SERFDOM INDENTURED SERVITUDE SLAVERY

Americans nowadays tend to think of their ancestors as quite free individuals who rightly rebelled against despotic encroachments by crown and aristocracy on their natural and unfettered liberties as British citizens. 

That was generally not the situation. There were a lot of indentured servants who were not free at all regardless of crown or aristocracy.

In general, one important point, it seems to me, is that there was, in practice, less of a difference between these categories, serfdom, indentured servitude, and slavery, than one might suppose. 

Indentured servitude was of shorter duration, at least for those who survived it. Serfdom and slavery were both more restrictive than indentured servitude, but it was more a matter of degree rather than of kind in many ways in practice.

Video reference: Captain Blood

J H Elliott has a detailed, lively, and very very learned discussion of this whole area in the New World context.

INDENTURED SERVITUDE TRANSPORTATION SLAVERY ETC

RE THIS RECENT POST TOPIC: 

SO WHEN DID WHITE OR BLACK OR YELLOW AD HOC SLAVERY INDENTURED SERVITUDE IN AMERICA FINALLY END

Americans know little of this complex history; they think mainly of black slavery and of the Civil War. 

There were huge numbers.  Huge numbers of whites of all kinds came over under indentures, or were transported as prisoners of war, or as convicts sentenced to transportation.

A high proportion of indentured servants, especially in the 17th Century, died before their contracts ended. Many had been offered acreage at the end of their indenture, to lure them to come. Some actually collected. 

Allison has a poignant passage in one of his lectures, Before 1776, on the fate of those who did not, and on what happened to the land they had been trying to live to get.

Especially those sent to the West Indies sugar islands, indentured or whatever, did not last long. Black slaves died there too in droves, although they were better able to stand the climate.

RE NYT TODAY RE HYPOTHETICAL SCENARIO

Maybe I have it a little wrong. Who knows?
But it seems that what I have said, re hypothetical scenario so far,  is true enough.

Israel is sort of conservative Jewish. NYT is sort of liberal.

Just for an example: NYT article today calls Israeli settler initiative piracy.

That is fairly bitter, it seems to me.

BBC India to grant residency to rich foreigners

I recommend you all take luxury lots, near the Pakistani border, so you don't get bored.

I also recommend plenty of Chinese, Muslims, and Japanese move there, really rev up the Indian economy.

I suggest that our top .1 of 1% offshore there, turn India into a fairyland.

MASQUERADE WHAT IS REAL

RE MASQUERADE

Following up on one of James Grant's musings: 

What does 'interest rate' mean, in the masquerade?

You might say something like:

Why, it is what the Fed does.

RE LOST IN A MASQUERADE

Let's just take one simple example, something really fundamental, P/E ratios?

Question, what, really, is P?

What, really is E?

In the Masquerade?

You might say, well, we are just tracking historical figures?

What has 'history' been, in the Masquerade?

LOST IN A MASQUERADE G 20

Think: To Catch A Thief.

What is the point of tracking prices, wages, wealth, earnings, valuations, interest rates, inflation, deflation, economy, in a world where currency secretly is printed, by every regime, behind a screen?

What, in each case, do you think you are tracking?

YOU SEE FRONT OFFICE LIBERALS HERE STOOGES REALLY

did not see that, after the collapse of the USSR, room here for a middle class, or even a respectable lower class, in the West, had already collapsed too.

All that is left here in the West are liberal and conservative front office, often out of work, upper middle, middle, and lower class stooges of what has been, and what is to come.

For those who might think this a cynical view, I will explain cynicism to you. Cynicism is disappointed idealism, or derived from lives of hard experience.

I have never been a disappointed idealist, or had a lot of hard experience.

I AM JUST GOING TO PUT IT THIS WAY

When two people like Thomas Piketty and James Grant agree on gold standard and fiat currency issues, you know you've got a big problem.

No doubt you all don't believe me, about Piketty...pgs 548, 557.

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2015/05/re-piketty-and-fed.html

NYT RE TRUMP FARAGE ROAD SHOW

This is how they, the NYT, Brooks and company, have to paint this.

True enough, these are Western Civ, even Anglophone, political demagogues....

The problem is, that initiatives of this kind, by very late blooming demagogues, are already way way too late to constitute constructive, or even very real, changes, in how the West has done business with other civilizations, and within its own territory, since the late 19th Century. 

Those days have been gone forever, for a long time now, in the West.

RE HYPOTHETICAL SCENARIO

Let's say that ultra conservative Jews, not the liberal ones, somehow take power....

There are plenty of both of them, liberal and conservative, bitter enemies in their ways, by influence, now, in both parties, at the top, that no one is discussing.

The conservative ones, have now been outed, at least among the Republicans, on the far right of Trump's campaign, re Breitbart, etc.

Signally, David Brooks, a classic, rather illiberal, globalist international economic order party of Davos Republican, a rather, so called, conservative Jew, maybe would have been dubbed a neocon, in former days, is now for Hillary:

See now: "The Dark Knight"

Wonder why?

He is speaking, just down the street, this week. 
I don't plan to go. Why bother?

He and Marc Shields, former fixtures of that, frankly, studiedly unenlightening, narcoleptic, MacNeill Lehrer News Hour.

He can read my column, on the other hand, not a lot of hide the ball window dressing, right here, for free....
Say, Re Hypothetical Scenario II, coming up.

re Kyrgyz WHERE THE FAULT LINES

Between the Orthodox, Muslim, and Confucian Civilizations?

RE CIVILIZATION AND TOLERATION REFORMATION ENLIGHTENMENT

Re prior post:
THERE WERE ARAB MUSLIMS AND THERE WERE BLACK AFRICAN MUSLIMS

They were not part of what was at first known, during the Wars of Religion, as people for whom toleration was deemed appropriate, put it that way.

They were not even part, for obvious reasons, of what later was known as the liberal Enlightenment notion of tolerance, incorporated into founding father documents here, etc.

RE RACE ETC HUNTINGTON THE CLASH

He sets the discussion of civilizations in other terms, cultural and religious contexts. 

Civilizations lie over, and are distinct from, racial features as such, but they are deeply related to them nevertheless.

Race simmers in the background, referred to by Huntington roughly as ethnicity, but it is still there, just beneath the surface of the discourse. 

It is a very difficult concept, because racial characteristics can vary so much even within a single civilization. Yet most people from different civilizations can tell the civilizational as well as racial background of others, often merely by physical appearance, and by physical appearance I do not mean merely skin color, but things like physiognomy, stature, hair and eye color, facial expression, etc.

Civilizational associations, apart from racial ones, include very many other things, language, religion, diet, personality, social surroundings, national origin, etc. 

PAGLIA

I just read DK's old paean to Paglia.

They were, especially his later stuff, way too caught up in sensationalism and hyperbole, even making it up as one goes along. (Note to Randy: I am, of course, not at all against improvisation, as improvisation.)

Paglia was a joy to read, but then you sat back and reflected on what outlandish things she had just asserted.

My wife, who follows NPR closely, just referred me to Laqueur's podcasts, as a way to get European History. 

I almost lost my cookies.

THERE WERE ARAB MUSLIMS AND THERE WERE BLACK AFRICAN MUSLIMS

and all colors in between. India Muslims, for example.

For the conquistadors, and later for other Europeans, it was OK to enslave any of them.

They were personae non gratae in the Christian New World, anyway, except as slaves.

SO WHEN DID WHITE OR BLACK OR YELLOW AD HOC SLAVERY INDENTURED SERVITUDE IN AMERICA FINALLY END

Only after the Civil War, with the 13th Amendment, over which the Civil War had not been fought, Lincoln probably cared nothing about, and for whom indentured servitude had not ever even been an issue, certainly not in his platform.

RE RACE AN ARTIFICIAL TERM

I still have not explained what I meant, but I have been doing a little setting of the stage.

CONQUISTADOR WAYS TO ENSLAVE NATIVES THE MENU

Normally, the Spanish were prevented by Catholicism from enslaving subject people...

But they could do so based on a just war. They could also do so to the Caribs, who were cannibals................


They also did a whole lot of enslaving of native people because no one was there who would have tried to stop them. 

Most people in fact thought it was a perfectly predictable and normal way to proceed; Europe, after all, was filled with serfs, indentured servants, and slaves.

The Spanish had just driven the Muslims from the Iberian peninsula by force after many decades, in fact centuries, of war.

RACE AND YOUR AVERAGE AMERICAN

who gets all hopped up about black slavery, really ought to get a load of Elliott's account of the history of servitude, more in general, in the New World in general, in the book just cited below. 

It's not a pretty picture, but at least it is a whole lot more real.

Most American so called white people go around with this huge load of guilt about black slavery.

I do not. 

A huge load of indentured servants, probably a bigger number, in total, than all the blacks who were shipped here to North America, most of whom for all practical purposes were slaves, were white.

JAPAN EYES FIERCER FIGHTER JETS

Consumer economy.
Nuf said.

RE IDEOLOGY SOCIOLOGY RITUAL RANDALL COLLINS

I think this discussion is rather illuminating:

"Much of it concerns the origins and application of violence, but this blog post on Randall Collins and his theory of ritual, by Xavier Marquez, is interesting throughout.  Here is one excerpt:

The (relative) insignificance of ideology. Taken in its strongest terms, Collins’ theory seems to suggest that ideology is generally unimportant. Whether a symbol acquires socially motivating value depends much less on its “generalized” meaning than on its place within chains of interaction rituals; we are not generally the dupes of rhetorical framings and persuasive strategies except in the context of successful ritual situations. (Collins notes, for example, that most advertisement seems to be unsuccessful at actually persuading people to buy products, and is mostly intended to preserve attention space against competitors). From this perspective, the decline of labor movements worldwide, for example, may owe less to any ideological changes (“persuasion” and “manipulation” taken in a very broad sense) than to (intentional or unintentional) changes in the conditions for the ritual production of solidarity. Chris Bertram recently mused on the occasion of Margaret Thatcher’s death that UK society used to be socially more class-differentiated (there were strong institutions where class solidarities and roles were produced) but is now less so (since these institutions have vanished), despite very low levels of economic mobility and higher levels of economic inequality; many people now “feel” that there is more equality. From the interaction ritual perspective, these changes are not the result of the working class becoming simply convinced of lies due to clever persuasive strategies by elites, but of the less central place of rituals and symbols reinforcing class solidarity in their lives. This is in turn due to any number of causes: laws that made labor unions more difficult to organize, structural changes in employment patterns, the decay of rituals of deference, the emergence of rituals focused on celebrities that cut across social class, etc.

Collins is one of the most important social scientists in the world today, though in many circles he remains underdiscussed.  You will findprevious MR coverage of him here.  The pointer is from @HenryFarrell."

WHAT WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT HUMAN HOLOCAUST IN RECORDED HISTORY BY FAR

The destruction of the native people of the Western Hemisphere, by disease.

RE FEFUGEES AND IMMIGRANTS WORLDWIDE ACROSS CIVILIZATIONAL BOUNDARIES

They all want cheap labor, BUT THEY GET A WHOLE LOT MORE!

 They don't care about color of skin.... 

After all, aren't we all one, under it?

BBC RE ILLEGAL CHINESE IMMIGRATION RING IN SPAIN

Shape of things past, and things to come, baby.

RE RACE QUESTIONS

What is a blackamoor?

What was Othello? The Moor of Venice.

'The gentlemen have their train of blackamoor slaves.' Thomas Gage, writing re New Spain, 1625. J H Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, p 101.

A PROPOS DK CURRENT POST THE CONCEPT OF RACE ITSELF

as it has been used in the West, since at least 1763, is an artificial one.  

It is based, in part at least, on what one might call an enlightenment notion of man, but it goes even further back than that intellectually.

What do I mean by this, then?
Am I affirming, for instance, something like what Randall Collins said, somewhere in The Sociology of Philosophies, when he asserted that we are all one under the skin, that the concept itself of race is artificial in this sense, that we are all homo sapiens, one species, so to speak?

No, that is not at all what I am getting at here.

It is something a little more complicated than that.

RE ARENDT BREITBART

I have not followed Breitbart, except to note DK's passing references.

Taking a glance at their sites, it seems that they are indeed a conservative Jewish tabloid type organization.

The other interesting thing is that they have lost some of their Jewish voices among the personnel, in the reach out to  bigoted anti Semitic American Christian right wing populism. 

The neocon movement, as DK noted, started out as a conservative Jewish initiative, but it reached out for its stooges primarily to liberal and centrist gentile Christians, not to far right wingers.

American ultras, so to speak, would never be the deep friends of conservative Jews, but rather their enemies.

It is hard to imagine a conservative Jewish secret society keeping and holding a large front organization, in Arendt's sense, even as ignorant stooges, of a large contingent of truly conservative radical right Christians.

This brings me to the question: where does Trump really fit into this framework?

Is he a bona fide insider, in fact the leader insider, or a fellow traveler? 

Is he the boss, or the biggest stooge? 

Hitler always kept his actual role ambiguous. 

WHY WOULD I WANT TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE NYT?

I mainly rip off their titles as cannon fodder for my blog.

Thomas Friedman, David Brooks. Please. 

These, as the colonials used to accuse the British Whig politicians of being, are thorough paced tools.

THE MURDOCHS PREFERRED TO DEBAUCH FOR PROFIT

rather than to manipulate (Milner group) for political ends, the reading public.

Neither side, of course, thought to actually try to enlighten them.

NYT today 8/27/16: The Dumbed Down Democracy

NYT played its part too.

SOMEONE CAN CORRECT ME IF I AM WRONG

Professor Kaiser, and anyone else, is right to rail against so called single issue politicians. They are endemic to our flawed system.

It seems to me that Lincoln epitomized in some ways this unfortunate tendency in American politics, the rise of essentially one issue politicians. 

His one issue had become bifurcated by his time; it seemed like two issues, but it was really only one issue: the union against slavery.

This was the Republican Party platform 1860:

Resolved, That we, the delegated representatives of the Republican electors of the United States in Convention assembled, in discharge of the duty we owe to our constituents and our country, unite in the following declarations:

1. That the history of the nation during the last four years, has fully established the propriety and necessity of the organization and perpetuation of the Republican party, and that the causes which called it into existence are permanent in their nature, and now, more than ever before, demand its peaceful and constitutional triumph.

2. That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Federal Constitution, "That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," is essential to the preservation of our Republican institutions; and that the Federal Constitution, the Rights of the States, and the Union of the States must and shall be preserved.

3. That to the Union of the States this nation owes its unprecedented increase in population, its surprising development of material resources, its rapid augmentation of wealth, its happiness at home and its honor abroad; and we hold in abhorrence all schemes for disunion, come from whatever source they may. And we congratulate the country that no Republican member of Congress has uttered or countenanced the threats of disunion so often made by Democratic members, without rebuke and with applause from their political associates; and we denounce those threats of disunion, in case of a popular overthrow of their ascendency as denying the vital principles of a free government, and as an avowal of contemplated treason, which it is the imperative duty of an indignant people sternly to rebuke and forever silence.

4. That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the states, and especially the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of powers on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depends; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any state or territory, no matter under what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.

5. That the present Democratic Administration has far exceeded our worst apprehensions, in its measureless subserviency to the exactions of a sectional interest, as especially evinced in its desperate exertions to force the infamous Lecompton Constitution upon the protesting people of Kansas; in construing the personal relations between master and servant to involve an unqualified property in persons; in its attempted enforcement everywhere, on land and sea, through the intervention of Congress and of the Federal Courts of the extreme pretensions of a purely local interest; and in its general and unvarying abuse of the power intrusted to it by a confiding people.

6. That the people justly view with alarm the reckless extravagance which pervades every department of the Federal Government; that a return to rigid economy and accountability is indispensable to arrest the systematic plunder of the public treasury by favored partisans; while the recent startling developments of frauds and corruptions at the Federal metropolis, show that an entire change of administration is imperatively demanded.

7. That the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery into any or all of the territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself, with contemporaneous exposition, and with legislative and judicial precedent; is revolutionary in its tendency, and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country.

8. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom: That, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that "no persons should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States.

9. That we brand the recent reopening of the African slave trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity and a burning shame to our country and age; and we call upon Congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic

10. That in the recent vetoes, by their Federal Governors, of the acts of the legislatures of Kansas and Nebraska, prohibiting slavery in those territories, we find a practical illustration of the boasted Democratic principle of Non-Intervention and Popular Sovereignty, embodied in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and a demonstration of the deception and fraud involved therein.

11. That Kansas should, of right, be immediately admitted as a state under the Constitution recently formed and adopted by her people, and accepted by the House of Representatives.

12. That, while providing revenue for the support of the general government by duties upon imports, sound policy requires such an adjustment of these imports as to encourage the development of the industrial interests of the whole country; and we commend that policy of national exchanges, which secures to the workingmen liberal wages, to agriculture remunerative prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate reward for their skill, labor, and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence.

13. That we protest against any sale or alienation to others of the public lands held by actual settlers, and against any view of the free-homestead policy which regards the settlers as paupers or suppliants for public bounty; and we demand the passage by Congress of the complete and satisfactory homestead measure which has already passed the House.

14. That the Republican party is opposed to any change in our naturalization laws or any state legislation by which the rights of citizens hitherto accorded to immigrants from foreign lands shall be abridged or impaired; and in favor of giving a full and efficient protection to the rights of all classes of citizens, whether native or naturalized, both at home and abroad.

15. That appropriations by Congress for river and harbor improvements of a national character, required for the accommodation and security of an existing commerce, are authorized by the Constitution, and justified by the obligation of Government to protect the lives and property of its citizens.

16. That a railroad to the Pacific Ocean is imperatively demanded by the interests of the whole country; that the federal government ought to render immediate and efficient aid in its construction; and that, as preliminary thereto, a daily overland mail should be promptly established.

17. Finally, having thus set forth our distinctive principles and views, we invite the co-operation of all citizens, however differing on other questions, who substantially agree with us in their affirmance and support.

You can kid yourself about it, but, with a few frills, (number 12 was good, but he did not carry it far) and lip service to states' rights in number 4, that is really what it comes to. 

It seems to me that this is may be what he himself is implying in number 17:

17. Finally, having thus set forth our distinctive principles and views, we invite the co-operation of all citizens, however differing on other questions, who substantially agree with us in their affirmance and support.

RE REVOLUTIONS AND THE DECLINE OF THE WEST

As Palmer remarked, in passing, the 18th Century saw the revolution of the Western world, the 20th the revolution of the non Western.

I would say that it was only the revolution in the West from, 1763 to 1800, which he discusses, that made the revolution of the non West against the West in the 20th Century possible. 

i might add that this revolution of the non West against the West is ongoing now into the 21st Century.

Americans do not see it as a revolution of this kind, but it is.

RUPERT MURDOCH'S FATHER MILNER GROUP

Protege of Lord, actually Viscount, Northcliffe, of the Times, among others................Northcliffe had been a member of the Group.

Just a thot, talking about conspiracies.... 

He, Northcliffe, broke with the Group, and they then took over The Times...1922.

Terms search: (The Anglo-American Establishment, Index, not this site) Northcliffe

Rupert is a libertarian, meaning, really, only a globalist market capitalist. The father of the tabloids. 

His father had been the grandfather, and that is why he was bought out by the Milner Group in 1922.

Terms search: Lorch

boop

Hows about, say, a remake of  "Aguirre, Wrath of God", 

on location?

I like that idea.

RE BREITBART ETC CONSPIRACY ASSERTIONS BACK AND FORTH MCCARTHY DK

Re Arendt's analysis:

The secret society in broad daylight...

Which party is better so described?

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2011/01/re-close-up-look-at-new-gilded-age.html

RE ECONOMICS CONFLATION NEOCONFLATION

James Grant:
The Forgotten Depression of 1921
YouTube, Talks At Google

My observation: Even so liberal a guy as Piketty seems to share so conservative a guy as Grant's views on currency.

Of course, Grant leaves out huge portions of the big picture himself, as also does Piketty, but that is another bigger story.

terms search: inflation deflation, Bozoflation, Conflation, Thurston

RE BOBBITT'S STATES OF TERROR VERSUS STATES OF CONSENT

"The mainspring of popular government in time of revolution is both virtue and terror... Terror is nothing but justice,... the principle of democracy, applied to the pressing needs of the country." Robespierre

See Palmer The Struggle, p 124, comparing the ideals of Adams and Robespierre. 

Adams had had an idyllic situation, the Powers had been on his side, against England. 

Robespierre did not, the Powers had united against revolutionary France. 

So, why had the powers been for the revolutionary colonials, but against revolutionary France?

Good question.

Why was Thomas Paine put in Prison by Robespierre's government? Good question.

Thomas Paine: Samantha Power

ANOTHER CLASSIC SOMEONE NOTICED

RE JOSEPH NYE PUNDITOCRACY ALSO KEOHANE THE RIGHT WAY TO TRIM NYT EISENHOWER ASIA PANDER

CLASSIC POST FROM 2010

Friday, December 31, 2010

RE PROFESSIONS EXPERTS SPECIALISTS IN DECLINE VERTICAL MONOPOLY INTEGRATION

I want to say a word about some loosely related matters, which cross different fields, regarding cooptation of what used to be called the professions, and also cooptation of burgeoning experts within various emerging fields as well.

Recall that we wondered why the lead impresarios of certain types of human endeavors were experts, or professionals, previously even limited to a few 'learned' professions, of certain types, eg architects, doctors, accountants, scientists, lawyers?

In the century just past, these vocations were increasingly taken over by what some would call market forces, but I would call even monopoly forces.

A classic example, from classic quasi-pulp fiction, is the architect hero of Ayn Rand's novel The Fountainhead, Howard Roark.

There are few 'Howard Roarks' around nowadays; their field was coopted by the construction industry, construction companies, general contractors taking over, construction managers, vertical construction firm integration, design/build firms, architects' services usually just one small input, things like that.

I shared a house with some architect grad students at MIT back in the 70s (visions of Howard Roark); they bemoaned the process, well under way at that time even then. Frank Lloyd Wright (apparently the model for Roark) may have been almost the last, except for the few really big 'name' commercial late 20th C architects.

Very similar kinds of processes have been going on for decades now, in fields as diverse as law and medicine, once learned professions which dominated their fields by technical expertise, and meritocratic criteria up to a point, who called the shots in their areas, and policed themselves as best or as badly as they could, in a loose system of regulation.

Similarly, doctors have increasingly been coopted by drug companies and the insurance industry, which increasingly have been calling the shots both on what they prescribe, on how much they are paid for their skills, and whose constraints configure the practices more than any other single factor.

Similarly for lawyers and the insurance companies. Some lawyers even have some favored coopted medical experts in their stables, rather than rely on impartial doctors who live largely by work outside the legal forensic area. Similarly, some lawyers corruptly rely on forensic medical experts for their livelihoods.

Even liability feuds between these professions were eventually more or less largely coopted by the insurance industry, a bigger more organized hitter with governments.

Public educational and private corporate institutions increasingly dominate the directions and the conclusions of 'research', and the discoveries made, by exact and not so exact science experts in their employ or influence.

Companies, often MNCS, and other entities which control either the funding, production, or the channels of distribution, and eventually the politics, lobbyists (see eg below comment), gain control at the expense of the professions, and of other experts, especially individual practitioners, as inputs.

The business man, the executive, the banker, the insurance executive, the call the shots for the erstwhile learned professions and others.

The Casanova hand of the monopolistic market at work, concepts of profitability overwhelming all other foreign considerations.

Oddly, it has been the unfettered march of an ostensibly individualistic social and economic order which utterly overwhelmed Randian individualistic types, although we continue to pay lip service to it with the so-called entrepreneurial, or Maverick, or even 'the overconfident CEO' (outlined recently in the BU School of Management Magazine), model of the successful person.

Has it been on balance a good development for the societies in which this has happened? On the whole, I think not.

John Droz, jr., wrote a comment on DK's site, this post:

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/2010/12/self-restraint.html

I rather liked it too, in context of this topic:

"Anyway I am a physicist and longtime environmental advocate. In my view what is happening is that real science is being diminished, and lobbyists are taking over on all levels. This is how such trivialities as wind energy have gotten so far."

REPRISING AN ECONOMISTS CLASSIC

Cobdenist Manchester School Corn Law Rant:

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2010/06/cobdenist-manchester-school-corn-law.html

boop

I understand you are up to 97 pounds.
Congratulations.

BBC THE US PRISON MENU

Imagine food so bad that you traffic in Ramen Noodles?

CHINA NORTH OR SOUTH CHINA SEA ALL THE SAME

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/oil-company-mixes-search-for-profits-with-strategic-role-kz9kt87gz

DEMAGOGUES HAVE ALWAYS FOUND THE BIBLE USEFUL

regardless of the veracity of the ' translation '.

It can mean anything one wants it to mean, stand for or against any proposition, on a particular occasion.

WHAT REALLY WAS THE ENLIGHTENMENT?

One might say, with some justification, that it was the dead end of the Reformation. 

The Reformation had been a kind of long series of civil wars between, among, and within the Old European Aristocracies, and involving their monarchies and emperors, as well as The Papacy.

The common Protestant man was more ignorant, more blindly evangelical, more superstitious, and more under the arbitrary sway of fragmented and demagogic preachers, after the Reformation and the wars of religion, in say 1650, than he had been, as a common Catholic man, before it. Trust me. 

The best example of how this would develop may be Luther himself.

BBC ISLAMIST MALIAN EXTREMIST DESTROYED SHRINES IN TIMBUKTU MALI

Why waste everyone's time with nonsense like this?

He is a native Malian. 

They should have let the Malians deal with this as a domestic matter in isolation, not make it a Western Europe cause celebre!

The place is totally surrounded now, anyway, and gradually being buried, by the Sahara Desert sand dunes...

NYT RE WHOSE LIVES SHOULD BE SAVED

Why not broaden the inquiry here?

The NYT opens all kinds of doors I walk through....

How about voluntary euthanasia?

I recommend it for about three billion people, worldwide, now living on the brink of starvation, amid perpetual tribal and other kinds of war, and longstanding environmental degradation. 

I say give them the choice? Call it aggressive human rights advocacy. Samantha Power can head up the initiative.

SELFIE IN CASE YOU WONDERED WHAT I LOOK LIKE

ALREADY A CLASSIC IN MY JUDGMENT

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/search?q=stalin+trump

RE DALLAS

I pointed out that American politics, such as it is, at the local and state level, is illustrated there.

Maybe I exaggerate, but think of the Barnes and the Ewings as Democrats and Republicans. That fleshes it out a little more.

It is also of course a Romeo and Juliet story....and other things.

SO WHAT WILL HILLARY DO WITH THIS TURN OF EVENTS

She is a liberal coddler of liberal Jews.

Neither will probably talk much about Jews, because they support each campaign so heavily, behind the scenes.

SO

You can vote for Trump, as ignorant Christian stooges, 

or for Clinton, as weak liberal globalist tools of Putin and Xi.

Take your pick.

BREITBART

Is a conservative Jewish organization, certainly in origin, just so you know.... 

They use conservative Christians as ignorant stooges.

DK:  "...Trump’s appointment of Steven Bannon of breitbnart.com to run his presidential campaign represents a final break with the Republican establishment...

Instead, Trump hired Bannon, a leading figure within the populist, ultra-right faction of the Republicans represented by Breitbart, the Drudge report, and Rush Limbaugh. 

Just as McCarthy began to accuse the Eisenhower Administration, too, of coddling Communists, Bannon and company have labelled mainstream Republicans as RINOS,..." DK

So, who are Bannon's real Republicans? He wants you all to think they are conservative Christians. That's because conservative Jews here need mostly Christian stooges, not Jews, because there are a whole lot more Christian stooges than there are conservative Jews. Numbers matter.

But who are his real republicans, really?
Conservative Jews.

As DK pointed out, the origins of the neocon movement itself were conservative Jews, disappointed about what might happen to Israel. They needed Christian stooges in great numbers, from the beginning, to accomplish anything. 

See his post of Jan 5, 2008. Of course, he doesn't characterize conservative Christians as stooges, but his assessment of their role in neoconservatism comes to the same thing.

As Hannah Arendt pointed out in The Origins of Totalitarianism, there are vastly different levels, and even types I would say, of understanding, in political movements.

Following Arendt, there was and is even a hierarchy among stooges; stooges of stooges, so to speak as shown below.

BBC CHINA FOOTBALL REVOLUTION A FINANCIAL GAME CHANGER

You said it.

MY OWN SUPPOSITION

would be that Putin would actually not favor Trump over Clinton, for the reasons I have suggested in recent posts.

It even seems quite feasible, to me, that someone like Manafort was intentionally put in, by Putin, to engineer Trump's eventual defeat.

If that were true, then Manafort certainly was succeeding at that, before he was outed. 

QUESTION RE MANAFORT

Since Professor Kaiser has raised the question of conspiracies, re Trump's campaign, why not turn the inquiry around? 

Manafort was publicly criticized for connections to Putin, apparently...... now he is suddenly gone.

I just want to ask this question, and ask whether it has occurred to the Clinton camp to use it, true or false:

Is Manafort a Soviet agent?

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/c01989a47ee5421593ba1b301ec07813/ap-sources-manafort-tied-undisclosed-foreign-lobbying

FDR'S administration, before McCarthy's witch hunt, had been filled with them.

AMERICAN AND FRENCH REVOLUTIONS

Disastrous French Revolution in perspective.

The French were the only people who carried out a revolution, and defeated a counter revolution, entirely with their own resources.

The colonials had done neither. And quite frankly they could not have done either.

The loyalists, the cream of the colonials, fled, or were driven off. 

They never came back. 

Why would you?

SQUIRREL VERSUS RABBIT AUSTERITY DISH

http://bozonbloggon.blogspot.com/2012/06/re-menu-squirrel-is-lot-better-than.html

audience today snapshot

Entry	Pageviews
United States	69
France	20
India	1
New Zealand	1

WHICH IS THE FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER TRUMP OR CLINTON REPUBLICANS OR DEMOCRATS

Hillary Clinton, fighting mainly for Hillary Clinton, but claiming to be fighting mainly for women, minorities, and the LGBT community.

Trump, fighting mainly for Trump, but claiming to be fighting for all Americans.

Professor Kaiser claims only Trump is the Frankenstein monster.....

IKE KNEW WHAT AMERICANS HAVE ALWAYS WANTED SINCE THE BEGINNING REALLY

weak Presidents and weak generals.

He knew, from his own experience, that he filled the bill on both counts.

So did the Russians.

THE LEGACY OF THE AMERICAN AND FRENCH REVOLUTIONS WEAK LIBERALISM

I cannot paint a simpler picture of this very long term trend, in the decline of the West from 1763 forward.

Kennan described it very well, in the 20th century, Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin. What did Lenin and Stalin want most from the West, after we had left the Soviets in power in Russia for three decades? Weak liberal governments. I can actually find the page, but not right now.

What have the Chinese wanted, since Mao took over?

Take a guess.

TRUMP TO BLACKS

Trump to blacks: What do you have to lose?

Great question.

As Professor Kaiser pointed out a while back: 

nothing (Trump) or 
less than nothing (Clinton).

Which would you choose?

IF YOU'RE A GLOBAL CITIZEN

you claim the same rights everywhere.

GAOLBALIZATION

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/send-british-inmates-abroad-to-ease-158584

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1327586/Foreign-convicts-sent-home-stop-overseas-inmates-clogging-jails.html

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1371122

WE COULD OFFSHORE ALL OUR PRISON SYSTEMS STATE AND FEDERAL TO CHINA OR EVEN SAY AFRICA

imagine the savings...

http://volokh.com/2012/11/19/prisoner-offshoring-or-gaolbalization/

http://www.cpt.coe.int/documents/bel/2012-19-inf-eng.htm

The Chinese are now big in Africa....

How about offshoring all the prisons to Africa, and then have the Chinese manage them.

That's certainly a win win PPP!

It would, of course, cut the Rooskies out, and Trump would have to throw Putin a bone!