07-09-2012, 10:36 AM
In the meantime, for the sake of fueling the debate, I forward to you and your colleagues this recent interview I did with for Asia Times:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Econ...0Dj03.html
Phil's note: Guido Giacomo Preparata's five-page interview with Asian Times' Lars Schall is titled Business as Usual Behind the Slaughter.
I enjoyed the fast pace and frank immediacy. In particular I had to have these pull quotes:
BEGIN EXCERPTS:
GP: All is religion. All history is a reflection of the battle that spiritual forces wage against one another on other planes. It is not economics - and least of all the survival instinct (whatever that is) - that drives history, but the quest for power, and power in its elaborate institutional manifestations is a form of (psychical) space that utterly transcends the relationship of production and distribution, let alone the basic dynamics of the wolf pack, or the more elaborate political economy of the beehive.
GP: They make it appear so, but it's a deception. The English power elite is a monolithic bastion: fissuring in currents and seemingly antagonistic blocs to adapt to the shifting exigencies of any power game is a tactical device older than prostitution itself.
GP: It tells us that even the most extreme of so-called conspiracy theorists are still three layers short of the truth on the actual nature of power game. It seems a suggestion of George Orwell's perennial war, with business as usual behind the slaughter. It is as if the theatrics of the Cold War had been launched already in the final stages of World War II, at a the time when the Hitlerites were notoriously finished (after Stalingrad) and dying of a slow but certain death, and the final phases of the fight were steered to accomplish other kinds of consolidations in view of the stage that was being set up vis-a-vis the grand, mangy circus of the USSR. The mere fact that all the big players were meeting in Bretton Woods in 1944 - that is, when the conflict was not even concluded (!) - to design the financial architecture of the Pax Anglo-Americana is revealing in this regard.
~~~
GP: Schroeders happened to be 1) one of the oldest banking houses in London handling Anglo-German high-level financial relationships, and one of the few privileged institutes that, possibly because of this role, 2) had direct, institutional access to the directorate of the Bank of England. As for Brown Brothers Harriman (in whose London subsidiary Norman had indeed begun his banking career), I don't quite recall what brought it deep into the financing tangle of the Nazis, possibly its strong ties to the City.
As mentioned, it was through one of its outfits that Prescott Bush, the father and grandfather of the 41st and 43rd presidents of the US, conveyed money to Hitler via Rudolf Hess, if I remember correctly. This he did not in the name of some kind of "fascist affinity", as some Leftists have foolishly contended of late, but as (a small) part of the greater design of propping up the Nazis the better to raze Germany to the ground in the forthcoming conflict - conflict for which the Germans had been well supplied by the Americans, under British politico-financial direction, thanks to the Dawes investment boom of 1924-1929.
~~~
There is no doubt in my mind that the Cold War was a colossal pretense orchestrated by the US in collusion with Russia to divide between themselves the planet (the Chinese unknown aside) while allowing the allocation / composition of local conflicts by proxy. As said earlier, the beginnings with Bolshevism are still enveloped in deep mystery, but the entire era is one giant cookie jar of mystery murders, from Korea to the attempt on the life of John Paul II, by way of the Bay of Pigs, JFK, terrorism, Watergate, Vietnam and Cambodia, the Middle Eastern wars, etc. In the context of what I have come to designate as the "Cold Game", it also seems as though Britain entirely vanishes, but she is there, and her steps must be re-traced if one is to understand this essential third act of the 20th century power-play.
In short, it appears that from 1946 to the late 60s, we are in an Orwellian setting of carefully orchestrated perennial war. The reliance on the USSR seems to falter in the early 70s as, more importantly, American leadership itself is severely damaged by the failure in Vietnam and the subsequent suspension of Bretton Woods in 1971. The role and legacy of Richard Nixon are in this regard crucial, as is his demise through Watergate. There follows the uncertain quinquennium of 1974-1979 - a period, as said, of absolutely central significance - during which the forefathers of globalism - the Democrats of the Trilateral Commission - attempt in vain to salvage the situation by attempting to create the global order in the cumbersome presence of a moribund Soviet empire. They will fail; it will be Ronald Reagan's neo-con hawks, instead, that would rise to resolve the Cold Game by pulling the plug on the USSR (1981-1991).
Now, if one is able to arrange all this into one coherent narrative, then and only then will we be able to move on and provide a serious analysis of what has been happening since 9/11 (terrorism, geopolitics etc). Few things to me are as irritating as the academic complaisance that glosses over that era affirming that it was a genuine spiritual conflict between East and West, and that all has been perfectly understood. There was no spiritual conflict and precious little has been understood.
~~~
Be that as it may, it is not enough and whatever is being done is too timid, constricted as it unfortunately is by the pedigree of most "rebels", ie economists who have formed themselves on a varying brew of neo-classical, Chicago, Keynesian economics, and to a minor degree, old-school British political economy (which includes Marxian porridge, in my view). All of which is to say, again, that, foundationally, they, like myself and all those who were cursed enough to have several economics degrees, have no understanding of economics whatsoever. It is, again, a detox process, which starts with doubt and catch-up, night-reading; it's like reassembling the brain after they have attempted to turn it into pulp/mush during the most formative years of one's intellectual development.
END EXCERPTS
I found each gem of note, worthy of comment, but more worthy of thought.
I will frame a question and submit it to Mr. Preparata and post his reply.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Econ...0Dj03.html
Phil's note: Guido Giacomo Preparata's five-page interview with Asian Times' Lars Schall is titled Business as Usual Behind the Slaughter.
I enjoyed the fast pace and frank immediacy. In particular I had to have these pull quotes:
BEGIN EXCERPTS:
GP: All is religion. All history is a reflection of the battle that spiritual forces wage against one another on other planes. It is not economics - and least of all the survival instinct (whatever that is) - that drives history, but the quest for power, and power in its elaborate institutional manifestations is a form of (psychical) space that utterly transcends the relationship of production and distribution, let alone the basic dynamics of the wolf pack, or the more elaborate political economy of the beehive.
GP: They make it appear so, but it's a deception. The English power elite is a monolithic bastion: fissuring in currents and seemingly antagonistic blocs to adapt to the shifting exigencies of any power game is a tactical device older than prostitution itself.
GP: It tells us that even the most extreme of so-called conspiracy theorists are still three layers short of the truth on the actual nature of power game. It seems a suggestion of George Orwell's perennial war, with business as usual behind the slaughter. It is as if the theatrics of the Cold War had been launched already in the final stages of World War II, at a the time when the Hitlerites were notoriously finished (after Stalingrad) and dying of a slow but certain death, and the final phases of the fight were steered to accomplish other kinds of consolidations in view of the stage that was being set up vis-a-vis the grand, mangy circus of the USSR. The mere fact that all the big players were meeting in Bretton Woods in 1944 - that is, when the conflict was not even concluded (!) - to design the financial architecture of the Pax Anglo-Americana is revealing in this regard.
~~~
GP: Schroeders happened to be 1) one of the oldest banking houses in London handling Anglo-German high-level financial relationships, and one of the few privileged institutes that, possibly because of this role, 2) had direct, institutional access to the directorate of the Bank of England. As for Brown Brothers Harriman (in whose London subsidiary Norman had indeed begun his banking career), I don't quite recall what brought it deep into the financing tangle of the Nazis, possibly its strong ties to the City.
As mentioned, it was through one of its outfits that Prescott Bush, the father and grandfather of the 41st and 43rd presidents of the US, conveyed money to Hitler via Rudolf Hess, if I remember correctly. This he did not in the name of some kind of "fascist affinity", as some Leftists have foolishly contended of late, but as (a small) part of the greater design of propping up the Nazis the better to raze Germany to the ground in the forthcoming conflict - conflict for which the Germans had been well supplied by the Americans, under British politico-financial direction, thanks to the Dawes investment boom of 1924-1929.
~~~
There is no doubt in my mind that the Cold War was a colossal pretense orchestrated by the US in collusion with Russia to divide between themselves the planet (the Chinese unknown aside) while allowing the allocation / composition of local conflicts by proxy. As said earlier, the beginnings with Bolshevism are still enveloped in deep mystery, but the entire era is one giant cookie jar of mystery murders, from Korea to the attempt on the life of John Paul II, by way of the Bay of Pigs, JFK, terrorism, Watergate, Vietnam and Cambodia, the Middle Eastern wars, etc. In the context of what I have come to designate as the "Cold Game", it also seems as though Britain entirely vanishes, but she is there, and her steps must be re-traced if one is to understand this essential third act of the 20th century power-play.
In short, it appears that from 1946 to the late 60s, we are in an Orwellian setting of carefully orchestrated perennial war. The reliance on the USSR seems to falter in the early 70s as, more importantly, American leadership itself is severely damaged by the failure in Vietnam and the subsequent suspension of Bretton Woods in 1971. The role and legacy of Richard Nixon are in this regard crucial, as is his demise through Watergate. There follows the uncertain quinquennium of 1974-1979 - a period, as said, of absolutely central significance - during which the forefathers of globalism - the Democrats of the Trilateral Commission - attempt in vain to salvage the situation by attempting to create the global order in the cumbersome presence of a moribund Soviet empire. They will fail; it will be Ronald Reagan's neo-con hawks, instead, that would rise to resolve the Cold Game by pulling the plug on the USSR (1981-1991).
Now, if one is able to arrange all this into one coherent narrative, then and only then will we be able to move on and provide a serious analysis of what has been happening since 9/11 (terrorism, geopolitics etc). Few things to me are as irritating as the academic complaisance that glosses over that era affirming that it was a genuine spiritual conflict between East and West, and that all has been perfectly understood. There was no spiritual conflict and precious little has been understood.
~~~
Be that as it may, it is not enough and whatever is being done is too timid, constricted as it unfortunately is by the pedigree of most "rebels", ie economists who have formed themselves on a varying brew of neo-classical, Chicago, Keynesian economics, and to a minor degree, old-school British political economy (which includes Marxian porridge, in my view). All of which is to say, again, that, foundationally, they, like myself and all those who were cursed enough to have several economics degrees, have no understanding of economics whatsoever. It is, again, a detox process, which starts with doubt and catch-up, night-reading; it's like reassembling the brain after they have attempted to turn it into pulp/mush during the most formative years of one's intellectual development.
END EXCERPTS
I found each gem of note, worthy of comment, but more worthy of thought.
I will frame a question and submit it to Mr. Preparata and post his reply.