by Dagmar Henn
Most people look at geopolitical interests and at the military-industrial complex, when they think about the economy of war. This might be right for the small ones, but it underestimates the impact of the big ones. Whole industrial empires rose from the profits of war, and not necessary in the areas of weapons production. The Quandt dynasty in Germany (they own f.e. BMW) started from selling uniforms in WWI and continued benefiting from slave labor in WWII. Bertelsmann, one of the biggest global media companies, turned from a tiny publisher of Christian literature to a big publishing house through selling 20 million books to the Wehrmacht. And when the big chemical corporation IG Farben was broken up after WWII, each of the three companies created out of it, BASF, Bayer and Hoechst, was as big as IG Farben itself before the war. They made a handsome profit from synthesized petrol… (not to mention a more gruesome product called Zyklon B).
For an industry desperately looking for demand this is the ultimate Keynesian kick. A big war is programmed obsolescence on speed – products intended for destruction, on a market free of competition, paid for by the customer of last resort, the state, who in his turn posts a bet upon refinancing the cost through plunder. If the bet goes wrong and the war is lost – well, that´s what Swiss bank accounts were invented for…
The present economic crisis is not a financial one. Finance is just the surface. The wave of deindustrialisation sweeping over most of the Western economies during the last decades tells another story. Industry became too efficient; it doesn´t generate enough jobs, therefore it doesn´t hand out wages sufficient to pay for all the products produced. For some time this problem could be covered up by credit-financed consumption and the roving circus of low-cost-country production, but finally it came back to roost. Industrial production recovered nearly nowhere to it´s pre-2008 level; so even if there were a beneficial wizard who took all the states debts out of the system, and all the fictive capital called derivatives or MBS or what-so-ever, it still would be dead-end-street. 
Source: querschuesse.de
But who wants to relinquish power? Concede that the famous invisible hand turned rheumatic, leave those beautiful mansions with well-cultivated lawns and share an ordinary life? Unimaginable. As long as there is a single card left inside the sleeve the gamble continues. And this last card is called war. On a large scale.
Now, let´s look at it from an economic perspective. There is an enormous need for demand; all those peripheral conflicts simply don´t size up to answer it. They generate profits for small, specialized segments of industry, but they don´t require enough material to set the whole industrial machinery back in motion. They don´t destroy a sufficient quantity of real values, which would also create a need for reconstruction – which values are left over to destroy in Afghanistan?
So what would be the criteria for the ideal enemy? There should be enough bounty, so that the whole enterprise can be refinanced by resources to be stolen. Cross out all countries that lack natural resources. The area that is fought over should contain a sufficient quantity of real values. Scratch out all non-industrial countries The enemy should be able to resist, because time equals demand. Scratch out all countries with weak armies. This seriously limits the choice. Adding the point that it´s not really advantageous to start an attack from the see, you can have a look at the globe and you will end up with one single option. Russia.
Oops. They got nuclear bombs. Isn´t it absolutely insane to risk a nuclear confrontation? It is, but – there are two points to consider.
The first one has to do with human memory. After a certain period, historic research talks about more or less eighty years, an event moves into the realm of legend; as soon as there are too few living persons around that have experienced it themselves. A few weeks ago this split in perception got very visible in German politics – the people who signed the appeal for reasonable politics towards Russia simply belong to an older generation, for them the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are still real. The politicians who lead at the moment know them only from tales; this is a weak argument against an economic collapse they can see and feel and taste.
The second point is the mindset of the ruling classes themselves. There can be no doubt they are better informed about the real state of capitalism than we are, and even we can read the writing on the wall. So why shouldn´t they play their last card? Just because there is a risk of total oblivion?That doesn´t change much from their point of view. Novels of the 18th and 19th century are full of aristocrats that prefer death over a loss of status. The character-masks of capital pass their lives considering the rest of humankind some type of cattle. And not because they lack brains or suffer from a faulty character; it´s a necessity for their self-legitimation. They couldn´t stand to be what they are and do what they do if they saw the world from a normal perspective. What seems completely irrational therefore turns into a rational choice. A peaceful continuation of collapse will definitely end in them losing their status. A bet on war might end in them losing their lives. And it might not. Marie Antoinette for sure would have turned the planet into a radioactive ashtray without hesitation, if she had the possibility.
It is our tiny problem that we don´t just share the same planet with these people; we still accept their rule.
The quote above is from Brecht´s “Mother Courage“.
Extremely valid points. All of them.
A) Just as the Saker said in his latest podcast, members of the elite, would rather risk total annihilation instead of losing their billionaire status. We must also keep in mind that it is not only their billionaire status that is under threat here. Banksters on both sides of the Atlantic face public rage, trials, imprisonment, possibly even execution once the steeple wakes up to their epic swindling.
B) We all more or less know that the current economic set up, especially in the west, is one giant Ponzi scheme. But with all certainty, the corrupt elites are far better informed than even the best and most brilliant economic historian out there. Their latest actions are a clear indication that an end game, a zero point is definitely approaching. For this simple reason, they have to roll the dice. They will not go down with a fight. That much is clear.
C) Lots of people think that wars are something you watch in movies. Something that belongs to bygone eras. Something that only occurs in “shitty countries” They may listen or read some rational analysis explaining how terrifyingly dangerous the situation really is, but their own narrow self experience does not allow them to accept what rational analysis dictates. This phenomenon is called fetishist split in psychoanalysis.
“What we see in Ukraine is probably another failure of various think tanks, mostly from Washington, which they are funded, of course, by the international capital. It seems that, apart from the fact that they have underestimated Putin’s abilities, they have also wrongly estimated that Russia had passed permanently in the neoliberal phase and would be ready to become an easy victim to promote their plans. According to these plans, the ultimate goal would be probably to dissolve the vast Russian territory in future and bring in power Western-friendly puppet regimes, in order not only to conquer the valuable resources, but also to impose permanently the neoliberal doctrine on “unexplored” regions and populations.”
The big barrier called Putin
What do Western elites plan for Russia. Especially the Anglo-American and their Zionist friends:
A) A weak regime along with a weak economy. That allows the west to have extensive leverage over Russia.
B) If possible to cut Russia into pieces. Once this is done, their control of Russia’s natural resources will become all the easier. It would also make it easier to disarm Russia of her nuclear deterrent.
C) If Russia remains United and powerful, then the energy situation will become untenable for the west. A Russia with lots of money will be nothing less than a pure nightmare for the Hegemon. Expect lots of USA adversaries to buy state of the art defensive weapons from Russia in ensuing years if the Imperial attack on Russia fails. That would mean that if the Empire wants to wage war, they will have to sacrifice men, expensive equipment and prestige. They may also suffer humiliating defeats.
“The present economic crisis is not a financial one. Finance is just the surface. The wave of deindustrialisation sweeping over most of the Western economies during the last decades tells another story. Industry became too efficient; it doesn´t generate enough jobs, therefore it doesn´t hand out wages sufficient to pay for all the products produced.”
Garbage in, garbage out.
The Dagmar Henn article doesn’t mention the off shoring of jobs. This is the real reason behind deindustrialisation in western industrial countries. Ignoring that fundamental factor in the analysis is like ignoring water in a study of fish. And this off shoring of jobs was done because of finance considerations. So that makes finance the main culprit in the decline of western industrial economies and the joblessness the off shoring created.
In fact, industry isn’t more efficient where the off shored industry was sent, it’s less efficient and more labour intensive (IE: uses more labour). It’s more profitable not because of efficiency, but because are low enough the inefficiency is outweighed by the increased profitability.
This article is the sort of misinforming analysis that keeps people confused and harmless to the ZPC/NWO establishment. I don’t remember reading something by Henn before, but at least now I know not to bother in the future.
вот так
Today has done a hell of a day here in northeast Euskal Herria, gale and raining as if there were no tomorrow. I had decided to go to the gym to move a little the body, since it is not possible to go outside, but in the end I’ve bundled reading what on Stalin is available on the web.
As I said once, that some person or nation is demonized with such unanimity, in this case both by the West and the East, arouses me not only great interest, but also some suspicion.
It is also listed in some literature on behavioral disorders such as psychopath. Well, not being an expert on the subject, but having studied it for a while, I have to say that his profile does not fit me to a psychopath.
A person lover of poetry could not, because the psychopath, as I understand, is unable to appreciate beauty, because it is unable to experience emotions, good or bad. Consistent also with this last characteristic of psychopaths, also contrasts that he was a loving and nurturing father not only for their own children, but also for their prematurely dead friend´s, which also makes us think that loyalty to the people, who really was worthy of it, was also one of its characteristics.
But above all, what squeaks sharply with the diagnosis of psychopath to Stalin, is that devoted his life to make a better life for most of its nationals, prepending a personal interest, even sacrificing his own son´s life.
In the end, it seems that what is qualified as paranoia, were not so, because it is speculated that he was poisoned by Beria and other Politburó´s who felt threatened by his power. And even when poisoning were not true, others point to a stroke he suffered after apparently a heated discussion over a dinner at his dacha with some leaders of the Politburó (another point that belie their lack of emotions, psychopaths usually do not die of cardiovascular events caused by stress). He retired to his room early, apparently outraged. Beria had ordered his guard to withdraw early, and then when hours later he was found by a guard on his rooms´ floor, with clothes still on, the Politburó members present, including Beria, took a day to call a doctor, which today is a crime known as “failure to rescue”.
As I see it, at least, after all read by now, a sentient being, hardened by a terrible upbringing at the hands of an alcoholic father who beated him and his mother, and a mother who apparently disregarded it emotionally in such an adverse environment. Surely that restless mind found an outlet for their resilient character on study and social struggle. However, the effects of aging in their character, would certainly inevitable.
Of everything I’ve read so far, I think the most fair this anonymous work that I found on the web. Although the presentation with no spaces, it is not very long, reads quickly, and is really very well written. I hope you enjoy both the Stalinists, such as anti-Stalinist, such as those, like me, just trying to find a fair view of the facts.
http://www.filosoficas.unam.mx/~tomasini/Stalin.htm
The criticism of the old USSR is beyond pathetic and false on multiple levels.
Having said that, I am not for a second insinuating that the Soviet blueprint is the way to go for humanity. But we can sure as hell be certain that more statism as well as a more severe state will be required in the very near future (if not now)
If there is to be a ‘hot war’, it will be initiated by the West. However, they will not proceed on this course unless/until a perceived moral high ground can be ‘sold’ to the public.
In that, the West is failing and is more and more seen as a characterture of its former self. Almost as if to highlight that point, last week Obama sanctioned a Russian biker club! How childish/pathetic can one get?!
Depite Western propaganda, the truth is beginning to win out. The truth is our greatest weapon in denying the sociopaths the war they think they want.
“Western economies during the last decades tells another story. Industry became too efficient; it doesn´t generate enough jobs, therefore it doesn´t hand out wages sufficient to pay for all the products produced.”
This is the central crisis of capitalism as described by Marx/Engels: overproduction.
Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is no longer operable. There are factions who believe a first strike is survivable.
However I’m beginning to think all the sabre-rattling and trespassed airspace is Anxiety Theater in advance of IMF resets. Keeping the peeps in a state of distracted anxiety. The real bomb will be economic. The rubble will be cratered standards of living. -NB
In Marxist terms, what we are witnessing right now is the organic composition of capital reaching a terminal imbalance in favor of constant capital (machinery and raw materials) to the detriment of variable capital (wage labor) “
This renders traditional capitalist industry virtually unprofitable.
Hence, the need for constant speculative bubbles, rent seeking, monopoly, and control of natural resources supply.
This saturation of the constant capital /variable capital dynamic is also the reason why immigration becomes essential for all mature capitalist nations. The assimilation of cheap labor power into the fold serves to at least partially restore the balance between constant and variable capital.
This is an epic process, decades or even centuries in the making.
I would recommend the excellent, but difficult to follow, critiqueofcrisistheory.com blog for this analysis.
“Industry became too efficient; it doesn´t generate enough jobs, therefore it doesn´t hand out wages sufficient to pay for all the products produced.”
I have a different interpretation: The Club of Rome & their ilk decided that transition to the NWO wd be smoother if the high-living-standards populations cd be homogenized w those of a lower income. So poverty-stricken labor was immigrated in & jobs were exported out.
Efficient industry is generally capital-intensive labor, where the laborer’s effort is multiplied by machines. Nothing but greed prevents the paying of a decent wage. The exported jobs were exported precisely to take advantage of unbelievably low wages.
Since human wants are elastic, in a legitimate monetary system there are always jobs for new goods and services. There is also the possibility of working fewer hours– imagine that!
It is state bureaucracies which make war, not the capitalist bogeyman. It is NATO and CIA whose existence depends on war, not Siemans or BMW. Siemans and BMW sell products in Eurasia, which was crippled by the Cold War!
War destroys capital(and labor), except for a few state financed and protected monopolies with a revolving door between the corporate structure and government bureaucracies.
Dagmar Henn’s linear analysis of capital and war ignores the role of state parasitism on capital and labor. The left linear analysis is a remnant of Cold War thinking!
‘Zyklon B’ or ‘Quandt dynasty’ are emotionally loaded to ignite the neural pathways of envy and resentment. For Dagmar Henn the arguments are simple and passionate script of the left intelligentsia, obfuscating the role of the left’s state patron. It is best not to ask a goldfish what is water…..
What I see most depressing in this picture is that ‘too efficient industry’ myth is as much bunk as planned obsolescence is a scam. Like there is nothing to do on this planet ? Give me a break please. We are far too quickly eating through (finite amount of) natural resources. We still don’t know how to treat cancer. We have no idea how to properly handle huge pollution our turbo-propped civilization is now generating and it is having more and more impact on us (global warning is a small part of this problem!). Our farming lands are degrading due to industrial farming and excess exploitation associated with it. I can go on and on – there is lots of work (and pay) for everybody on this planet for decades to come. Main obstacle is mindset – especially psychopatic mentality of bankster/corporate elites (western in particular). They’re used to exploit anything they put their hands on until exhaustion or collapse. This applies to environmental issues (thousands of examples), workforce exploitation (corporate sweat shops), abusing financial system (raiding pension accounts, bailouts, bail-ins), exploiting whole societies (housing bubble) and ultimately taking us all to war. If you look closely how modern corporations work, you’ll see that ‘cost optimization’ euphemism actually means passing big costs onto someone else – and in many cases it is ‘last dollar’ (or ‘past percent’) of that ‘optimization’ that causes most damage. Unfortunately we all are responsible for this to some extent by participating in such work-buy-consume thread mill, by buying lots of things we don’t need, by using corporate products and services. We all need to change our mindset somewhat. By promoting conservative orthodox values Putin will be able to achieve some positive changes in Russia. Zombiefied western societies probably won’t change in meaningful way – especially Americans (I’m reminded about this each year when Black Friday comes). This is one of (many) things that can be done – consume less, prefer small local producers where possible, influence others to do the same. I mean permanently changing one’s habits, not just remembering it for a month or two and then returning to usual business. Reading Bucky Fuller works can also help – especially ‘Critical Path’ that seems to be good starting point.
Perhaps the international banking cabal of which the US is a tool will not be able to respond quickly enough. Certainly there are many fine geopolitical/economic events occurring speedily:
In the Serbian capital of Belgrade on Wednesday [12/24] China, Hungary, Serbia and Macedonia agreed to build a land-sea express link connecting Budapest, Belgrade, Skopje, Athens and the port of Piraeus in Greece, one of the largest container ports in Europe.
The corridor will be based on a rail link between Budapest and Belgrade, which will be built and financed by Chinese companies by 2017.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2014livisitkst/2014-12/18/content_19111345.htm
My concern is that the neocon elite here in the US have become so blinded by their hubris that they fully believe their own propaganda. Some of the most dangerous ideas in the last decade came from Lieber and Press, writing for Foreign Affairs about “The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy”; they contended that the US is now capable of destroying 100% of Russian nuclear forces in a surprise first strike. Paul Craig Roberts has written that belief in such a capability explains the willingness of US leaders to take such aggressive, reckless risks in the current push towards war with Russia in Ukraine.
Please note that the nuclear primacy thesis completely ignores the peer-reviewed studies that predict even a “successful” nuclear first strike (by either the US or Russia against the other) would leave the Earth essentially uninhabitable (see “Self Assured Destruction: the climate impacts of nuclear war” published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/RobockToonSAD.pdf ). Despite the best efforts of the scientists, their warnings have been ignored by US leaders, who (along with the rest of the leaders of the other nuclear weapon states) refuse to acknowledge or discuss the existential threat posed by US and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals.
What is needed is a loud, concerted protest from the non-nuclear weapon states, whose peoples are held at much at risk from nuclear war as the those living in the target areas. Corporate media has effectively banned discussion of this subject, so it is up to people, such as the readers of this blog, to take the initiative and spread the word, demand action, get mad and get busy.
1) there is no “western capitalism”. Capitalism needs a capital, but western countries have only gigantic debts, not a capital. It’s principally war of debtors against creditors.
2)Primary goal of the war are slaves, not territory. Even Hitler wanted Slavs working forcely for his Reich, not dead. Americans may turn Earth into radioactive desert but who will serve them in such world?!
@ BOT TAK – 22:22
“The Dagmar Henn article doesn’t mention the off shoring of jobs. This is the real reason behind deindustrialisation in western industrial countries. Ignoring that fundamental factor in the analysis is like ignoring water in a study of fish. And this off shoring of jobs was done because of finance considerations. So that makes finance the main culprit in the decline of western industrial economies and the joblessness the off shoring created.”
I agree with you. Look at the USA, the off shoring poster child where a Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE outsources tens of thousands of well paying jobs to China.
“GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, The Head Of Obama’s Jobs Council, Is Moving Jobs And Economic Infrastructure To China At A Blistering Pace”
http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/ge-ceo-jeffrey-immelt-the-head-of-obamas-jobs-council-is-moving-jobs-and-economic-infrastructure-to-china-at-a-blistering-pace
On top of it, GE had cashed in about $ 500 million from the Obama admin in (hidden) subsidies. Immelt is the head, the czar, of Obamas “Job council”
Germany did it differently. We are actually protective of jobs. German companies did not go into an outsourcing frenzy but paid their workers subsidized wages instead in harder times. This definitely is a good thing because when times change to the better, one has still the same (experienced) staff.
You are correct regarding the ZPC/NWO establishment. THEY and the crony capitalism are the real problems.
No, it´s not satire but the truth:
http://tomatobubble.com/fh1.html
And always remember: 8 families only control and own the Fed:
The Federal Reserve Cartel: The Eight Families
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-federal-reserve-cartel-the-eight-families/25080
“The present economic crisis is not a financial one…..” Dagmar Henn
The financial debt burden of state deficit spending has created systemic instability. The IMF + BIS globalists are shifting a fraction of the sovereign debt burden onto the emerging economies of China, India, Brazil, Russia, etc. An equal fraction of the value of debt instruments will be erased by devaluing the USD unit of account into SDR substitution accounts. The third fraction will preserve some value of the USD savings, so the default of the USD debt finance burden will be shared by all parties to the USD monetary system which provides the physical needs of billions of human lives.
The nominal value of USD denominated promises to pay is far greater than world GDP, hence the real economy can no longer service the debt and continue to lubricate the world economy. It is debt finance which results in Global Stagnation! The IMF + BIS with cooperation of China and Russia will switch the USD for SDR, so the world can avoid thermonuclear war. The idea that general war is the objective of the puppet theater in the Ukraine and Syria is for the well intentioned naive. It is a smoke screen while the monetary system is switched before our diverted eyes…it is monetary war!
“This transfer of wealth that is coming is not a direct and equal transfer. It is not like pouring one pitcher into another. It is more like flipping a switch on the virtual matrix. Turning off the monetary plane that hovers over the physical plane and claims to tell you how much “stored purchasing power” everyone has. When you turn it off, all that purchasing power disappears in a flash. And then what lies beneath is exposed in daylight, the real physical world. No real capital is destroyed, only the myth is destroyed. But true capital is exposed and revalued.”
@ Stavros H
In case you are living in Greece, is this true?
“Greek Prime Minister: “It’s Best For The Country” To Do Away With Democracy”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-27/greek-prime-minister-its-best-country-do-away-democracy
He said this on public TV? Is there a chance that the military will move out of their barracks and will end this (renewed EU) farce?
We all remember the “Papandreou” shenanigan.
I wonder, really.
I am Greek Cypriot currently residing at one of the Empire’s metropolises (London)
But being familiar with Samaras (an EU US stooge if there ever was one) and Greek politics I wouldn’t be surprised in the very least.
I will have to see what he has stated exactly and get back to you.
Achilles heal of the western armies is extrem intolerance to the loss of life among their solders. Europeans are in no mood for war. Where can NATO find milons of solders willing to charge on the cold Russian stepes? Knowing that most of them would never see home again? How many losses are aceptible for their public? I think for the most of NATO members if 30 to 40 solders duy in a day it would be the end of it.
NATO can wage a war only against helples, using technology, with a risk of losses near
zero.
No way that they can wage a conventional war
against Russia.
The only thing they can do is a trying to weaken Russia from inside, (as Zbig described so eloquently in his books), with all dirty tricks they so oftenly and succesfully used against
scores of smaller countries across the globe.
But Russia is not a Serbia…
Stavros H: “This renders traditional capitalist industry virtually unprofitable. Hence, the need for constant speculative bubbles, rent seeking, monopoly, and control of natural resources supply.”
The ultimate burst bubble is delivered by the kind of lurid supply/demand destruction that only war can deliver. Rubble, in short. The last business cycle in a secular trend is punctuated by bombs.
Unfortunately our adeptness at lethality is a cumulative bestowal that does not suffer a deflationary collapse.
There are the Joel Skousens of the world who insist the American elite pans to retreat into bunkers after initiating a first strike, wait out the retaliatory strike and then emerge as champions of all that remains. Internet freedoms will look rather ornamental at that dire stage. Of course Skousen sells disaster recovery products and solutions for US homeowners. Where’s that grain of salt. But yes, there is an irrational element within the American elite born of decades of uncontested exceptionalism. Has this weirdness metastasized into full-blown psychosis? They haven’t been playing Grand Master chess of late, have they? -NB
The argument here is that since global capitalism is probably headed for disaster, something that would expose the parasitic elites for what they truly are to the eyes of their people, these same elites will be willing to take a massive gamble so that they can preserve their cherished status.
A major global war will serve, or will be hoped to serve the following functions:
A) Completely divert attention from the economic failures of the elites.
B) Create a new global situation out of the ruins and wreckage of the old world. Like many have noted, many in the deranged neocon circles seem to believe that the US can prevail with a nuclear first strike. For them, the hope is that the west will remain largely intact (even if a few nuclear warheads do fall on Western cities) the rest of the world will be fully cowed into submission, and be once again at the complete and total mercy of the Empire.
Once this Dr Strangelove scenario plays out, a brand new cycle of capitalist accumulation could commence.
Or in other words. The crazed Western elites calculate that under peaceful conditions their dominion over the planet is doomed. For them, it’s either we rule the world, or there shan’t be any.
excuse me guys, my english skills are not the best…
there is something wrong with this phrase or I just didn’t get the point?
“Adding the point that it´s not really advantageous to start an attack from the see, ….”
kudos to the author! share more. her writing put me in mind of college math texts where 300 pages of differential equations had only 40 pages of actual math. this has the meat without the potato to ease its swallowing. terse and to the point. i’m not at all suicidal but i think russian capitulation would only prolong our misery. some country in the world needs the spine to resist.
@ bob kay
“And then what lies beneath is exposed in daylight, the real physical world. No real capital is destroyed, only the myth is destroyed. But true capital is exposed and revalued.”
Hmmm, does it mean that they will take the credit cards away from certain “folks” (as Obomber likes to call some)?
I would not mind at all.
I hope that the “purchasing power” of 93% of worlds opium supply from a certain country under (renewed and ad nauseam) US “protection” will be part of it.
@anonymous 22:22
I did mention off-shoring of jobs. That´s what I meant with the roving circus of low-cost-country production. But this tendency is a result, not the origin of what I call the final activation of the main contradiction.
In case the value of a product is denominated by it´s content of labour, off-shoring of jobs offers a single advantage – it enables selling products to a price above the value. Until the moment when all other producers did the same. Then the price will reapproach the value again.
So this strategy works for a certain time, and it does include a shift of production towards a productivity level far below the possibilities. It is, in itself, already a symptom of a major disfunctionality, and started in branches that passed the peak of their production cycle a long time ago (for textile industry f.e. you could date it to around 1880).
Anything finance does is a method of distributing surplus value (including future surplus value)inside the ruling class. It doesn´t create surplus value.
dagmar
There is nothing that I can disagree with in the above statement.
wow – I don’t know if I’ve ever seen such a top-level and intelligent group of comments on a post. In the first 18 comments – I agree totally with everyone, and everyone seems to be on the same page. I’m struck by this thread so far, it’s an amazing demonstration of perspective shared by many people.
Funny how we took the threat of nuclear war and turned it straight to its underlying economic and financial realities. Funny also how we can turn to Marx if we want to parse the big picture.
@ Anonymous (NB?) at 22:36 – this is worth saying again:
“However I’m beginning to think all the sabre-rattling and trespassed airspace is Anxiety Theater in advance of IMF resets. Keeping the peeps in a state of distracted anxiety. The real bomb will be economic. The rubble will be cratered standards of living. -NB “
@ Penelope at 22:54 – very well said, thank you, I totally agree. Make me dictator of the world and I’ll just declare free money with no strings attached. With that medium of exchange we’ll all just get on with our lives and make life good everywhere. As you say – Imagine!
Elsi, I’m going to go read your rehabilitation of Stalin now. Your logic is perfect, he has to be better than the reputation that the lie-machine has handed down to us.
I have nothing of value to add to anything here, beyond my admiration for the commenters. Keep it coming. And thanks.
@ bob kay
“‘Zyklon B’ or ‘Quandt dynasty’ are emotionally loaded to ignite the neural pathways of envy and resentment.”
Thanks for these words.
Unfortunately, this seems to be a very typical german attribute.
70 years after WWII…when will this kind of “reminder” ever end?
All those born later have nothing to do with these deadly sins after all.
Mrs. Henn should know it too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdajUraK0LM
this video for anyone interested in researching the theme of ‘Stalin deniers’
A couple of personal observations:
(1) re “The first one has to do with human memory. After a certain period, historic research talks about more or less eighty years, an event moves into the realm of legend; as soon as there are too few living persons around that have experienced it themselves.”
I’m just barely old enough to remember the first atomic bombs, which I’m sure are more like science fiction than reality to the current generation. The moon landings have almost become so. I grew up hearing vidid personal stories of the 1929 crash and the great depression. (My mother saw well-dressed business men in 1933 sleeping wrapped in newspapers in sub-zero weather under Wacker Drive in Chicago, all they had left were their clothes; which I’m sure are now like ancient history to everyone, especially the 1% banksters. “Those that do not remember the past .. etc., etc.”
(2) The other personal observation concerns Stalin. On a group tour of Russia last July, just before things went sideways, our young Russian tour guides in Moscow, Suzdal, and St. Petersburg (“Historical Jewels of Russia”), all very religious, wearing head scarves and lighting candles in churches, all said he was undoubtedly a bad man, who did many bad things, but he won the war, and freed the Church. Which strikes me as just about right. We’ll need another 100 years, IMHO, to see him as he really was.
@ anon. 23:40
“Germany did it differently. We are actually protective of jobs. German companies did not go into an outsourcing frenzy but paid their workers subsidized wages instead in harder times. This definitely is a good thing because when times change to the better, one has still the same (experienced) staff.”
Oh, really? Only if you look at two specific industries: the core of automobile industry and machine engineering. Textile industry? Gone. Electronics? Gone. Even the production of car parts is in the process of dissappearing.
Whole regions are already completely deindustrialised, not only in the eastern part, whose industry was nearly completely destroyed.
And “we” subsidized wages? What about Hartz IV? The development of average wages during the last 25 years? The massive rise in underpaid, partime, unsecured jobs? It didn´t take place? A good part of “our” population was intentionally impoverished to push down wages in the interest of export industry.And to ruin “our” European neighbours, naturally…
There isn´t anything like ‘crony’ capitalism and good capitalism, there is just capitalism. And to imagine a change in personell or a change in ideology would solve a problem in the reproduction of capital itself is like repairing a car with a broken motor by changing the tires.
There can be a debate about the quality of the relation between the USA and the German-led European bloc and their respective capital factions, on the scale from subordination/cooperation/competition, but a debate ‘bad American capital’ against ‘good German capital’ is absurd. Who ever feels inclined towards this position should look at least at three things: 1) The role of Bertelsmann as a strategic center of German capital (f.e. related to Hartz IV, privatisation of health services etc) and the role of it´s chief lobbyist Elmar Brok in the actual conflict with Russia, 2) the criminal history of Deutsche Bank (sufficient to read about recent events, no need to dive down to the 1940s) and it´s leverage, and 3) the colonial dictates the German government imposed on countries like Greece.
@ Dagmar Henn
“There is an enormous need for demand”
I think I prefer “The demand for demand is tepid when it should be more demanding.” lol
“What seems completely irrational therefore turns into a rational choice. A peaceful continuation of collapse will definitely end in them losing their status. A bet on war might end in them losing their lives. And it might not. Marie Antoinette for sure would have turned the planet into a radioactive ashtray without hesitation, if she had the possibility.”
Quite possibly. Inter-generational wealth breeds infantilism and petulance. We cannot rule out a nuclear tantrum. How does hyper-exceptionalism, bred over centuries, affect decision trees? I’m not a shrink to the Rothschilds. But I’d love to be a fly on the analysand’s wall. The rich might be so different that Non-existence trumps stooping to take out the trash. -NB
Frau Henn,
WE all have ONE real problem mainly.
There are 187 Multinational Corps in the world.
Their main shareholders are mostly banks or huge financial institutions (for ex: Larry Fink´s Blackrock, Blackstone etc. plus big pension funds, int. insurance companies etc.)
And the banks and big financial companies are owned to a large part by whom?
See, we find the same people over and over again. They rule over the weak and dumb politicians in many countries. Their spell must be resisted, it must be broken actually if we all want to survive.
Elsi,
Good for you to plumb the archives for truth.
We can just look at the descriptions of Putin and see how they have tarred him as dictator, as a murderer, as a thief, as anti- the Russian people, as a kleptomaniac, as starter of wars, as destabilizer of nations, etc, etc.
All lies in advance of the world’s knowledge of the truth of Putin.
This is the first law of propaganda.
‘He who says it first is right.’ Goebbels
It is almost impossible to erase the first words the brain receives in description of an object. If the object is in a foreign land, a language away, thousands of miles away, and described in a torrent of lies, there is no way a mind receiving all those lies as the first signals can decipher the truth.
Keep us informed of your journey and what you learn.
Frau Henn, said:
“Oh, really? Only if you look at two specific industries: the core of automobile industry and machine engineering. Textile industry? Gone. Electronics? Gone. Even the production of car parts is in the process of dissappearing.
Whole regions are already completely deindustrialised, not only in the eastern part, whose industry was nearly completely destroyed.”
On which planet do you live?
Ever heard of the german “Hidden Champions”, all nicely noted in the M-DAX? At least half of them if not more are the world leaders in their industrial field. These innovative firm, large, middle and small, are the envy of many!
And btw, weren´t the german UNIONS that were destroying the former East right out of the gate! I do remember the ugly headlines from 1990.
THEY demanded for the east the SAME conditions/wages as “enjoyed” by the people from the western part.
There was the strong proposal to do what Mr. Putin does now in Crimea to attract investment: create an economic free zone with lower taxes and wages.
The bloody west german unions prevented it, not the government!
1) The role of Bertelsmann as a strategic center of German capital (f.e. related to Hartz IV, privatisation of health services etc) and the role of it´s chief lobbyist Elmar Brok in the actual conflict with Russia,
Frau Henn, yawn. Most Germans know about Bertelsmanns/Liz Mohns inherited power and finances.
We KNOW about that thugish Elmar Brok, an old CDU member who has been sitting snug in Brussels, lobbying since nearly 3 decades. I encourage always people to google this old thug.
2) the criminal history of Deutsche Bank (sufficient to read about recent events, no need to dive down to the 1940s) and it´s leverage, and 3)
Where have you lived during the last 60 years?
Everybody and his aunt knows about DBs history (and that of other banks too). Can we, the people, change it in hindsight? No.
DBs derivative exposure is being discussed daily on biz TV. Bigger then JPM´s!
But this is the gist:
“the colonial dictates the German government imposed on countries like Greece.”
Go, ask the german gov to acknowlege over and over again and again the guilt of former generations, 70-80 yrs ago, their “colonial dictates” ad nauseam pls.
I remind you that there was a treaty between Adenauer and Greece and following payment of compensation (if one can compensate with money such misery at all).
Shame on you! What other grievances do you have with Germans?
It is now clear to me WHY I left the “german Saker” right after the first read. Good night.
Dagmar Henn 28 December, 2014 00:32
“I did mention off-shoring of jobs. That´s what I meant with the roving circus of low-cost-country production.”
The off shoring of industry deserves a bit more attention here than just a throw away line. That was my point, you didn’t really include this factor in your analysis the way it needs to be.
“But….value.”
Saving on the cost* of labour is one factor in off shoring. Others are environmental, cost of necessary resources, political, geopolitical, social control related, monopoly related, old fashioned excess greed…there’s others I’m sure I’m leaving out and will later wish I didn’t. ;
Claiming off shoring was due to the cost of making a product rising above the economic value (selling price) is flat out wrong. That’s the platitude given by the parasites to excuse themselves for doing it. The reason is political and geopolitical. And there is a lot of factors behind it.
If you will notice, this practice really got going in the 1970s, right after the parasite class realised that their previous plan to create a prosperous, but corporately loyal populace was failing politically (the plebes were using their education and comfortable living standards in corporately unapproved ways – like war protesting and societal conformity resistance).
So that comfort had to go, and the “back to the 19th century” movement took off in the west (Thatchurism in the UK, Raygunomics in the USA), vanguarded by the zionist media, naturally. Essentially, the parasite class realised at the end of the 60s was that if things continued as before, it would not be long before those people would realise they didn’t need that parasite class any more.
That’s one factor, another, which coincided around the same time as the political are the economic and environmental. The internationalisation of the oligarch parasites greatly expanded. With environmentalism on the rise, it kept getting more expensive to continue trashing the environment – and those educated plebes were getting pissed off about it, too (loss of control factor). Easier to trash the colonies, where the parasite class deliberately kept the people dirt poor and in slavery. Plus it’s far away and the zio-media can ignore the suffering it causes, and emphatically and enthusiastically do.
Economically, the multinational corps no longer had reason to keep their operations national, they had holdings worldwide, why not treat the world as their backyard, not just one country. So economic planning went worldwide on a scale not seen earlier. Your descriptions of the “German” corporations did your readers a disservice. They are not German any more. The parasites who own them and manage them, do not consider themselves German, even those of them who are actually German citizens. They are now “gods”, independent of mere national loyalties.
Part 1
вот так
Part 2
Another factor is greed and power. Excessive greed and power. This current parasite class absolutely does not want to share the wealth or relinquish any of their power. They only want more, more, more. They want absolute, total power unto themselves. In the industrial countries, they would have had to share with the people [gasp], off shoring industry/jobs stopped that cold. No unions, no socialists, no left at all, in fact. Let the loyal underclass work multiple low paying jobs to survive, the excess unemployed, re-ghettoise them and let the Jewish drugmafia handle things there. Keep the plebes to busy trying to survive and at each other’s throats to keep them organising and educating themselves in such ways they become a threat. The “middle management class”? Those serfs with still decent wages? “1984” was more prescient about some things than many give Orwell credit for. That’s what colleges are for in the enlightened west.
Ironically, your post 28 December, 2014 01:12 indicates you understand such dynamics as I’ve described on a micro scale, but you fail to apply them on a macro scale.
* In my earlier 27 December, 2014 22:22 comment I erred: “but because are low enough the inefficiency” should have been “but because the costs are low enough the inefficiency”.
вот так
Muckety has only a basic map, not what i expected in detail to see:
http://news.muckety.com/2014/09/05/top-us-government-contractors-are-also-investors-in-russia/47511
@anom 1:53
First of all – which grievances do I have with the Germans? I am German. So it is my grievance, and my shame…it is because I am German that I consider it important to remember the historical facts as much as perceive the present ones.
Deutsche Bank isn´t less criminal now than it was in the past. And it is never my intention to change things in the hindsight. Following the actual German laws it would be possible to withdraw DBs banking license, due to repetitive and intentional breach of the Wertpapierhandelsgesetz (bond trading law). The colonial dictates I talked about are called troika contracts, and were placed by the Merkel government. Do you want to tell me that the German government, that today´s German politics are not our responsibility? Should the consequence of all knowledge about past and present events just make one shrug the shoulders and say, nothing can be done? No, it shouldn´t.
Well, I do have the impression that quite some people who like to rant about US crimes and close their eyes about German ones do that primarily to continue shrugging their shoulders. The world is evil, but it´s none of my business. The past is the past and so on and so on…
Ever heard of the german “Hidden Champions”, all nicely noted in the M-DAX? At least half of them if not more are the world leaders in their industrial field. These innovative firm, large, middle and small, are the envy of many! So what? Is that some kind of absolution for anything?
No, it isn´t. Neither for the deeds of German corporations or Merkels politics nor for tolerating them.
To Dario Alok at 28 December, 2014 00:06:
“not really advantageous to start an attack from the SEA”
To Dario Alok at 28 December, 2014 00:06:
“not really advantageous to start an attack from the SEA”
Greetings from France:
Yanis Varoufakis has done serious work on the US unsustainable economic-financial system. Here a quote. For further reading go to his blog.
QUOTE
The Crash
What was it that tripped up the Bretton Woods system, causing it to lose its footing and to collapse on 15th August 1971? The answer is: the US government’s inability to exercise self-restraint vis-à-vis its own capacity to exploit its exorbitant privilege; its ability, as custodian of the world’s reserve currency, to print global public money at will so as to finance (without substantial new taxes) a stupendous military-industrial complex, the Vietnam war, Lyndon Johnson’s, otherwise splendid, Great Society policies etc..
And what was it that brought us the Crash of 2008? Again, it was an American failure at self-restraint. Only this time, it was not the US government’s failure (even if a case can be made that it happened on the US government’s watch) but of the private sector in general and of the banks in particular: The American financial sector failed spectacularly to exercise self-restraint vis-à-vis its capacity to exploit its newfangled exorbitant privilege: its ability, as custodian of global financialisation, to print global private money at will; a capacity that was functional to the maintenance of American hegemony and, therefore, one that was at odds with any serious type of regulatory constraint upon the bankers.
Conclusion
Global imbalances were not the cause of the Crash of 2008. However, their diminution is, equally, no sign that the world is re-balancing. A quick look at excess savings and excess labour, in the United States, in Europe and in Asia, reveals the inconvenient truth that the world is out of kilter. As it was analytically feeble to argue, prior to 2008, that global capitalism was in a state of ‘equilibrium imbalance’, it is today inane (even insulting) to claim that we are shifting toward a state of ‘equilibrium balance’ – see also M. Pettis’ excellent book The Great Re-balancing (2013). Before 2008, the observed unbalanced equilibrium was pregnant with the instability brewing, by necessity, inside the circuits of finance. Today, once more, the observed tendency towards balance (at least in current accounts) is a symptom of vicious underground forces that are begetting disequilibrium, despondency and discontent in the core of our societies.
UNQUOTE
http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/2014/01/28/is-the-world-re-balancing/#more-4993
@ anonymous 23:40
Off-shoring of jobs is a favored complaint of American chauvinists.
But it’s a predictable diversionary tactic to avoid confronting the Capitalist system itself, which Americans worship as the followers of Mammon that they are.
It’s almost an instinctive response of Americans to blame foreigners (or immigrants) for their malignant economic system–but they have neither the honesty nor the courage to face the reality that Capitalism necessarily seeks out new low-wage labor to exploit throughout world.
It’s called the Profit Motive.
What American companies are really doing with off-shoring is OFF-SHORING EXPLOITATION–with the ruthless American exploitation of workers outside of the USA.
But you won’t hear Americans frame the issue this way of course, as it is too honest.
What’s more, the American economy and precious Way of Life(TM) are parasitic to the core.
The United States is based upon both off-shoring exploitation (via American capitalism reaping higher profits off the backs of low-wage labor in the Developing World) and the Petro Dollar Imperialism.
America: Host or Parasite?
http://michael-hudson.com/2007/03/america-host-or-parasite/
And as the American parasite enters its its economic death throes, the USA will likely adopt the same extreme path of Germany and Italy in the years leading up to World War 2: Fascistic nationalism and War.
It has always amazed me how some people could believe private greed was supposed to be the correct policy for a nation made up of millions of citizens.While there may in any country be a few “mother Theresa” types.The vast majority of the greedy rich,as we see daily in the world,are far more of the “sell mother” types.Which is why nations should always have enshrined in law provision that some industries that are needed by the entire population would always be owned by the state as the representative of the total people.They should only be governed by the need for the functioning of society and never by a profit motive.Governments should also work for the common good of their population.And only be judged on that basis.
I remember years ago reading a book by a early 20th century Cuban economist.He lamented the problems they faced,and compared them to how the system worked in those days in the US.To Americans today his praise of the US system then is strangely dated.The attributes he praised are gone in the US system today.And he would probably be shocked at that today.He praised the high wages (for the period) in the US.Saying how that allowed people in the US to buy the products US industry made.Thus constantly expanding industry,as there was a ready market for its products.He also praised how the US protected its industries from low-wage competition in other nations.As a function of the interests of industry and workers working together.One wanting the profits from selling their products,the other wanting the high wages that allowed them to buy those products.The system worked as a circle,with everyone getting some benefit.He said he thought the system would never change.That Americans would be fools to change it,and that Americans weren’t fools (I didn’t say he was great at predictions or a great judge of character).But he was right at the time.As long as US industrialists were connected to the US for their wealth.They were willing ,out of self-interest if for no other reason to see that their customers were able to buy their products.And that helped the average person to have a share in what they considered “the American Dream” back then.But with the spread of “globalism” and the wealthy becoming a multi-national elite with far less ties to their own peoples that all changed.A widgit maker in New York couldn’t care less if his employees in New York could afford his products.He will move that factory to a low wage country,import his now lower priced widgits and sell them in New York or Germany or Australia.His connections to his nation and loyalty to its people are almost non-existent today.And while I used the US as an example the system is the same in much of the world.
What loyalty to Russia and its people does an oligarch that spends most of his time in London,Paris,New York,have to Russia.He puts his money in London Banks.He owns villa’s in Cyprus,or a London Mansion.Owns sports teams,or newspapers in the West.Can you even consider these types Russian anymore.It is this problem that must be corrected if the people in the World will ever reclaim their sovereignty in their countries.
Uncle Bob
@ Uncle Bob
We are simply seeing International Capital more brazenly showing its essential internationalist features. National borders have been trampled by trade zones, NAFTA, EU, etc. This expedites the flow of capital. Arguably, the wealthier one becomes the higher up the pyramid one moves and thus the more alienated one becomes to native cultures (where arguably most of ‘real living’ occurs). The American poet/lecturer and agrarian Wendell Berry wonders how the world can run in the absence of communities. International Capital is an inhuman force. It wants workers and consumers. Basic humanity becomes an ‘inefficiency’.
Hello Dagmar!
May I put in a plea for some whole-sytems thinking in this conversation, please? So far, I’ve seen none.
The whole system that I mean is the entire Earth, in all it’s geophysical processes – including particularly human depletion/scattering of the planet’s once-only non-renewable materials; once gone – or scattered – never available again.
So far, your original article, Dagmar, and the following discussion, have been somewhat tunnel-visioned onto narrow arguments about which politico-socio-economic strategies work best; and which facts are material and which irrelevant.
But no-one has mentioned The Limits To Growth (both the book and its updates, or the global realities which it discusses); or the inevitable, >inescapable< consequences of those limits: the Synergising Global Crises – which are not coming soon, but are already on us, already unfolding right now.
The SGCs include:
– the Sixth Extinction (already well in process);
– human population overshoot (ditto, and heading towards the inevitable crash which corrects such blooms, in any species). And let’s be clear: our overshoot of Earth’s carrying capacity for humans isn’t coming soon; it’s already happened, some time ago.
– climate shift, already shaping up as a serial killer of many things, including humans, and scheduled to get much worse in that respect;
– Peak Everything, very much lead by peak SLEG-crude, in 2005 (Sweet, Light, Easy-Get, low EROEI and low EROI petro); the ‘everything’ being the once-only planetary endowments of things like metals, fossil hydrocarbons, phosphates, uranium ores, etc., through which we have been burning like drunken profligates for the past two-to-three centuries in particular, accelerating the burn all the while;
– and so on.
Discussants here can ignore those elements of the gathering global storm, if they choose to indulge crazy tunnel-vision just to go on riding their favourite political hobby horses for a short while longer. But that won’t make the SGCs go away; nor will it prevent their overwhelming >forces-majeures< from sweeping away in global chaos all our preferred political ‘solutions’.
As Nicole Foss puts it so pithily: “Reality will not negotiate with you.” Discuss rival BAU political systems to your hearts’ content. But if we don’t factor in the SGCs as THE major elements in the discussions, we’re just generating futile hot air.
Certain things need to be got starkly clear in this discussion, including most particularly the reality about economic-growthforever. In a nutshell, growthforever is over.
Of course, it’s entirely predictable that some rising states and regions of the Earth will continue with odd spurts of anaemic and brief economic growth; but only at the expense of actual economic shrinkage in other places.
‘Growth’ is now a zero-sum game. Growthforever is never coming back. And that fact alone disables pretty well all the assumptions of the now-dead growth-era economics. Always a highly iffy, questionable ‘science’ at best, orthodox economics of the just-departed era of global-bubble growth has now shifted into completely irrelevant delusionism. (cont.)
(cont.) We have left the era of abundance industrialism behind, a few year back. We are now transitioning – whether we will or no – into the new era of scarcity industrialism, leading in it’s turn down the Long Descent (See JMGreer’s book of the same name) into a period of detritivore salvage economies, and from there down again into a dark age. To be followed – if the greatly-reduced human global population of that future time is lucky enough – into ‘The Ecotechnic Future’ (another of JMGreer’s book titles), some centuries from now, which seems likely to being an arresting blend of stone-age/appropriate technologies, inspired gardening methods of the permacultural kind, and living strictly on our insolation energy income perforce, whatever form of society we then evolve.
We ignore these stark, utterly over-riding realities at our mortal peril. Those delusionists still in religious thrall to the Great God PROGRESS, and humankind’s – alleged – destiny to explode upwards and outwards to the stars, should apply to the Star Trek Foundation for the necessary trilithium crystals and warp-speed technologies to enable that dream. Here an Earth, the actually-likely, realworld future is going to be very different…
PS: I doubt there’ll be an all-out global nuclear war. I think that the sane populaces of the nuclear-armed countries – including sane members of the military brass – will tear down and lynch the loonies screeching for nuclear war, first. Roman emperors were frequently pulled down, killed, and replaced by new figureheads, by nothing more than the Praetorian Guards getting annoyed with the previous incumbent. What makes us think that that “couldn’t happen now…”?
But should it come to a nuclear war, followed – perhaps – by a nuclear winter, that doesn’t mean the inevitable sterilising of the Earth. It doesn’t even mean, necessarily, the end of humankind (though would the Gods mind too much if that happened…?) Mam Gaia is – as the innovative biologist Lynn Margulis pointed out – “a tough bitch”, who has piloted her planetary life-web through worse global catastophes, after all: For example, the Chicxulub asteroid strike, an energetic event orders of magnitude more powerful than all the nuclear weapons currently around all exploding at once. And the even more apocalyptic ending of the Permian Era.
We do like to puff ourselves up, don’t we, we humans, to think that somehow – precise agency still rather hazy – we can be even more overwhelming to the Earth’s life-web than those natural incidents were. Don’t actually believe that, myself, though. But some narcissistic frogs, stunned by their own magnificent uniqueness, will continue to croak it, doubtless.
вот так:
“I don’t remember reading something by Henn before, but at least now I know not to bother in the future.”
She is quite funny. Her obsession is a German “deep state” dating from Bismarck to Merkel.
If she were Russian she would have unearthed a deep state Romanov conspiracy running uninterrupted from czar Nikolaj to Putin.
She resonates with Russians who think that Germany destroyed and impoverished itself multiple times in order to cover its tracks en route to its current status of planetary hegemony.
English Saker post here: http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.de/2014/07/the-german-government-is-acting-on-its.html .
Book: The best enemy money can buy. Video. The power of nightmare. Or Secret government.
http://www.wanttoknow.info/050423secretgovernment
To Ms Henn,thank you for your article.
here I read of what the ‘allies’ should be ashamed of.
THE HIGH COST of VENGEANCE
by Freda Utley .. 1949… tells about the post WWII atrocities comitted by the US,British and French allies against the civilian population and the deliberate policies of the ‘Morganthau Plan’,also the reason that even modern day Germany,is not really a Sovereign nation.
I started school in 1947 in England,but they never taught us that truth.
‘OTHER LOSSES’ by James Bacque
[ An Invesatigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the hands of the French and Americans After World War II, (Little, Brown and Company Ltd., c/o Fenn Publishing Company, Ontario, Canada. 1989, 1999, 2004) ].
They never taught us that truth either.
Ancient or Modern,the British, French and Americans are most definitely NOT civilized as Nato’s 15 year old actions have shown.
cheers.
@ BOT TAK /part 1 – 03:13
“Your descriptions of the “German” corporations did your readers a disservice. They are not German any more. The parasites who own them and manage them, do not consider themselves German, even those of them who are actually German citizens. They are now “gods”, independent of mere national loyalties.”
Absolutely!
Poster child: Klaus Kleinfeld – from
Siemens to Alcoa:
“Klaus Konerko Kleinfeld (born November 6, 1957 in Bremen, Germany) is chief executive officer (CEO) of Alcoa Inc., and former CEO of Siemens AG.[1]
In August 2007, Kleinfeld was appointed COO of Alcoa Inc.[2] Beginning October 1, 2007, he oversaw the operative business for the US Aluminum concern. In May 2008, Kleinfeld was appointed as CEO of Alcoa,”… (Wikipedia)
More then 60% of shares of the 30 big companies listed in DAX, are opwned by foreigners (which means that more then 60% of dividends go into foreign wallets), mostly US.
These people do certainly not have any loyalty to Germans but are imho actually stateless passport holders – so called citizens of the world (as that despicable CNN rag Amanpour likes to call herself too).
These are the few ways we can practice humility:
To speak as little as possible of one’s self.
To mind one’s own business.
Not to want to manage other people’s affairs.
To avoid curiosity.
To accept contradictions and correction cheerfully.
To pass over the mistakes of others.
To accept insults and injuries.
To accept being slighted, forgotten and disliked.
To be kind and gentle even under provocation.
Never to stand on one’s dignity.
To choose always the hardest.
@ Frau Henn – 28 December, 2014 04:28
„ I am German. So it is my grievance, and my shame…it is because I am German that I consider it important to remember the historical facts as much as perceive the present ones.”
I AM German too and I guess that I have been around much longer then you.
If being German is a problem because of all the grievances, give up your passport, look for greener pastures. There are still some around, I assure you. I mean it because times might become tougher.
Historical fact?, See through the game that is being played:
Merkel zu “60 Jahre Israel” (her speech to Knesset, 2008)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qSG_mmnoZMM
I am PROUD to be a German, at least I was until Merkel came into power (I admit, by a political uneducated electorate thanks to the school system).
You forget, that Germany is
1 – the only country in this world that has acknowledged officially “guilt”
2 – a country that has tried (+succeeded) to make good with huge financial compensation/contributions to various countries, individuals
3 – since after WWII one of the biggest donors of “Entwicklungshilfe” (funds for development of foreign countries
(Remember FM Genscher´s check book he used to travel around with?)
4 – always one of the biggest finaciers of UN, actually no. 3, shouldering 7,1% of reg. budget cost after USA/22%, Japan/10,8%.
Compare with: GB (5,2%), France (5,6%(Italy (4,4%) (Auswärtiges Amt, Berlin)
4 – Then came unification in 1989.
The exchange rate for the DDR currency was 1:1. Was THAT generous?
At the same time the special “solidarity tax” was invented, paid by everybody on everything. This tax is still with us, 25 yrs later!
From 1990 onwards, german govs sent around DM 150 Milliarden ($ billions) /year of hard earned money into the eastern part, now enjoing a much better infrastructure then many places in the western part.
I AM proud of all these good deeds, Frau Henn, and YOU should be too!
THAT, the money flows, Frau Henn, was observed closely by quite a few foreigners unfortunately (incl. the greedy hegemon that is still occupying us) and one day, the US/anglozionists decided to plunder us right after they started plundering Russia.
In 2000 they forced the euro on us, knowing full well, that a huge majority of Germans were against this stupidity.
But then came the final blow in 1992: Maastricht treaty = establishment of the present EUcracy.
The average German was not really amused, knowing full well, that a power hungry, dumb, corrupt nomenklature would now rule in form of unelected bureaucracy, spreading like a malignant cancer.
And Merkel and her obedient CDU + “coalition partner” SPD?
“No Joke. US Puppet Merkel Is Person of the Year for UK Paper”
http://russia-insider.com/en/2014/12/27/2157
This is called a poisoned gift! Merkel doesn´t work for the benefit of Germany.
IMO she is characterless and THAT might be the reason why she was chosen long ago to head Germany one day.
Wasn´t she a privilegded one already in the GDR?
The final goal of the political ploy? You can read about it from Bernd Lüthje, former banker:
Appell an Angela Merkel: „Stoppen Sie Mario Draghi – jetzt!“
(DWN)
:
part 1
part 2 –
@ Frau Henn – 28 December, 2014 04:28
Appell an Angela Merkel: „Stoppen Sie Mario Draghi – jetzt!“
(Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten)
:
The USanglozionists had made a decision: Destroy the world market competitor Germany – we are no. 3 with just 42 million people working and paying fat taxes and fees plus those special “solidarity fees” – AND destroy the huge and energy rich, commodity rich and meanwhile financially very solid Russia – everything with ONE stroke.
Dismantle Russia into small “manageable” parts and make Germany the “Hinterhof”, an unimportant western european backyard with the really unimportant Baltics, Poland and Rumania right in front of them as a “buffer” (have they not been endlessly pampered with huge EU funds, to a large part german money, Poland in first place?)..
It does not matter what Deutsche Bank does: they are NOT doing anything different then be big Rothschild banks in the City of London Corp. For ex.: remember HSBC and the whitewash of drug money?
The Libor and gold manipulations were orchestrated by a banker cabal, not DB alone.
Germans are not realy responsible for what the politruks are doing. Why? We vote for whatever party but the outcome is always the same: after the election they have forgotten everything they had promised and do the opposite.
And btw, Frau Henn, I happen to be one of the proud 2013 founding members (in my state) of the new party AfD (Alternative für Deutschland).
I (and f + f) am not prepared to swallow what Merkel and her int. overlords are serving us until Germans are non existant, hvbe finally disappeared from this planet.
Modern Capitalism–It is an international system which has been built on the old structure of the nation state and therein lies its biggest problem. The EU countries are still “wild cards” in the big scheme of THE MACHINE. They have labor movements and potentially very functional democracies.
they do not put “excess” people into a prison/industrial complex–not yet nor in any great numbers. The powers that be are going to try to keep people out of it—they will use robots ( drones), economic manipulation ( crashes where people lose their savings and become desperate) and proxy wars which provide shivers of entertainment, outrage and horror for the so called “first world” audiences. There is a lot more in their play books than all out war including making pacts with drug gangs to terrorize whole nation states.
That said, my military expert friend says that Russia has well built bomb shelters that can preserve 1/2 the population and if it comes out the the Russians are running drills with these, then their Intelligence has gotten wind of some rotten moves in the works and they are preparing for the unthinkable.
From a strictly “human reactions” point of view it seems to me that the author has a chip on her shoulder: the article mentions a number of good points but most of these points are used to illustrate some sort of German deviousness or culpability.
Some of the points also have other interpretations as some of the commenters have observed, f. ex.
– offshoring can be viewed as a profit motivation by business elites, it can be viewed as a deindustrialization motivation by zionist elites or as a finance motivation to redistribute income to the banksters.
– the motivation for war may be an intrinsic part of some big business groups (“military-industrial” f. ex.) but they are not the only interestees: empire-type governments generally produce wars (and genocides) because of power-craze motivations or to hide failing policies.
The point I personally found the most interesting was the mention of industry efficiency. It is my impression that we are inexorably moving towards a situation where machines will increasingly replace humans in the unskilled (soon the less-skilled) jobs and we will have to find a way to let these people live too (f. ex. some of our own children or grand-children may be part of those groups)
part 2
@ Frau Henn – 28 December, 2014 04:28
Appell an Angela Merkel: „Stoppen Sie Mario Draghi – jetzt!“
(Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten)
:
The USanglozionists had made a decision: Destroy the world market competitor Germany – we are no. 3 with just 42 million people working and paying fat taxes and fees plus those special “solidarity fees” – AND destroy the huge and energy rich, commodity rich and meanwhile financially very solid Russia – everything with ONE stroke.
Dismantle Russia into small “manageable” parts and make Germany the “Hinterhof”, an unimportant western european backyard with the really unimportant Baltics, Poland and Rumania right in front of them as a “buffer” (have they not been endlessly pampered with huge EU funds, to a large part german money, Poland in first place?)..
It does not matter what Deutsche Bank does: they are NOT doing anything different then be big Rothschild banks in the City of London Corp. For ex.: remember HSBC and the whitewash of drug money?
The Libor and gold manipulations were orchestrated by a banker cabal, not DB alone.
Germans are not really responsible for what the politruks are doing. Why? We vote for whatever but the outcome is always the same: after the election they have forgotten everything they promised and do the opposite.
And btw, Frau Henn, I happen to be one of the proud founding members (in my state) of our new party AfD.
I (and f + f) am not prepared to swallow what Merkel is serving us.
How do they say? Don´t talk the talk but walk the walk.
@ NotSoFast said…
Yes, thinking of 3D printing can give one the creeps.
bob kay said…
“It is state bureaucracies which make war, not the capitalist bogeyman.”
Just the opposite, Bob. Social Security and Medicare don’t make war. Congress and the President do because they have been captured by the Big Banks and Big Business. The money which is electing both comes from Banking and Corporate America. The purpose of the wars is to benefit these. Iraq war was to loot their oil and is now to break Iraq into smaller pieces so that it can offer no resistance to further looting and to the NWO.
NWO is the plan of the less-than-1% for an oligarchy to be run by the owners of banks and largest corporations. It is not planned that nations will even continue to exist.
Nor are today’s generals the moving force behind the wars; generals are appointed by presidents, the puppets of those who elect them w big money: bankers and big business.
I like Rhisiart Gwilyn’s take on whole systems, to which I would add “whole persons” as part of it.
Dagmar Henn used the phrase “fetishist split”. I understand that as an object that has been sexualized and divided to an extreme. Sounds like our culture which is anything but whole and trying to be sexy.
I am curious how an article that features Russia in its title becomes so focused on Germany.
You must not imagine that the US is the top echelon of the plan to create a New World Order. The US is only the temporary tool of this plan:
Historian Carroll Quigley wrote in his epic book Tragedy and Hope that BIS was part of a plan, “to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole…to be controlled in a feudalistic fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements.”
The US government had a historical distrust of BIS, lobbying unsuccessfully for its demise at the 1944 post-WWII Bretton Woods Conference. Instead the Eight Families’ power was exacerbated, with the Bretton Woods creation of the IMF and the World Bank. The US Federal Reserve only took shares in BIS in September 1994
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-federal-reserve-cartel-the-eight-families/25080
Thanks to Anonymous for this excellent link.
I am not sure who said that “countries have no permanent friends, only permanent interests.” Russia (Putin) is leading the attack against American financial monopoly. He had a body in that attack which included or includes Chavez, Kaddafi, Hussein, Ahmadinejad, Milosevic, and Assad, who are either dead or nearly so. What is left Jinping, Modi, Zuma, and Rousseff with a few more coming on board. American strategy, rather than defence is attack to cut the head so that the body dies. Even if they don’t accomplish that it will take decades to rebuild North Africa, Middle East and the Balkans and this is a short term “Keynesian kick” to the American economy. The long term is the next scenario, convince the bovine in the West that Russia (Putin) is a KGB agent who is jealous of America’s way of life and he hates us and wants to destroy us. Trust me the bovine will swallow the simple since they have watched too many reruns of “Saving Private Ryan” and very few if any know anything about Meliton Kantaria and Mikhail Yegorov.
@NotSoFast who says
“…It is my impression that we are inexorably moving towards a situation where machines will increasingly replace humans in the unskilled (soon the less-skilled) jobs…”
In a sensible world, NOT. Even in a materialistic one. Because there is no point in making things if you can’t sell them. No profit if they pile up in the warehouses. To sell things you need customers with money. That means people have to WORK. If half don’ work and you support them with the taxes of the other half, you are reducing the buying power of those as well. And both lots spend firstly on food, and not much left over for the other things you are producing. Unit costs might go up if you employ people rather than machines, but you’ll get the higher prices so still make the profit.
If you take the tough way and kill off the people you can’t employ you are still reducing your customer pool. It is better to employ them. Not in make-work schemes but in actual production that can be sold, so they earn their keep.
mjm, thank you for an interesting comment. I will read it again when I am less rushed. At the moment, I pull out of it only your mention of “excess savings”. I would note that the failure of demand in the US (at least) is not due to excess savings, but the necessity to pay off consumer debt, mortgage debt, student debt, credit card debt.
As Michael Hudson points out, when the instalments on these are paid, there is very little left for current spending.
Regards.
@ Penelope – 28 December, 2014 21:32
Welcome. Yes, it was the wish of th Brits who wanted the BIS to remain.
You should see their BIs fortress of high luxury in Bale/CH! It’s a guarded exterritorial property like an embassy.
No local Swiss can enter. IMO it’s really sort of an obscene and highly secretive set up.
@ Kat Kan
” Because there is no point in making things if you can’t sell them.”
To some extent this is true. However today’s reality also shows that jobs are harder and harder to come by and that business increasingly uses more machines and fewer workers. This is not only for profit but also to avoid human problems associated with absenteism, unions etc. And to me it looks as if this situation is becoming worse. So I believe that we’ll have to face this problem in the near future (10 or 20 years?) – or else accept the existence of a caste of economic “untouchables”
“Marie Antoinette for sure would have turned the planet into a radioactive ashtray without hesitation, if she had the possibility.” – A totally perverted, establishment-conditioned, narrow-minded and borderline delusional statement – rank with hatred too.