Have we forgotten that this war against Iraq has been going on for nearly 18 years? What was Bush Snr intending in August 1990 when he enticed Saddam Hussein into the Kuwait trap? Sure, he was big on warbucks & oilbucks, the Soviets were in collapse, but daddy Bush is not known as a prozionist. Iraq War II could not have happened without Iraq War I. Unless it is all sheer sadistic cruelty, something doesn't compute.
Some voices of protest from UK Indymedia icluding Brian Haw, Felicity Arbuthnot & Michel Chossudovsky (mp3).
http://www.indymedia.org.uk/medi.../03//
394540.mp3
A point that has been made by many people is that the attack on Iraq was not about oil per se, but about ensuring that oil continues to be sold only for US dollars - in other words, ensuring continued oil backing for the otherwise increasingly worthless dollar. Since Israel is totally dependent on its subsidy from the US, and no other country is going to provide that kind of patronage if the dollar becomes worthless, its survival in its present form depends on the survival of the dollar. In this sense US interests and Israeli interests coincide.
Saddam's great crime was that he was starting to join the international ditch-the-dollar movement by taking euros in payment for oil.
This open letter to Tony Blair in Counterpunch identified the position of the decline of the US$ against the Euro and the sales by Saddam of oil denominated in Euros...
Before the illegal occupation.
http://tinyurl.com/2w823w
It also identified that Saddam had no WMD's
Onlooker - you have left out Germany's dole to the zionist entity. Now that the USD is tanking, expect to see more German taxpayers' euros being sent to Occupied Palestine. And Belgian, Polish et al. taxpayers' subsidies, all in the name of 'reparations', don't you know.
I suppose the Nitzan & Bichler theory is just too difficult for the poor winnie the pooh brains around here.
here is a great scandal involving lashings of sex, dollars, etc:
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/ne...sion/
article.do
Someone recently posted information here to the effect that Ariel Sharon's legs had become gangrenous and had been amputated, but were being preserved, frozen, perhaps, so that they could be buried with him, in accordance with Jewish law, once the genocidal old vegetable finally stopped breathing. Wonderful story, but I have been unable to find confirmation. Would whoever it was kindly indicate the source?
I remember reading that somewhere, but can't remember where. It seems to me that it was a religious-jewish site, and the story was quite matter of fact, that the body has to be eventually buried as a complete set.
Rowan, I just read a button saying that British writer Sebastian Horsley has been denied entry into the US on grounds of "moral turpitude". More sex and flash?
There may be funner entries in Wikipedia than Horsley's
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Seb...bastian_Horsley
If there is please let me know.
righteo | 03.24.08 - 4:49 am | #
April Glaspie was acting on instructions when she encouraged Saddam to invade Iraq.
In celebration of the 4.000th US soldier, and the 1,2 million Iraqi civilians sent to their deaths by a cabal of criminals in Washington, DC, here is an excellent, blow-by-blow documentary of the lies and deception that made this crime possible.
http://www.leadingtowar.com/index.php
You can watch the excellent compilation of the the liars and their damned lies in high quality video. Just pick your language:
http://www.leadingtowar.com/
watc...atch_online.php
This site and documentary were privately paid by Jürgen Todenhöfer, German conservative heavy-weight, former CDU Bundestag member and speaker, and currently vice-chair of the board of the Burda media group, one of the biggest European media conglomerates. This is no light-weight, and may this documentary be a portentous sign of change in the German establishment.
May all these unnecessary deaths and suffering lay heavily in the consciousness of all Americans who, through their innaction, escapism and gullibility, allowed their leaders to commit such monstruous crimes in their names.
April Glaspie was acting on instructions when she encouraged Saddam to invade Iraq.
You are including Kuwait as the 19th province of Iraq?
And yes, she was acting on the instructions of James Baker, Secretary of State in the Bush I Administration. Saddam had asked her for the US position on Iraq's annexing Kuwait, and she replied that the US held no views on the matter. Saddam then smiled on the understanding that the US had given him the green light to go ahead.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.co...CLE5/
april.html
"April Glaspie was acting on instructions when she encouraged Saddam to invade Iraq."
US taxpayer | 03.24.08 - 9:45 am | #
It is fairly obvious that Saddam was suckered into going to Kuwait.
I think the "war for no oil" idea combined with Israeli nuttiness makes the most sense in explaining Iraq.
It also explains the Iranian fixation.
Afghanistan may not have any oil at present but what do the seismic surveys suggest?
And besides, there were big plans to pipe gas through Afghanistan to India, including the enron power station.
Maybe it suited some to kill the deal.
How do we explain the US getting itself into such a foreseeable mess.
US foreign policy is a mysterious business, and taken as a whole, seems to have done little to advance the security of the average US citizen.
Most of them seem to have become hypersensitive to enemies that, themselves, approach the ethereal dimension.
One possibility is that it has been done deliberately.
Don't ask me how or why, but there seems to be some attempt by some of those in power to destroy the prestige and credibility of US.
They are well entrenched and very influential and have ample media backing.
The whole Katrina deal adds to this impression, it is almost like they think the place is not worth fixing.
Maybe it does need to be abandoned, but even so there seems to be no sense of direction, more a holding action.
When you look at how their economy has been handled, you get the same impression.
I get the feeling that this all started around the time of the Entebbe incident.
This is when "security" arrived on the scene.
Or is it all due to the US honestly misreading the situation.
It seems inevitable now that Iraq will be divided in to three parts.
This would be to Israels advantage, I guess, perhaps Turkey has eyes on the North and SA is interested in Sunni areas and Iran the rest (the last two are long shots).
The efforts of some in Israel to incite US to attack Iran seem to be falling on stony ground, at least since Vald says he is taking Iran's side.
You see Israel losing credibility, and becoming more entrenched in their fantasy.
Consider the creepy weird scenes of Angela Merkel in Israel, lending support to the Iran boogey man story, she knows Vlad says no.
How could this possibly be in Germany's interest?
Lots of things don't add up.
I think it's all just good old fashioned geopolitics, more or less as Alexander Dugin claimed.
Nothing wrong with the U.S. that a good exorcism can't fix
RB - "It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?"” Winnie the Pooh
WTP | 03.24.08 - 11:56 am | #
LOL!
Easy words?
Nitzan and Bichler are crap. US influence in the world, corporate and gummint, has melted with the rise in the oil price.
If they claimed anything at all regarding "US influence", they didn't do it in any of their published work, which you obviously haven't read.
Erratum: Jürgen Todenhöfer did not finance "Leading to War".
the dude who shopped spitzer:
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/...ory/
465701.html
Why would I bother, when you tell me they claim the rise in the oil price is a plot for the benefit of corporate America? Or is that statement of yours now inoperative?
well, the convoluted but not totally discredited logic says that the astronomically steep cost of transporting stuff cannot be offset by cheap labor, which would supposedly bury Chinese economy.
The fly in that ointment is that USians are too fat, dumb and demoralized to rebuild their manufacturing base, their basic education doesn't even teach them how to pull bananas off branches, etc.
Maybe their bosom buddies, the Jews, will come to help, right?
Instead of waving fistfuls of useless dollars, poor Chinese will have to settle down to lives of leisure, enjoying their electronics and fashion knockoffs.
Bottom line: Nitzan and Bichler had better come up with another trump card.
Yes, China has been drowning all the way to the bank, for six years now.
Clearly those two are idiots, but even more dishonest than they are idiotic.
'declining US influence', wot's that? As long as the Japs, Chins, Brits, and Wahabbis of the Saudi persuasion continue to buy US Treasury Notes then the benefits of a depreciating US dollar to the US Debt far outweighs the tangential harm to the U.S. economy of an increase in the price of oil.
And what's the currency of exchange for um, the Drug Trade? From the bazaars of Afghanistan to the Columbian cartel, they know well enough to ask for payment in dollars, not Euros.
So maybe the U.S. won't invade Iran. But what they ARE doing is the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of humanity since colonial times; from the American middle class to the financial class, and once they privatise social security they'll be headed Europe's way.
Europe's the next prize, and the Middle East; just a distraction.
There's not a word in that which makes sense.
nitzan and bitchler never claimed that expensive oil would neutralise China's competitive advantage either : some commenter in the washington post claimed that, and I was so struck by the fact that anyone could see anything positive in expensive oil at all that I forwarded it to Nitzan, who basically said that looking at today's globalised capitalism in terms of national blocs is no longer remotely realistic, so the question of the proportional effect of such factors on production costs is irrelevant.
Clearly what you think you recall of my previous mention of this is is upside down, inside out, ass about face, and unrelated to what I had said.
also, neither they nor I said that "the rise in the oil price is a plot for the benefit of corporate America". what they said and I repeated is that there is a SECTOR within US capital which gains in terms of DIFFERENTIAL - NOT ABSOLUTE - profit vis-a-vis other sectors.
Harmony Report Aids Perverse Lies of Clear Channel Talk Host War-Whore,Mike McConnell,
The "in denial" aspect of corporate imperialists in the broadcast media about the failed and unwinnable Iraq War is often overshadowed by elements of their hypocrisy and perversity wrapped into one. No better example exists than the five years worth of war-whoring commentary by WLW flagship, national "Weekend" talk host Mike McConnell,as exemplified eg. by today's broadcast.
McConnell, who uses the Wall Street Journal's take on the war and economics more faithfully than the average Christian uses the Bible, was all a-twitter over the "Harmony Report," and the failure of the GOP to aggressive push its arguments to defend the already lost Iraq War.
Saddam Hussein, you see, had ongoing ties to "terrorists" in the Mideast and the war was justified because he would have eventually used his ties to attack America ---while attaining nuclear weapons. Forget that just prior to the WTC attack Powell and Rice were quoted as saying Saddam was ineffectual and contained in a box.
Pre-emption, although in violation of international law, is seemingly as holy as Christ's Re-demption, to such as McConnell- the more so as applied to what might happen, years later. You wonder why America is hated worldwide with common attitudes like this?
Further, Saddam "bluffed' having WMDs so well, Bush and Co should be forgiven for believing he had them. Dispensing with the second lie first,uttered by McConnell scores of times since 2003, Hans Blix and Scott Ritter both on-scene inspectors, have proclaimed quite the opposite,which McConnell well knows and purposely suppresses.
Blix said by the time of his last visit he was all but convinced Saddam's worst crime was sloppy record-keeping, and equally convinced Bush had already decided to go to war regardless of the evidence. Smooth "bluffing" indeed!
Hussein himself told Dan Rather months before the war the Bush regieme was fully aware he had no remaining WMDS and Ritter has born this out by the testimony of defector Kamel. In fact Ritter bore it out in a pre-war interview with McConnell who derided Ritter for saying the war was going to be lengthy, probably unwinnable and that no WMDs were going to be found. No apologies to Ritter from lying Mike,who insinuated Ritter was divisively fearmongering at the time, have been forthcoming, although McConnell assured Ritter he would issue them if Ritter was proven right.
Iran, which now has a pro-Iranian Iraqi government in tow, and intelligence agents permeating Iraq thanks to Bush's criminal blunder, was also fooled by the "bluffs" according to war whore McConnell. No Mike, Saddam didn't "bluff" nearly as well as you and Bush and Wolfowitz and Perle and Cheney utter and uttered bullcrap. And people who continue to lie in your vein should be made to enjoy the triumph of Iranian policy in Iraq, for the very unbluffed Iran's l
leaders are much smarter than the criminals for whom you lie in spite of defeat having stared you in the face since 2004.
Now, as to the ties of Saddam with Mideast "terrorists", there are two main problems: one, since Saddam was "our ally" for decades
until he broke ties by invading Kuwait, we were complicit in any ties to "terrorists" he might have had during this period. To a non-interventionist like Ron Paul and Pat Buchanan on the Traditional as opposed to Israeli-owned, Big Oil owned "Right," this is no problem, as we were advocating hands-off the Middle East during this period. For imperialists who believe America always does good, except when it doesn't do it forcefully enough, our Likud Party, Israel-friendly policy which has subsidized the dispossession of a million Palestinians, many in refugee camps since 1948,is sacrosanct and any Arab or Moslem who isn't sufficiently submissive, is a "terrorist."
Thus if Saddam gave Hamas (which Russia and China and most of Europe do not classify as 'terrorist') a fifth of the assistance Iran did in the same period (that's the other "axis-of-evil" member, the now-strengthened and very influential in wide swaths of Iraq, McConnell)he was aiding "terrorists." If Saddam
gave Palestinian families whose homes were bulldozed by Israelis in collective punishment 25,000$ to build another house, he was "aiding terrorists." If Anwar Sadat against the wishes of 95% of his subjects, signs a peace treaty with Israel at our bribery and behest and pays for it, it was a "terrorist" who made him pay.
The McConnell/Limbaugh/Levin/
O'Reilley/Hannity corporate media
axis of war whores will help lead,
cheer-lead if you will, America to absolute suicide in the Middle East if statesmen do not arise
to out their continuing sanctioin and rationalization of a failed interventionist policy.
4,000 lies mean nothing to them-chickenhawks all. The 51 year old McConnell has often admitted he would not have served in Vietnam
if he could have escaped it. Now he has accrued a four year record of calling Americans "sissies" for turning against an unwinnable war
with "only" 4000 lost lives, and
tens of thousands of lost limbs and worse.
Complimenting the hypocrisy of an erstwhile draft-dodging chickenhawk are the lies of one, lies which the spirit thereof will inexorably lead to the implementation of a society-polarizing new draft to carry out the preferences of the
hawkish wing of the American ruling elite. We suspect the Mike McConnells of the broadcast elite will be aghast at the Vietnam-like domestic blowback resulting if they are still cheer-leading and lying at the time the cards go out.
Just maybe, Mike, the GOP elite doesn't wax eloquent about the Harmony Report, because it realizes these implications as related to continued American
intervention in the Mideast. Just maybe
Hm, I thunk that N+B's conjecture was that expensive oil strengthens US hegemony ... now it is localized to inter sector rivalry?
So what did US do, attack Iraq to provide competitive advantage to say, mattress manufacturers over beet farmers?
As for Nitzan saying that looking at today's globalised capitalism in terms of national blocs is no longer remotely realistic, it sounds like Tom Friedman's 'flat world' - spot NWO under the rug.
All these guys, including Chomsky, look to me like those gargoyles hanging off Icke's lizard, droning on about Big Oil, row, row, row your boat, while the world slumbers.
With all due respect, they want us barking up the wrong tree.
I just noticed that they have a selective ignore function on the comments threads at 'the nation' magazine, such that if you are trying to argue with person [z] about what ari berman thinks, and person [s] keeps interrupting, you can erase him and all his comments until further notice and keep the ignore on a cookie. This will work until some other person [v] says "why the hell don't you answer [s]s question?
In case smekhovo's having a problem with my, not Rowan's, post, that's too bad.
But the only sophisticated form of the oil argument is the Bichler and Nitzan form, which shows that EXPENSIVE OIL is a corporate US policy goal.
Rowan Berkeley | Homepage | 03.19.08 - 6:42 am
What do you think? Would a reasonable person interpret that as claiming the rise in the oil price was a plot for the benefit of corporate America, or not?
I don't know how "a reasonable person" would interpret it, but what "a corporate policy goal" implies is, one among others.
You need to decide whether the term "SECTOR" means anything or not. To us it does, though, as I said, we have a problem similar to that of james Petras in labelling these things. "petrodollar-weapondollar coalition" is the current bichler and nitzan term for the "SECTOR" concerned.
Well, if expensive oil is a corporate US policy goal only in the same sense that cheap oil is a corporate US policy goal, I don't see the point of the observation.
"petrodollar-weapondollar" ... a fancy name for a gas pump holdup gone global, I guess.
If so, we're right back to Big Oil Crucified Jesus theory of the world.
each "sector" has its OWN BANKS - this is important historically, as you will see if for instance you look at Quigley's account of the banking cartels in France between the two World Wars, and their respective industrial clienteles.
but Rowan, if we accept that
a) Jews own the banks, and
b) Jews dictate US foreign policy,
then it is clearly a self referencing argument unless it somehow represents an internecine fight among top level Jews.
That would be different from left-right tv squawking heads putting on a hasbara for goys' entertainment, while raising Manischewitz toasts when cameras are turned off.
Or maybe not at all different, just performing at a higher level, as in Capitalism meets Bolshevism in a steel cage match.
Thus the blame for ensuing fiasco devolves to their respective industrial clienteles, while the criminals go away laughing, sort of like Michael Vick in the dogfighting business.
Are Nitzan + Bichler that bright?
If "we accept that Jews dictate US foreign policy", then we must already have all the data on the industrial, financial, and political cartels of the USA at our fingertips, so to speak. If this is the case, then we certainly don't need academics of any description, all we need now is magic wands.
maybe Tamils dictate US foreign policy, so what if none have ever served in US government above post office level?
Who you gonna trust, your own lying eyes?
By way of exclamation mark, let me refer you to this post by MFA in a previous thread:
At the United Jewish Communities conference in Washington, Hillary Clinton rep former White House official Ann Lewis said, (...)
"The role of the president of the United States is to support the decisions that are made by the people of Israel. It is not up to us to pick and choose from among the political parties."
Maybe the poor dears are just deluding themselves ...
I'm not convinced that those two clowns are the proper people to conduct such research, or that calls for it are anything more than a way to avoid facing facts.
I bet you are already regretting having said the following:
(...) we must already have all the data on the industrial, financial, and political cartels of the USA at our fingertips.
I leave it to you to compose a suitable rebuttal.
what makes you think it matters who wins israeli elections?
we could start by demanding access to Cheney Energy Task Force documentation, without which absolutely no conclusion can be drawn, no?
And if we can't get it, let's all squat down to our interrupted penny pitching game.
it absolutely doesn't and jews are saying it shouldn't matter who wins the US ones either, because they - the jews are still and always calling the shots.
So what's the big picture? It doesn't matter; the elections, banks, sectors, left-right, ideologies, it's all part of the single shell game.
It always seemed to me that you promulgated this picture as well.
The decision makers are never elected, no matter which buttons we push.
There is no randomness in finance or politics either.
come to think of it, right now, ehud barak is the big hawk in the israeli govt., and he is (supposedly) labour. that explains why obama would favour him, in fact, you could call this the hawkish wing of left liberalism.
The segment that pushed for the first Iraq war was the israel crowd. remember Pat Puchanan's "amen corner".
as i see it, the only pertinent litmus test is whether a political nominee blocks or advances interests of Zion.
The Zion Party has approximately 531 members and Gentile party has how many, maybe 4? Truly representative of people's will.
Everything else is a burlesque, hey lookit over there, a bunch of whores!
No, transvestites ...
talking about the US Congress, the Walmart of whorehouses.
Considering Hitler had only a few years to perfect 'modern' and 'technology based' Occupation and Mass Control - this task was subsequently handed over to the Zionist fascists (of which Mike 'Lead-in' is a descendent - how a Jew can say he's a fascist in the Mussolini - Luigi Russolo vein is beyond me? They all make plenty of noise however) of which the Palestine 'naqba', various other atrocities, forty plus years of checkpoints and slave labor are all the direct result. Occupations are then perfected, marketed and 'franchised.'(ala media fabricated al-Qaeda in Iraq or Taliban in Marin County). Enter venture capitalists Cheney and Rumsfeld . 'Uzi Landau' said is best: Israel is an extension of the fourth Reich.
and Palestine is the epicenter (pee-tree dish)of the New World Order. And the Jews continue peeing on the Lebanese tree as well.
But what they ARE doing is the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of humanity since colonial times; from the American middle class to the financial class, and once they privatise social security they'll be headed Europe's way.
You mean there will be U.S. citizens (Yank white men?) in the EU soon stealing Kraut's jobs? Perhaps moving to Griechenland and becoming Costa's man-servant (day labour man) is not such a bad idea - which would mean cleaning toilets at Costa's whore house (Costa's Griechenland of Wunderkinder) for America princesses in the Greek port city of Piraeus.
anlogo bung blago bung blago bung bosso fatakaü üü ü schampa wulla wussa olobo.
That's plagiarism.
Juan Cole is among the least dumb mainstream Orientalists, which leaves him pretty hopeless, but still capable of saying things that do not endanger his tenure.
hello again, kei and yuri!
"Nitzan, who basically said that looking at today's globalised capitalism in terms of national blocs is no longer remotely realistic, so the question of the proportional effect of such factors on production costs is irrelevant"
If this is true, it points out Nitzan's failure to realize that something can be global in nature..(the expanding world economy)..as well as national..(groups of dominat capital using nation states to compete for bigger pieces of same world economy)...in this case
energy production and distribution...
Once again a dialectical analysis trumps a one sided,mechanical method.
Ken, This is for you. Only YOU are interested in the arcane goings-on of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Scroll down to "Struggle to Succeed Russian Orthodox Patriarch Heats Up"
http://windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/
Actually, it is an interesting window into how power devolves in the Kremlin.
All is not well in the Light Onto the Nations: Izzy police have arrested an izzy soldier after suspecting he handed information to the Hibzullah. Drugs involved.
http://imemc.org/article/53713
Is the scent of money trumping the ideology of chosenness?
traducteur, kassandra - re: sharon's amputated stumps, it was about a month ago somewhere on xym.'s haloscan. Wonder if the surgeons used anaesthetic when using the buzzsaw? Stories come out that people in coma can be aware.
from whatreallyhappened.com:
Man Declared Dead Feels 'Pretty Good'
Four months after he was declared brain dead and doctors were about to remove his organs for transplant, Zach Dunlap says he feels "pretty good."
http://www.comcast.net/news/arti...03/24/Not.Dead/
Somnambulist | 03.24.08 - 7:55 pm | #
You should keep you shoes on, your feet of clay and iron are showing.
It is a bit of a giveaway.
Why do you keep changing your name?
Are you trying to trick us or something?
I suppose it would be too much to expect people to read e.g. Nitzan and bichler instead of concentrating on whatever I may have tried to say about them. I certainly won't bother in future.
tell you what, meankin - why don't you stick to WorldNetDaily?
I recommend safety boots, to protect against rocks etc.
"...Nitzan and bichler instead of concentrating on whatever I may have ..tried to say about them. I certainly won't bother in future."
Rowan Berkeley | Homepage | 03.25.08 - 8:23 am | #
I am reading some of it now.
Thanks for pointing it out.
"...tell you what, meankin why don't you stick to WorldNetDaily?"
Rowan Berkeley | Homepage | 03.25.08 - 8:24 am | #
What?
The end of capitalism as we know it?
By Phillip Blond
Sunday, 23 March 2008
"What we are seeing is nothing less than the unravelling of neo-liberalism"
http://www.independent.co.uk/new...-it-
799494.html
WorldNetDaily are the great exponents of the Yellow Peril.
I cannot believe Buchanan said this:
America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.
From that same link,
"free markets – unless subject to civil regulation, asset distribution and persistent intervention – always tend to monopoly.
Similarly, there is nothing inherently efficient about free markets – they do not of themselves promote sound investment or wise management.
Rather, when markets are conceived wholly in terms of price and return, and when asset wealth and the leverage that this provides becomes as concentrated as it was in the 19th century (which is a scenario we are approaching), then markets encourage nothing other than gambling masking itself as sound investment."
"Free" markets, in my experience, are never really free.
There are many ways to give hidden subsidies or preferential treatment and pricing to a subset of the competitors.
Market domination by big operators, buyers or sellers very rarely reverses without major upheaval.
It is interesting to note that the freest market, the securities market, is now just the opposite, it is frozen.
No I'm not a gold bug.
Gold does not do anything much.
Money tied up in gold cannot produce anything.
I have nothing against fiat money, but it has its problems as John Law and the French found out.
Wealth concentration is the downfall of empires and our system guarantees it, it seems.
I think that the root of our economic problems is our failure to properly harness the, what I call, Gods of modernism, productivity, efficiency, technlogy etc.
We are overawed by their power, and they give us much, but they demand our lives.
Man and his world can be sacrificed to these new miracles.
The efforts that we make to justify ourselves in the 'nihilistic void' are a failure.
Existentialism, despite heroic efforts by those who witnessed it's birth, to find meaning for man as man, not as an asset or resource, have produced a lost generation.
'Christian' existentialism, psychoanalysis etc, are all admirable attempts to provide insight in the cultural dead end of existentialism and we can learn much from them.
But the lessons of "A tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing" have come at great cost to humanity.
I would like to see us develop a more balanced relationship with these new Gods, and resurrect the 'One We Had Before'.
We must recognize our brothers and sisters for their intrinsic worth.
I know that sounds far fetched, but that's what I try to do.
Man does not live by bread alone.
Love also keeps us alive.
Existentialism is like a straitjacket, I prefer to be who I want to be, and believe what I want believe.
That is what I choose.
@ Rowan,
"...thank God he is an American."
That is a bit pompous.
He could just say "thank God...".
Mind you, I do think we all have a problem with the culture of entitlement, which I presume is what he is banging on about.
No one has a monopoly on that sort of thing.
I try to be grateful for what I have rather than fall into the mimetic pit of covetousness.
you aren't a USAian, are you, moonkoon? (nor am I, but I can tell from here that telling Wright he "ought to go down on his knees" is basically a threat.
This man also chooses his own way.
"I am building my mind all by myself
And growing worthier for the tasks ahead
Who knows when shall I be able to declare with all my heart:
I have reached my Realisation,"
Rabindranath Tagore
Wittgenstein used to read Rabindranath's
poetry.
He read it in a very defiant way.
you aren't a USAian, are you, moonkoon? (nor am I, but I can tell from here that telling Wright he "ought to go down on his knees" is basically a threat.
Rowan Berkeley | Homepage | 03.25.08 - 10:12 am | #
I'm a round eye.
I was thinking more of Buchanan saying "thank God...", himself.
You know, for the good fortune he has to criticize Wright.
moonkoon | 03.25.08 - 8:47 am
Thanks for the link.
There's a much simpler explanation than Blond's - totalitarianism. Capitalism was doomed when the USSR collapsed and for exactly the same reason - corrupt, short-sighted and abusive self-interest by the people at the top.
No I'm not from US, but I know a few from there.
Sniping about who should be grateful is an interesting phenomenon.
It usually appears when someone uses his freedom to speak and criticizes something or someone.
Wright demonstrates his appreciation of that freedom by exercising it.
Buchanan's advice is redundant.
Goodnight.
Rowan Berkeley | Homepage | 03.25.08 - 8:58 am
http://www.davidduke.com/
general...bsite_3599.html
Maybe if Obama had voted with Kucinich to withhold funding for the Iraq War and had attributed it at least in part to Zionist neocons, you could accuse both Duke and Buchanan of being impolitic.
This observation from Blond hits a very pertinent nail squarely on the head:
"Governments should bail out not banks and speculators but the customers who now have every reason to fear for the future."
It makes so much sense on every level that we can be absolutely certain that it won't happen. The rich don't like to see financial pain quarantined within their own domain - they like to see the little folk suffer more than themselves. Then they can still pick up bargains even if their own fortunes are substantially diminished in the shakeout...
It should strike everyone as highly questionable when govts bail out the tax avoiders and minimisers instead of the tax (and profit) payers.
I don't believe it's the intent of Buchanan's words but rather the God in them which evokes complaints.
Kassie,
Arcane? Your evanescent pal Dalton insisted that Russian Orthodox politics were so important, it was crucial that the Church issue a formal apology to Ukrainians so that it might shed its worldwide disrepute
for shared atrocities.
Thankfully, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church doesn't know what Dalton is talking about.
Somnambulist is 100% 'rara avis' - on the bollock side of that spectrum however. Hasn't been able to sit through a single episode of 'Yes, Prime Minister' without passing out. Thi - I'm sorry to report - in about half dozen attempts.
Outside View: The end of capitalism as we know it? By Phillip Blond
great article moonkoon, explains what's been going on.
there is nothing inherently efficient about free markets – they do not of themselves promote sound investment or wise management.
those merchant souls, from Thatcher to Blair, have been preaching "market liberalism" "neo liberalism" as sound recipes, but nothing was more untrue. It was open doors for thieves: privatization of even railways, water-suppliers, or factories that have been paid for by society or workers and were taken to the bourse, to be ripped apart by profiteers and ruined by speculators, and then finally tax payer shall pay for the damage again?
Unbelievable circumstances, like around year 2000, the finance minister Lafontaine of Schroeder, Germany, demanded that speculation internationally had to be limited. What followed was a great cry of outrage from London's to Wallstreet's papers, and probably threats, because he jumped into his car and drove home at night, left office without explanation (he had been head of the social democrat party).
2003 the value of all derivative trading was $85 trillion, while the size of the world economy was only $49 trillion...
now [speculation:values] maybe 3:1..
global growth has not aided the poor. In the 1980s, for every $100 of world growth, the poorest 20 per cent received $2.20; by 2001, they received only 60 cents. Clearly neo-liberal growth disproportionately benefits the rich and further impoverishes the poor.
..the wealthiest 1 per cent of the population, on current government figures, now control more than a third of all the marketable wealth – and this ignores the vast sums held in offshore tax havens.
Real wage increases in the top 13 countries of the .. (OECD) have been below the rate of inflation since about 1970 !!!...
Everywhere in the West it seems to be like this. Maybe they have transferred the extorted sums to China? Like the factories? And now these thieves and their bankers are bankrupt and the taxpayers are asked to help them out?
the last words from Everywhere in the West on are not quoted, but my addition.
In his doctor-thesis The Booty-value of the State Thor von Waldstein explores the understanding of pluralism by the political philosopher Carl Schmidt (compromised with his role in the 3.Reich). He is saying, that political pluralism is abolishing the difference between state and society. Thereby a part of the sovereignty of the state goes to non-state groups. ["privatization"].
The so originated civil society attributes to the decay of the state, that then cannot meet anymore its obligation, to defend the freedom of the individual.
So the much praised pluralism leads to loss of freedom of the individual.
i.e. it is also by the oil prices, that tax payers have to pay for the privatized Iraq war and those criminal "investors"- profiteers.
Curious that people supposedly opposed to the neoconservatives should share with them a love for carl schmidt. or not curious, if you assume that the only REASON they are against the neoconservatives is that they want to put themselves in the place of the neoconservatives, as totalitarian imperialist tyrants, don't you fritz.
This graph gives some insight into the size of the asset value bubble that has been allowed to develop.
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to work out what might happen next.
What on earth were they thinking?
http://
www.investingintelligentl...home_values.png
Do the judaeocons really study Carl Schmitt? I know that Leo Strauss had met him, but how much of the rest is true?
Carl Schmidt was not an imperialist, I have to guess, not having read much, later he was for a catholic authoritarian state. The Neocons claimed Leo Strauss, who had studied at Schmidt, but took a very different way - something like "power not restricted by moral"
One version of events:
---
Cold War Interview with Sergio Beria
Sergo Beria is the son of Lavrenty Beria, chief of the notorious NKVD, the Soviet secret police. Growing up he was privy to many high-level conversations his father had with Stalin, Molotov, and countless other important Soviet figures. As a young man he worked as a spy for Stalin at the Tehran and Yalta conferences. The "Cold War" production team spoke with Beria in October 1996. The following are translated excerpts from his interview.
On why Stalin signed a neutrality pact with Nazi Germany at the start of World War II:
Stalin often visited us at home, and he said, "We have to win time, if only two years. Only with this amount of time would the Soviet Union be ready ... to defend itself against Germany." I heard conversations like this many times with Molotov and my father. ...
That the Western countries might let us down in some measure — this was Molotov's opinion. He believed there might be a kind of Western alliance with Germany, whereby Germany could invade us and the Western countries wouldn't help directly, but would find all kinds of ways to urge Germany on.
On Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union:
It wasn't unexpected, because in the year before the war began, we got the documents from Germany about the Barbarossa plan, the main directions of the invasion, what the troops would look like, how many divisions would take part in this war. ...
http://www.iraq-war.ru/article/159880
The issue of how the people relate to the state and vice versa is a subject that engaged the minds of Schmitt, Strauss and others.
I think we need to distinguish between the discussion of, and the implementation of, those ideas.
Schmitt suggested that, to retain relevance, the state needs an existential enemy.
The state can then present itself as the powerful protector of the people.
It can bypass the logjam of democracy and implement a more "guided" policy.
It can mobilize its resources to combat the existential threat.
Schmitt's ideas seem to be a logical derivation of the existential outlook.
"The enemy creates the conditions for the exercise of decisive state
power, free from the restraints imposed by law and the deadlocks of
parliamentary politics."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car...ki/
Carl_Schmitt
There appear to be uncanny parallels between the above and neoconsevative backed action.
You don't really need an intermediary to make the link.
Lately the existential threat has taken on a more theological tinge.
The ideal existential threat, communism, failed to live up to it's early promise and needed to be replaced.
It was introduced to the world at Entebbe.
Leo Strauss is said to provide the link between Schmitt and the neoconsevatives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Strauss
Strauss also accepted the existential view and divided nihilism into brutal and gentle varieties.
He surmised that the brutal side was manifested by communism and national socialism and the gentle option was embodied in western democracy where it transmuted into hedonism and decline.
My guess is he and Schmitt arrived at similar conclusions, i.e. that we need something to maintain our magnitude, direction and strength.
Hence the existential threat.
Such is the effort that we have gone to in order to find relevance in our new modern fantasy.
All three notions have fatal flaws.
This is why I look to put the focus back on the sacred nature of mankind.
Man is not the child of a lesser god.
Carl Schmidt was professor of international law and justice, which probably Strauss later despised - but the point was only, that socalled "market neo-liberalism", that was preached like a religion in the last years, has led to gigantic speculation and robbery. Therefore markets at least should be restricted, even by an authoriarian state, if nothing helps.
I don't agree with Lafontaine, who later made pilgrimages to Rosa Luxemburg, but about this financial speculation he was right, also against these wars.
"...He believed there might be a kind of Western alliance with Germany..."
righteo | 03.26.08 - 8:33 am | #
A friend who was on the spot told me that some German military units were kept in battle ready condition by the Allies for some months after the German surrender.
Yes, I remember from Feldmarschall v.Bock's memoirs that his cleaning lady knew the exact date of Unternehmen Barbarossa months in advance!
U.S. Army General Patton was keen on the idea of re-arming Germany and chasing the Reds back to behind the Urals. His early demise was hastened by a motor-lorry.
this schmidtian misuse of the term 'existential' is now omnipresent in israeli rhetoric.
Blowback, or How Steven Walt opposed the Iraq War before it began:
---
Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday March 25, 2008 07:14 EDT
The ongoing exclusion of war opponents from the Iraq debate
(...)
UPDATE II: There's an ongoing myth, peddled by the pro-war establishment, that very few people with "serious" foreign policy credentials unequivocally opposed the invasion of Iraq. That just isn't true. Here, for instance, is an anti-war ad signed (and paid for) by 33 scholars of international security affairs -- from among the nation's most prestigious academic institutions -- which they published in The New York Times in September, 2002, presciently setting forth the case against the invasion.
Review the names of the anti-war signatories and one finds that they are virtually never heard from in the establishment press, even now. As one of the prime movers of that ad, signatory Stephen Walt of the Harvard School of Government (who, as indicated, made pre-invasion, anti-war arguments with pinpoint accuracy in numerous other venues as well), wrote to me via email today:
(...)
http://www.salon.com/opinion/gre...ents/
index.html
"...chasing the Reds back to behind the Urals."
righteo | 03.26.08 - 9:21 am | #
I understand that the Urals were to be the limit of Adolf's expansion plans.
Great minds think alike I guess.
I think the plan was to move quickly with relatively little damage while negotiating hard.
The Reich had support in the pre-war world, c.f. Australia's Robert Menzies and his mentoring by Ford.
He probably thought that the alliance would back him over the less palatable Russian option.
Maybe it is like Churchill said, his common currency plan was his undoing.
"Germany's unforgivable crime before the second world war," Winston Churchill said," was her attempt to extricate her economic power from the world's trading system and to create her own exchange mechanism which would deny world finance its opportunity to profit."
(Churchill to Lord Robert Boothby)
Quoted in the Foreword, 2nd Ed. Sydney Rogerson, Propaganda in the Next War 2001, orig. 193
"
Rowan,
The differential accumulation ideas of Nitzan and Bichler are spot on in my view.
It is a good description of the mechanics of wealth concentration.
How do we climb back down that tree without inconveniencing ourselves.
I meant Bock's diaries, of course.
Quoted in the Foreword, 2nd Ed. Sydney Rogerson, Propaganda in the Next War 2001, orig. 1938 "
The Reich had support in the pre-war world, c.f. Australia's Robert Menzies and his mentoring by Ford.
You know, I find that very credible. Mein Kampf had sales in the Antipodes among dispairing young people of the Great Depression days. Menzies was known as 'Pig Iron Bob' for trading with Imperial Japan during times when Roosevelt was angling for war in the Pacific. I've often wondered how similar many of the social systems put in place in Australia were quite possibly knock-offs from National Socialism. Then there were the Douglas Credit enthusiasts in New Zealand who also sound like N.S. bankers.
Thanks for the pointer. I'll look for more.
Frontline has been running a series on the Iraq War. In part I (the part I have seen), they show how the Bush White House was taken over by a cabal operating out of Pentagon, and how the intelligence community (CIA, mostly) was subverted to give the CIC info. which was cut and pasted to give a casus belli against Saddam where none existed. It is a story of infighting, with the neocons on the Pentagon side (Israeli military came and went in huge numbers, with little scrutiny, says one Pentagon insider -- but NOT on the Frontline show). It is a third rail in media to emphasize that.
Nobody would dare to connect Homeland Security terror alerts with domestic anthrax sent in a scare tactic, to tie the tincan of 9/11 to Saddam's tail.
Maybe now there are dual citizens in positions of power, in new posts created by 9/11, but it wasn't true at first. And Rumsfeld wanted there to be a way to tie Saddam to 9/11.
What was 9/11? Who was it originally going to be blamed on, before the White House vigorously connected it with Saddam?
Weren't there some who wanted it to be attributed to Palestinians and Hamas? I mean that never flew.
Was this an interception of some casus belli against someone else?
well, moonkoon, I hope you downloaded their book in its pdf form.
of course, it de-focuses the whole jewish issue, and all other national issues, leaving is with completely amorphous and abstract patterns of financial force that do NOT obey ANYBODY's apocalyptic fantasies.
but you still need to bear in mind that - possibly for convenience - nitzan and bitchler reject the marxian law of the falling rate of profit, whereas I consider it both self-evident and intuitively explanatory of why capital concentrates in the way that it does, physically.
no 9/11 was against generic moslems, whoever they were specifically du jour. Palestinians, Saudis, Iraqis, Egyptians, Malaysians, Algerians, etc. oh yes, Afghans too. yankees are too dumb to make any distinctions.
Bit like commies in the fifties & sixties, they were everywhere even under the beds.
put it into the continuum of th efact that CIA started recruiting Egyptian Muslim Brothers in 1981 - the year they killed Sadat - then follow that through the 1993 trade towers bomb.
moonkoon, about the global effect of the falling rate of profit, take a look at this pithy little interview with Immanuel Wallerstein, who pretty much created the term 'capitalist world system':
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/
...ubre260308.html
Sergo Beria was telling the Soviet line of propaganda. He is ignoring the archives in Moscow opened in 1990. (V.Suvorov, W.Maser,B.Musial a.o.) Neither was Germany prepared for a conquest of Russia, nor was Stalin's military draw up in 1941 defensive. He had masses of parachutists and attack weapons, and that was why they were overrun so fast.
After the capitulation of the Wehrmacht 1945, it was mainly Churchill's idea and preparation to use a rest of German units against the Soviets again.
What a Satan: first bombing German cities to rubble and killing hundreds of thousands of civilians (up to a million) and then starting war again. (book by Arthur Smith, American historian, 1977, "Churchill's German army").
This article, moonkoon has posted above, explains all that is going on in economy (speculation, robber economy) good enough. Not necessary to waste time on useless economic theories.
http://www.independent.co.uk/new...-it-
799494.html
Outside View: The end of capitalism as we know it? by Philip Blond.
Churchill did have the grace to say "Looks like we killed the wrong pig", which was brutally blunt, if not bluntly brutal.
But he also said, "History shall be kind to me, for I shall write it". The old sod has been dining out in the halls of history ever since.
doubtless anything beyond the level of the breviary is useless to YOU, fritz.
josie hadas was the main perp behind wtc #1 bombs (Israeli Jewess in the Mosad which Chertoff at that time had deported right after the success of the bombings)..her house was tested positive for explosives whereas none of the other arab men knew how to build them...CIA and Ikhwan are just distractions (smoke and mirrors)..and Emad Ali the Egyptian agent is a liar as confirmed by many sources...so Ikhwan weren't really involved in the bombings...although dumbass sheep in US believe that they were...even the blind Sheikh Rahman accused the Zionists for tampering with evidence and framing him.
http://www.newrightausnz.com/?page_id=87
Schmitt is in generally good company here.
Fred Farrel asserted Beria killed Stalin.
Rowan, you set a cracking pace in the reading department, forgive me if I lag somewhat, (thanks, by the way, for that angel talk link you posted a while ago).
I think Marx also arrived at similar conclusions re wealth concentration and other economic gottchas.
The socialist idea clearly is not dead, even the US is now indulging in a bit of it with it's buying up of bad debt.
The wealth tends to be concentrated when losses are socialised.
The capitalist system, it seems, uses it as a fallback position.
Socialising gains could be seen as one way of reversing or moderating wealth concentration, we see this now with the creation of soverign wealth funds.
See here,
http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/setser
for more discussion on SWFs (for some reason, you don't need to register to access this part of the site).
To my mind this is just state banking in a new dress/suit.
The implementation of marxist economic practices is beset with the same dangers as capitalism, greed corruption and power.
Cultures of impunity develop wherever the power of the state is viewed by the ruling clique as something other than a means of furthering the welfare of the citizens.
They become the gatekeepers of mimetic desires.
No system has a monopoly on this tendency.
I view the state as a necessary evil, one in which we should not overindulge.
This implies that personal responsibility is one way to improve our prospects.
We are dreaming if we think that we can ever develop a "set and forget" system that absolves us from further exertion.
Thanks once again to all for this great conversation.
One thing that we need to review is the various theories of value, e.g. much perceived wealth these days is digital in origin, the cost of which tends to decline.
I am thinking about it.
"Our lives are frittered away by detail...simplify, simplify."
Thoreau
from:
Legality, legitimacy, and Carl Schmitt
Paul Gottfried
....
Though remembered and sometimes ridiculed for citing "exceptional circumstances' as the test of liberal democracy, Schmitt believed that democracy would destroy the state from within, even if there were no sudden catastrophe. Parliamentary and pluralistic democracy was preoccupied with balancing the interests and settling the grievances of contesting parties and strident minorities. The liberal democracies analyzed by Schmitt made themselves contemptible by currying favor. Ironically, they aroused revulsion and fear of despotism in proportion to their efforts to be acceptable to everyone. As Schmitt presciently observed: "A pluralist state run by parties becomes a total state not by its effectiveness but by its weakness. It intervenes in every aspect of life because one expects it to satisfy the rising demands of all claimants.'
The political entity being discussed lacked the cohesion characteristic of established national communities. Moreover, it was incapable of adapting itself to the state system that had existed in Europe since the early modern period. Without a sustained diplomacy and a continuing awareness of political enemies (as opposed to counter-litigants or competing party coalitions), modern democracies ceased to be recognizable as states. In most cases, they could not defend themselves against adversaries foreign or domestic (being unable or unwilling to distinguish friend from foe), or else they turned all international struggles into ideological contests. This second course endangered sovereign states. It represented an attempt at hegemony by people who pursued globalist dreams instead of limited national interests....
Introduction to Schmitt's "The age of neutralizations and depoliticizations"
John E. McCormick
...For Marx and Lukacs, the other moment of the commodity is exchange value, which reflects the general or abstract labor that characterizes industrial society as a whole. This aspect of modern society is responsible for the interchangeability of commodities, the reduction of qualitatively different entities to quantitative equivalents....
While he obviously disagreed with the Marxian claim that modernity is driven by the compulsion to surplus value, the affinity between Marx and Schmitt is useful in demonstrating how Schmitt's account of modernity is free of some of the shortcomings of two of his contemporaries -- Max Weber and Martin Heidegger. While both often characterized modernity in terms of its abstract, "valueless," formal and quantitative aspects in their respective theories of "rationalization" or "framing," Schmitt sides with the tradition of Critical Theory in claiming modernity also produces its own peculiar "concrete" and "qualitative" torres...."
torres = towers (spanish)?
torres = towers (spanish)?
yes
Here is a bit on Tibet,
"The biased CNN newsmedia in the United States conveniently ignored the fact that the minority "Hui Muslims" who aren't "Han Chinese" suffered the most from the violent riots in Tibet, with the entire "Hui Muslim" community in Lhasa Tibet burned, murdered, looted, and destroyed. Why was the total destruction of the Muslim community in Tibet never reported by CNN and the USW newsmedia?
Written by DC on 2008-03-24 16:27:59"
http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/s...#readcomments\"
And, speak of the devil,
"At war with the utopia of modernity."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commen...22/
tibet.china1
Moonkoon, the basis of the law of the falling rate of profit is very simple, but it requires that one adopt the labour theory of value as axiomatic, meaning, the theory that all value in the economic sense is created, literally, by labour power, which however is treated as one production factor among others and only paid its own replacement cost.
The effect of this is that, as capitalists compete, they introduce higher and higher levels of plant, thus reducing the output costs of their product, but also reducing the proportion of new labour power used in making it, and thus ultimately reducing the size of the profit pie for ALL manufacturers, as they all bring their plant up to the new automation level - and this continues until the profit rate collapses and so do the industries.
"etc...modernity is driven by the compulsion to surplus value...etc"
Fritz | 03.27.08 - 12:16 am | #
There is honestly not much to quibble with in all of that.
What they are basically saying is that no state structure can succeed in delivering utopia.
That they, in fact, contain the seeds of their own destruction.
This view is like the existential view.
It is a logical conclusion based on the post Galilean trick.
It is a product of the dismissal of the sacred nature of man.
Modernism always leaves love out of the equation.
But it's like bread, we can't live without it.
We may not be able to live without Productivity, Efficiency, Industry etc. but we certainly can't live without Love.
I think the proof of this need to include Love is demonstrated by the obvious shortcomings of the systems that ignore it.
It is not something that lends itself to be system sustainer.
You can't tax it like you can money.
So we need to question how it fits into the plans of the state.
They never mention it.
This is one of the problems of state run services, we can transfer the money but we can't transfer the Love.
It's not just that it is good for us.
We have also been entrusted with it, it seems.
We can't see, "Love Your Enemy", anywhere else.
In all the stars we can study, we see nothing like it.
No tell tale signs at all.
It's just here, with us.
Well, if They can't see Love anywhere in the system, They sure as hell can see Hate, and don't you ever forget it. little moonkins.
"...don't you ever forget it..."
righteo | 03.27.08 - 7:11 am | #
That's good advice and I have taken it to heart.
The strange thing is that even hatred needs love to have its meaning, so it dare not strike it down.
It is the prisoner of love.
You can see an aboriginal lady lamenting the lack of love in the assistance they get on tonight's Lateline.
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/
"The effect of this is that, as capitalists compete, they introduce higher and higher levels of plant, thus reducing the output costs of their product, but also reducing the proportion of new labour power used in making it, and thus ultimately reducing the size of the profit pie for ALL manufacturers, as they all bring their plant up to the new automation level - and this continues until the profit rate collapses and so do the industries."
Rowan Berkeley | Homepage | 03.27.08 - 3:52 am | #
Exactly.
Henry Ford realized this.
I posted this a while ago on RGE Monitor,
Put money into the hands of consumers, the poorer the better, and not
just enough for subsistence.
We live in a world of many products and services, we can't expect the
system to work if consumer purchasing power is limited to just what
they need for staples.
By some measures there has been no increase in US real wages since 1982.
You can't support new industries, services and technologies on thin
air, especially when productivity dividends are denied the consumer,
e.g. oil.
Moving to a debit based (as opposed to credit) system would be worth
thinking about when we get out of this mess.
We are all born into a world of familial, social, cultural and natural wealth.
We also need to consider that much perceived personal and corporate
wealth is digital and not subject to scarcity.
Prices tend to fall for this sort of thing.
Connectivity is much the same.
These technological "rains of gold" have been around for sometime now
but somehow we always treat them as some sort of passing aberration.
These people seem to have their heads screwed on properly.
http://www.safehaven.com/article...rticle-
9651.htm
moonkoon, the problem of the falling rate of profit is not reducible to a problem of demand deficiency. If you make up the demand by increasing wages at the expense of profits, then you get a flight of investment capital to some other part of the world where wages are lower. When even that is exhausted, capital simply goes on strike, and you get a slump.
in a way, the attempt to reduce the former to the latter is reminiscent of keynes, but i think to be fair to keynes he understood that the profit motive itself would eventually have to be dealt with, which is why he proposed as a distant goal "the euthanasia of the rentier", by which he meant the private investor.
First question from your "The Independent" article, that was clear, was about this speculation (3:1 real values) - to me it seems completely useless even destructive and should be forbidden: they are gambling with peoples situation (speculators believing to be superior?)
Carl Schmitt would probably agree with moonkoon, that economy can't give a social group (state) enough coherence or values worth it.
He is not easy to read and I haven't read any book by him.
---from Ken's link above (Aussie- right - new right) there are articles collected (around the middle of the list):
http://www.foster.20megsfree.com...m/index_en.htm/
But in one article Carl Schmitt foresaw a surplus production of goods and culture as entertainment. His critique was often against the "American market liberalism" that doesn't lead to freedom but is globalized as ersatz-religion (also pluralist democracy).
Especially in Germany he was ignored as "Nazi"- how stupid! as basic thinker he is now rediscovered on the right and left (a bit). Necessary to think about today's problems in an "unconventional" way. Also he wrote about "the partisan"- that would be important to the law-breaking in the "war on terror" today.
Wage arbitraging is under pinned in many cases by a dollar peg.
The current flight from the dollar and pension/hedge etc. fund supported commodity price rises are putting big pressure on the peggers.
They are copping local money supply increase, causing inflation.
The commodity rises are also causing inflation.
Their Reserves are being forced to buy deflating dollars.
Many peggers have double digit real inflation rates.
Wage competitiveness is coming at a high price.
They cannot stand much more pressure.
Hungary caved in and floated a couple of weeks ago.
China is now having fuel supply problems because of the price control/oil price rise wedge.
The pegs are being forced to float.
This has serious implications for the future of the dollar as the currency of reserve.
Some more thoughts on this that I posted a while ago at the same
place.
How many trillion dollars can the other currencies absorb?
The dollar onslaught ironically forces the foreign reserve agencies to buy dollars and increase their local money supplies.
They must be getting that sinking feeling that they are paying to much for them.
And the people cop the the value haven/dollar devaluation driven increase in commodities.
People with dollar contracts are being 'squeezed', Airbus says it can't take any more.
Liberalizing foreign ownership of US equities and other assets would boost support for the dollar.
Everybody needs to support the dollar for now or they will get bitten.
Floating must be considered, the pegs are adding pressure to the floaters such as the Euro as well as making a rod for their own backs.
Another one.
taxpayer -- right now i don't see much floating, and i see a fair
amount of deliberalization (notably price controls)
Written by bsetser on 2008-03-05 09:55:46
I wonder hold long they can hold out?
The export competitiveness that the peg gives them is creating a pressure point.
They can let the air out gradually (float or pseudo float like China)
or risk a more damaging and unpredictable blowout.
The rush to get out of the dollar is not making it easier for them.
The commodities rises flowing through to foods like tempeh and pork
are creating domestic tension.
They are wedging themselves with price controls, pinning their hopes
on a commodities downturn sooner than they can realistically expect.
The commodities have their fund money floor -for now.
This is a big deal.
Despite the fact that our population has increased by around 50% in the last 40 years, there is ample production capacity in the world to take care of our needs.
The financial system, however, is somewhere else.
It has become an end in itself, rather than a tool for our welfare.
The crisis is not a scarcity based crisis but a system generated one.
Brad Setser is one of the few, (maybe the only one) trying to unravel currency flows.
It is not easy.
Good information is hard to come by.
http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/setser
Well I can assure you it doesn't flow down hill.
Keynes derived his speculations about "the euthanasia of the rentier" from the long-term historical trend of falling interest rates without lasting inflationary pressures and with increasing financial stability. It was an attempt at extrapolation, not an exhortation.
What he didn't foresee was the introduction of a permanently inflationary and unstable regime.
Even Mr. Sarkozy is shocked.
"Who can imagine that it is normal that international rating agencies can rate certain financial products AAA on a Friday and the same financial products, rated by the same agencies, become BBB on the Monday?" Sarkozy asked.
"I don't want that kind of capitalism, because it's the capitalism of frivolity, of lies and of lack of transparency," he said.
http://business.smh.com.au/sarko...80328-
222n.html
same could be said of sarko himself: tripleA on friday and tripleB on monday.
What he didn't foresee was the introduction of a permanently inflationary and unstable regime.
smekhovo | 03.27.08 - 6:12 pm | #
Krugman says that "the euthanasia of the rentier" has been postponed by new industries.
"....... after World War II a combination of technological progress and revived population growth opened up many new investment opportunities."
http://www.pkarchive.org/
economy...eynesIntro.html
I think that there has been some of that.
Technology, Mobility etc.
However it is looking increasingly likely that Keynes was only out in his timing not his substance..
The "global savings glut" and negative real interest rates are indicators
There has also been a deliberate attempt to maintain the relevance of capital by requisitioning what what previously considered the realm of the amateur or the domestic or the commons for inclusion in the economy.
It probably started with the appropriation of traditional healing in the witch burning era, but there may be earlier examples.
Come to think of it, the enclosure of common land may be the start of it.
The demonization of herbal remedies (GWOD), is a continuation of this effort.
In some places even things like knitbone are illegal
It has lately blossomed with,
Privatization of Public Infrastructure
Enclosure of water, carbon
Intellectual Property Rights
Plant Variety Rights
Security
Professional sport
You can probably add to this list
and expansion of,
Education
Child Care
Aged Care
Health Care
Insurance Industry
Finance industry
This is an unsustainable practice and leads to much stress and transfers power and authority away from traditional holders.
These changes are always touted as bringing quality and efficiency benefits, but don't always deliver.
The never ending effort to develop new areas of wealth creation is taking on an ominous tone.
I posted this tongue in cheek suggestion for wealth expansion a while ago.
"the private equity bubble and LBO craze has gone bust
..yesterday's Masters of the Universe are now in the dust"
The "Masters of the Universe" and their ilk will be taking a
commission hit from the LBO bust, the collapse of the subprime CDO
scam and sundry other unravellings.
I have been thinking of how they might be able to recoup some of those
losses and create new commission streams.
Upaid fines are one of the last great untapped sources sources of
securitization.
Overdue fines amount to billions,
Exploiting this source might help to replace some of the recent
downturn in business.
I envisage something like this.
"Package" the unpaid fines using a single "umbrella" organization.
Add a perfectly justifiable collection fee to the fine so that the,
say, $20 littering fine, if unpaid, would have a $100 collection fee
added.
This would boost the total amount available for securitization.
Grade the unpaid fines and repackage as fine bonds.
Insure the instruments and apply for a rating.
Absolutely right, moonkoon, but unless you work rigorously back and forth in your mind between the money supply, how and where the new money is injected, and the effects of inflation, you will not be able to see that this is a way of clawing back some of the lost profit by unobtrusively lowering real wages.
It is not true that Keynes did not anticipate the quasi 'steady' state but actually inflationary economy - he proposed it.
cont.
Offer good commissions for brokers who can sell them to funds etc.
Margins will allow a generous lobbying budget
Happy days will be here again.
(I hope someone else hasn't thought of this already.)
http://www.rgemonitor.com/conten...view/245686/85/
"...new money is injected, and the effects of inflation...unobtrusively lowering real wages..."
Rowan Berkeley | Homepage | 03.28.08 - 3:13 am | #
I agree.
This manipulation has been evident (to me, at least) since the eighties.
I have used the analogy of a triangle to describe the relation between, labour, capital and commodities.
If you will tolerate another repost,
...We know that commodities don't pay dividends, so it can only yield a
return, unless you are shorting, when the commodity price rises.
At what point do we decide these are no longer free markets, that is,
no longer responding to physical demand?
What is the effect when a market no longer responds to demand?
Aren't such markets liable to misdirect resources like those that are subsidized or have floor prices?....
...Assets and commodities rising, incomes left in the dust, one side of
the triangle is broken.
"...Well I can assure you it doesn't flow down hill."
hp | 03.27.08 - 4:01 pm | #
If it is Love you are talking about, that's right.
It doesn't go anywhere by itself.
It can only move with our thoughts, words and deeds.
We are it's vector, its transmitter.
Nonsense, that was not an intended result of policies influenced by his ideas. He never predicted it, nor did his followers until it had already happened.
Keynes explicitly says in his general theory that at the price of modest inflation you can maintain a consumer demand that would otherwise be insufficient to the industries themselves. Read it.
specifically, he proposes that enough extra money be injected AS WAGES that aggregate demand will fuel full employment as then understood, i.e., unemployment of 2 or 3% which could be dismissed as 'frictional'.
From last night's lateline,
"NICK LUCCHINELLI: Marion Scrymgour says she can understand the fond memories many old timers have of missionaries. But she says their time has come and gone.
MARION SCRYMGOUR: Love, they did provide a lot of love and attention to those children. Maybe that's what's missing in some of our communities."
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/c...07/
s2201397.htm
Not throughout the business cycle.
aha -- his self-imposed restriction of his method to 'moderating the business cycle' is because he couldn't admit to any awareness of long term forces. He actually attributes all forces affecting 'investor confidence' rather unconvincingly to the 'animal spirits' of the investors.
Moonkoon,
no, not love. I was referring to currency. As in everything but currency flows downhill, and I'll testify to that. A small joke.
And Love doesn't cost any money, you have to pay with your heart.
To even try to read what you all are saying in the above paragraphs makes me dizzy and somewhat ill. I honestly believe I'm capable of understanding this and that is why I avoid it like the plague. To me, it's a form of profanity and I'm grateful to feel this way.
In general, I find the supposed alliance of leftists and old-rightists uninspiring, because I see no evidence in the real world, or in its own theories and writings, that capitalism can be anything other than predatory.
You don't concede that in certain strands of Old Rightism, at least, capitalism as such is no longer in force?
you mean they've succeeded in regressing to feudalism? tell me more.
"..To me, it's a form of profanity.."
hp | 03.28.08 - 11:33 am | #
Recent history has been a profanity against man.
The level of desecration of his spirit and dignity is unrivaled in history.
Many lament their betrayal, and believe that God himself has betrayed them.
That idea even occurred to Jesus.
But, if we can believe the stories, events soon proved him wrong.
moonkoon, you are a very thoughtful person. Such an active mind capable of incredible material calculation, yet a soft heart to temper it. You know you have a soul..
I'd bet you have a garden? And flowers.
moonkoon, if you find nitzan and bitchler useful (and I hope you do), bear in mind that they will never admit to the falling rate of profit, or to the axiom behind it which is the labour theory of value. This they profess to regard as 'metaphysical', so they can avoid it. But everything they actually DO say is fully compatible with the law of the falling rate of profit - as they know perfectly well!
This corresponds to what in the marxo-phobic USA is called 'the institutional school', after throstein veblen. When it shows any politics at all, they are technocratic, which is to say, gimmicked up fabianism, really.
HP, yes we do, it's all a bit ad hoc and unruly.
But truly beautiful.
Rowan, many people have given their lives to considering our position.
I think it is a good idea to listen to what they have to say dispassionately.
I know my enemies aren't fools, I can learn much from them.
I really do think that anyone who dismisses the non repeatable, the metaphysical, the spiritual, is selling themselves short.
Call it myth or fantasy if you like, but we need it.
Anything would be a step up from the godless, nihilistic, death cult we seem to be running with at the moment.
All the economists I have read recognise that all economic systems have problems with wealth concentration, itself a product of the distribution system.
I have seen socialism and capitalism ruined by complacency, greed, arrogance and so on.
There is a natural place for credit and thus, capital but it cannot be allowed to run amok.
There is also a natural place for command but ditto.
The fact that China has been able to grow at 10% plus for years show that both can be accommodated to advantage.
There are problems with the scale of enterprises in our economies.
Interestingly, it is large scale capital institutions such as SWFs that are being flagged as potentially harmful.
I also think that we make a big mistake when we try to get our economics to somehow reflect our idea of morality.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't advocate immorality, but it is something that we need to practice personally.
We can't hand it over to a set of economic principles.
It never works.
Economies are impersonal, we are the personal ones.
We can't rely on the economy to give people what they need, sometimes that requires that we be uneconomic.
Immorality: 'The morality of those who are having a better time.'
Mencken
A bit of prose,
we can't go back to 1500 or some other time
we can't go forward in time
we only have what is here now
some of it is killing us
after killing our spirit
we can't pull it all down
even if there was a way
we don't have the will
we have to synthesize the new from what exists and what doesn't exist
The synthesis comes from the theory and it's antithesis
Commenting by HaloScan
