 2009, that conspiracy was called an "investment bank", now it's simply a "bank").
Says Krugman in his NYT editorial (July 17, 2009): "Goldman Sachs’s record quarterly profits show us that the investment bank is very good at what it does. Unfortunately, what it does is bad for America."
Here is my comment below (a more incisive version, "Gold Man Sucks", with sharper philosophy, will hopefully be posted on patriceayme.wordpress):
***XXX***
COMMENT ON GOLDMAN SACHS AND BANKING SPURNED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES:
Goldman Sachs would not exist if not for the taxpayer. The taxpayer saved Goldman Sachs from extinction in 2008. To reward the taxpayer, Goldman Sachs is fully reestablishing its dominion.
Goldman Sachs got a 13 billion dollars gift through AIG, from the taxpayer, and probably much more, secretly, at some point through the secret operations of the Federal Reserve (unaudited by the US Congress). Just these $13 billion is about 25% of the stimulus distributed, so far, for more than 300 million Americans. But Goldman Sachs got it in 2008. Goldman gets first class service, and most of the service that exists. The USA seems to exist to serve Goldman.
China's economy is growing again close to 8% per year. Why? Because of a giant stimulus to its economy. In the USA, there has been an even much larger stimulus. But not a stimulus for the economy; that one is small: officially $787 billion but in truth a small fraction of this (once the AMT and the subventions to the crashing states have been removed).
No, the giant stimulus in the USA has been for the bankers, the same group of private individuals, some particular bankers, that caused the disaster to start with. All of Goldman Sachs is part of it. Banks should have been saved as institutions, no doubt. But should well organized criminals be saved too? Yes, it sounds like an unrelated question. So why did the government of the USA relate both propositions? Because there are always Goldman Sachs officers in the government of the USA? Does this have to do with Goldman Sachs' acumen in profiting from the disasters it itself advise periodically to engage in?
China has banks too. But the Chinese government gave guidelines about who and what should get money for its real stimulus to the economy, and that meant the real economy, not speculation.
How come China could achieve this, and not the USA? Because China is a People's republic. The Chinese government controls its bankers. In the USA, the bankers control the government.
Make no mistake: China is also a plutocracy. Children of Communist party officials control the economy to a great extent. official statistics show this. Simply, the USA is even more of a plutocracy, and thus, in that particular dimension, less of a republic.
In the fractional reserve system, bankers, private individuals, fabricate the money. It is time to realize that this FRACTIONAL RESERVE SYSTEM IS A DEVOLUTION OF CIVILIZATION. The only way out is to reestablish a greater control of banking, enforcing on bankers an ontology, an oath of office, and severe controls, to finally make them officially into the officers of the state they already are. It is part of the solution for allowing its rightful owners, the People,to repossess the State.
Indeed, right now, a particular group of private bankers and their business associates, rule the USA as their own private state, instead of letting the public do their own thing (which is what a republic is, supposedly).
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
INFINITE WISDOM ONLY FROM ETERNAL LIFE?
SINCE WISDOM EXTENSION WE NEED, LIFE EXTENSION WE WILL SEEK.
Extending life will extend wisdom. Not just because people will know more, including how childish many a passion is, but because they will have more to lose if policies go wrong.
So life extension will not be a luxury, but a necessity, because if a given threshold of wisdom is not reached, humanity will be exterminated.
BTW, there is a theory, by very serious people, that it is stress, not calorie restriction per se, which causes life extension in animals. So here! (Anti oxydant studies' perplexing results have led to this counter-intuitive view...)
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Extending life will extend wisdom. Not just because people will know more, including how childish many a passion is, but because they will have more to lose if policies go wrong.
So life extension will not be a luxury, but a necessity, because if a given threshold of wisdom is not reached, humanity will be exterminated.
BTW, there is a theory, by very serious people, that it is stress, not calorie restriction per se, which causes life extension in animals. So here! (Anti oxydant studies' perplexing results have led to this counter-intuitive view...)
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Thursday, July 2, 2009
MONEY SWINDLER GUIDANCE
WHEN THE HOUSE GOES TO THE FOXES.
Obama passed a pseudo stimulus package of around 800 billion dollars. Some of it was fake, such as the AMT adjustment(a standard part of the Fed budget), some was running in place: such as money sent to states that are cutting their own spending. Best example: 50 billion dollars of the Federal stimulus is sent to California, at the time when California state budget went into a deep freeze (thousands of California state projects were stopped, all employees were told to stay home, and not be paid one Friday out of two; starting July first, it's three days with no work and no pay, almost two months worth of salary, and work, a year, now reduced to zero, and the pitiful Obama stimulus cannot stop that non sense).
Moreover, the Obama "stimulus" spent so far is about 50 billion dollars. China's stimulus was about 500 billions, but three quarters of it has been spent, and it's on real infrastructure.
By comparison, Goldman Sachs, through TARP money sent to AIG, got a gift of 13 billion dollars from the proverbial "taxpayers", the government of the USA, in the name of the American People. Question: what does Goldman Sachs make? What employment does it support? For example, Boeing makes planes. Goldman Sachs makes transactions, as many as possible, and then extracts a cut for each. It does not make anything real, let alone anything that would help people. Goldman Sachs has been about greasing the wheels for so long, there are not more wheels, only grease.
When FDR was president the Federal budget was a very small part of GDP (this changed only with World War Two) . So FDR could do little, but to legislate very creatively and very boldly and intelligently, and all of that he did.
Obama, by contrast, controls a huge part of the GDP, but he gave most of this control to the dim witted foxes he put in charge of watching the hen house (see above: 50 billion stimulus, so far, 13 billion for Goldman Sachs alone, if not more through the central bank secret operations). Obama can do a lot, but, as long as he puts the profiteers in charge of not changing the system, all he can show is the profiteers profiteering again, as he boasts of regularly on TV, as if he accomplished something important. Well, maybe important to him.
Just two examples from France: the government there has decided to create a gigantic fast automatic 24/7 train in an immense eight connecting all four of Paris airports and business districts and central hubs. Cost: 50 billion dollars. Work on four new high speed train lines is proceeding. The high speed train line through the "metropolises" of the French Riviera (Marseilles-Toulon-Cannes-Nice) was decided this week. It will be underground a lot, so it's immensely expensive: 30 billion dollars. Next generation nuclear reactors are also being built. And so on. That is what one calls really stimulating.
Eco-nomy means house-management. It does not mean profiteering from the house. As long as Obama puts financiers (Summers, Geithner, and various other mental gnomes from Goldman Sachs) in charge of managing the house, they will keep on stealing it. That's all they know. For a fox, the essence of intelligence is killing chicken.
House-management is fundamentally not about money. Money helps to motivate the children, and keep tabs on their activities, but rather it's just a way to help, not the essence of the thing. The essence is productive work. It's for the People and its democratically elected government, guided by the deepest thinkers to decide what productive work is, it is not the business of the money swindlers.
Such is Obama's mistake, and it could all end very badly, if he does not correct this in time.
I know someone with a PhD who works as an quality control inspector overseeing the Food and Drug Administration. She informed me an hour ago that all her portion of the overseeing system she works for will be cancelled in September. Meanwhile Mr. Obama is stimulating the Afghans by killing and terrorizing a lot of them. Change you can sneer by.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Obama passed a pseudo stimulus package of around 800 billion dollars. Some of it was fake, such as the AMT adjustment(a standard part of the Fed budget), some was running in place: such as money sent to states that are cutting their own spending. Best example: 50 billion dollars of the Federal stimulus is sent to California, at the time when California state budget went into a deep freeze (thousands of California state projects were stopped, all employees were told to stay home, and not be paid one Friday out of two; starting July first, it's three days with no work and no pay, almost two months worth of salary, and work, a year, now reduced to zero, and the pitiful Obama stimulus cannot stop that non sense).
Moreover, the Obama "stimulus" spent so far is about 50 billion dollars. China's stimulus was about 500 billions, but three quarters of it has been spent, and it's on real infrastructure.
By comparison, Goldman Sachs, through TARP money sent to AIG, got a gift of 13 billion dollars from the proverbial "taxpayers", the government of the USA, in the name of the American People. Question: what does Goldman Sachs make? What employment does it support? For example, Boeing makes planes. Goldman Sachs makes transactions, as many as possible, and then extracts a cut for each. It does not make anything real, let alone anything that would help people. Goldman Sachs has been about greasing the wheels for so long, there are not more wheels, only grease.
When FDR was president the Federal budget was a very small part of GDP (this changed only with World War Two) . So FDR could do little, but to legislate very creatively and very boldly and intelligently, and all of that he did.
Obama, by contrast, controls a huge part of the GDP, but he gave most of this control to the dim witted foxes he put in charge of watching the hen house (see above: 50 billion stimulus, so far, 13 billion for Goldman Sachs alone, if not more through the central bank secret operations). Obama can do a lot, but, as long as he puts the profiteers in charge of not changing the system, all he can show is the profiteers profiteering again, as he boasts of regularly on TV, as if he accomplished something important. Well, maybe important to him.
Just two examples from France: the government there has decided to create a gigantic fast automatic 24/7 train in an immense eight connecting all four of Paris airports and business districts and central hubs. Cost: 50 billion dollars. Work on four new high speed train lines is proceeding. The high speed train line through the "metropolises" of the French Riviera (Marseilles-Toulon-Cannes-Nice) was decided this week. It will be underground a lot, so it's immensely expensive: 30 billion dollars. Next generation nuclear reactors are also being built. And so on. That is what one calls really stimulating.
Eco-nomy means house-management. It does not mean profiteering from the house. As long as Obama puts financiers (Summers, Geithner, and various other mental gnomes from Goldman Sachs) in charge of managing the house, they will keep on stealing it. That's all they know. For a fox, the essence of intelligence is killing chicken.
House-management is fundamentally not about money. Money helps to motivate the children, and keep tabs on their activities, but rather it's just a way to help, not the essence of the thing. The essence is productive work. It's for the People and its democratically elected government, guided by the deepest thinkers to decide what productive work is, it is not the business of the money swindlers.
Such is Obama's mistake, and it could all end very badly, if he does not correct this in time.
I know someone with a PhD who works as an quality control inspector overseeing the Food and Drug Administration. She informed me an hour ago that all her portion of the overseeing system she works for will be cancelled in September. Meanwhile Mr. Obama is stimulating the Afghans by killing and terrorizing a lot of them. Change you can sneer by.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Thursday, June 25, 2009
WILL TO NOODLE?
NOT ENOUGH AUDACITY TO ACT FOR THE PEOPLE?
Paul Krugman, in his June 25 New York times editorial "Not Enough Audacity", points out that: "When it comes to domestic policy, there are two Barack Obamas.. On one side there’s Barack the Policy Wonk, whose command of the issues — and ability to explain those issues in plain English — is a joy to behold. But on the other side there’s Barack the Post-Partisan, who searches for common ground where none exists, and whose negotiations with himself lead to policies that are far too weak.
Both Baracks were on display in the president’s press conference earlier this week. First, Mr. Obama offered a crystal-clear explanation of the case for health care reform, and especially of the case for a public option competing with private insurers. “If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care, if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal,” he asked, “then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.”But when asked whether the public option was non-negotiable he waffled, declaring that there are no “lines in the sand.”... So Mr. Obama and Democrats in Congress have to hang tough — no more gratuitous giveaways in the attempt to sound reasonable. And reform advocates have to keep up the pressure to stay on track."
I have defended for years the idea to use a public health plan to out-compete the private health plans. Because of its bulk, a public health plan can negotiate lower prices from drug makers, and it is cheaper, because it does not have to make such a profit that it would attract investors. Now, clearly, the people who expect to make a fortune from the bad health of their fellow citizens, are terrified by the perspective of losing a major source of gouging. So the plutocrats are on the rope, and now is not the time to rescue them, They were already rescued by giving them a few trillions for their bankrupted banks.
But there is a more general question.
The leader of May 68, the highly successful Franco-German politician, Daniel Cohn-Bendit,has boosted ecology in France and the European parliament. Considering his great popularity, he has been pressed to run for the French presidency, but the "green giant" declined "Because to be president, one has to be a killer."
By this Daniel Cohn-Bendit meant that the French president comes across decisions where he has to decide to kill people. It is part of the job. France declared war to Hitler on September 3, 1939. During the cold war, Soviet attack plans in Europe intended to stop at the French border, because the Soviets were persuaded that France would strike with its nuclear arsenal. Same for Britain. Everybody knew that the defense of democracy, worldwide, depended upon the military resolve of the three great democracies, Britain, France, and the USA. That, in turn, depends upon them being led by killers.
To be a strong warrior, one has to have resolve. One has to believe in something beyond seduction. Of course, successful politicians, in a democracy, have to be seducers, otherwise they would not be elected. But the heads of government of the top democracies have to be more. They have such very strong beliefs that they would order whatever is necessary.
Obama believes deeply, apparently, that the truth is somewhere between yesterday's obsolete democrats, and yesterday's obsolete republicans. But, being half way lost between two wrongs does not make one right. That the USA does not have a public health plan is abysmal, and it has become a national weakness so great, it is actually a strategic threat against the USA.
Obama has enormous power and clout at his disposal right now, but he is wasting them because he seems to believe that it is wise to believe in nothing except being the interlocutor between adorers of the plutocrats on the left, and adorers of the plutocrats on the right.
Look at the gas tax: it has never been lower, because it is not adjusted for inflation. But Obama will not rise his voice about such things, he just runs a deficit that will soon paralyze him. All he seems to want is play a smile on TV. But the USA, and democracy, need, even require, to be defended by people with ultimate convictions. If one is so weak in one's conviction, that one cannot dispose of the weakest ideas of the extreme right, that have proven so completely wrong, for so long, how could one look as if one could order a nuclear strike? Because it is ultimately what it is at.
Obama's metapsychological waffling is also apparent in foreign policy. After proclaiming the Qur'an "holy" several times in Cairo, he declared: “And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” Apparently Obama had forgotten the blatantly secular Constitution of the USA. The consequences were immediate: Khamenei, the official "Supreme Guide" of Islam in Iran, stole the election there, within days. Khamenei had every reason to expect that Obama would fight by his side, against the "negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear", for example in the streets of Teheran.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Note: For days, Obama held to the position that "The difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised." Maybe the noodle is al dente, maybe it is not...
Paul Krugman, in his June 25 New York times editorial "Not Enough Audacity", points out that: "When it comes to domestic policy, there are two Barack Obamas.. On one side there’s Barack the Policy Wonk, whose command of the issues — and ability to explain those issues in plain English — is a joy to behold. But on the other side there’s Barack the Post-Partisan, who searches for common ground where none exists, and whose negotiations with himself lead to policies that are far too weak.
Both Baracks were on display in the president’s press conference earlier this week. First, Mr. Obama offered a crystal-clear explanation of the case for health care reform, and especially of the case for a public option competing with private insurers. “If private insurers say that the marketplace provides the best quality health care, if they tell us that they’re offering a good deal,” he asked, “then why is it that the government, which they say can’t run anything, suddenly is going to drive them out of business? That’s not logical.”But when asked whether the public option was non-negotiable he waffled, declaring that there are no “lines in the sand.”... So Mr. Obama and Democrats in Congress have to hang tough — no more gratuitous giveaways in the attempt to sound reasonable. And reform advocates have to keep up the pressure to stay on track."
I have defended for years the idea to use a public health plan to out-compete the private health plans. Because of its bulk, a public health plan can negotiate lower prices from drug makers, and it is cheaper, because it does not have to make such a profit that it would attract investors. Now, clearly, the people who expect to make a fortune from the bad health of their fellow citizens, are terrified by the perspective of losing a major source of gouging. So the plutocrats are on the rope, and now is not the time to rescue them, They were already rescued by giving them a few trillions for their bankrupted banks.
But there is a more general question.
The leader of May 68, the highly successful Franco-German politician, Daniel Cohn-Bendit,has boosted ecology in France and the European parliament. Considering his great popularity, he has been pressed to run for the French presidency, but the "green giant" declined "Because to be president, one has to be a killer."
By this Daniel Cohn-Bendit meant that the French president comes across decisions where he has to decide to kill people. It is part of the job. France declared war to Hitler on September 3, 1939. During the cold war, Soviet attack plans in Europe intended to stop at the French border, because the Soviets were persuaded that France would strike with its nuclear arsenal. Same for Britain. Everybody knew that the defense of democracy, worldwide, depended upon the military resolve of the three great democracies, Britain, France, and the USA. That, in turn, depends upon them being led by killers.
To be a strong warrior, one has to have resolve. One has to believe in something beyond seduction. Of course, successful politicians, in a democracy, have to be seducers, otherwise they would not be elected. But the heads of government of the top democracies have to be more. They have such very strong beliefs that they would order whatever is necessary.
Obama believes deeply, apparently, that the truth is somewhere between yesterday's obsolete democrats, and yesterday's obsolete republicans. But, being half way lost between two wrongs does not make one right. That the USA does not have a public health plan is abysmal, and it has become a national weakness so great, it is actually a strategic threat against the USA.
Obama has enormous power and clout at his disposal right now, but he is wasting them because he seems to believe that it is wise to believe in nothing except being the interlocutor between adorers of the plutocrats on the left, and adorers of the plutocrats on the right.
Look at the gas tax: it has never been lower, because it is not adjusted for inflation. But Obama will not rise his voice about such things, he just runs a deficit that will soon paralyze him. All he seems to want is play a smile on TV. But the USA, and democracy, need, even require, to be defended by people with ultimate convictions. If one is so weak in one's conviction, that one cannot dispose of the weakest ideas of the extreme right, that have proven so completely wrong, for so long, how could one look as if one could order a nuclear strike? Because it is ultimately what it is at.
Obama's metapsychological waffling is also apparent in foreign policy. After proclaiming the Qur'an "holy" several times in Cairo, he declared: “And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.” Apparently Obama had forgotten the blatantly secular Constitution of the USA. The consequences were immediate: Khamenei, the official "Supreme Guide" of Islam in Iran, stole the election there, within days. Khamenei had every reason to expect that Obama would fight by his side, against the "negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear", for example in the streets of Teheran.
Patrice Ayme
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Note: For days, Obama held to the position that "The difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi in terms of their actual policies may not be as great as has been advertised." Maybe the noodle is al dente, maybe it is not...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)