Three New Reads – December
Philip Roddis
And so this is Christmas, what have you done? The old year is over, a new one just begun.
Well, almost. I can’t alas, offer much in the bliss department this year, nor would you expect me to. I leave to others the bringing of glad tidings of great joy. As my flawed but brilliant teacher was given to saying: any fool can be happy; more important by far is being real.
No shortage of reality in these reads. We start with as venomous a piece of anti-semitism (the real McCoy) as ever was penned, packing into its mercifully short length a mix of hatred, non sequitur and – more widespread, this – confusion as to the true nature of capitalism.
We proceed to analysis of the election – yes, that one – and thence to heartfelt indictment of our rulers’ criminality in Syria. For afters we get a first hand account of what happens when an honest journalist working in mainstream media tries to tell the truth on matters critical to the interests and agendas of those same rulers.
All sitting comfortably? Then we will begin.
*
READ 1: “Vulture Capitalism is Jewish Capitalism”
This being the nastiest of my December reads – of any reads, truth be told – I’ll get it out of the way first. Written by Andrew Joyce on the far right Occidental Observer site, what it says on the tin is a reliable guide to the poison within.
First a little basic logic. These things are broadly true: organised crime in Prohibition America was dominated by Irish and Sicilian gangs; Jews are overrepresented in finance capitalism.
But then, Irish and Sicilian Americans had the advantage that they could if so minded draw on covert traditions and organisational forms forged in resistance to colonial rule in Europe, and now eminently suited for the opportunities opened up by Prohibition and the American Dream.
For their part, Ashkenazi Jews are overrepresented in many areas favouring intelligence: finance capital, yes, but also media, science, arts and the Left (Marx, Trotsky and Luxemburg exemplify a wider trend). The mean IQ of Ashkenazis is 107-15 against 90-110 in the population at large.
So when we’re invited to conclude that Irish/Sicilian Americans are likely to be racketeers, Jews financiers, truth is being twisted by knaves to lay traps for fools. Even without those empirical explanations just given, if Group A is significantly overrepresented in a much smaller group, B, we may not (validly!) infer that B is significantly overrepresented in A.[1]
That said, this piece unwittingly gives a decent summary of capitalism, albeit one suffused with a second confusion: failure to grasp that ‘vulture capitalism’, far from describing some deviant form of an otherwise sane and sensible organising of social relations for the purpose of wealth creation, is a tautology akin to ‘carnivorous tigers’ or ‘antisemitic nazis’.
What Jewish vultures engage in is not productive [but] greed-motivated parasitism on a perversely extravagant and highly nepotistic scale.[2] Jewish enterprise — exploitative, inorganic, and attached to socio-political goals that have nothing to do with individual freedom and private property [is] the free enterprise Jews learn about — as illustrated in their extraordinary over-representation in all forms of financial exploitation and white collar crime. … Vulture capitalism is Jewish capitalism.
No, Mr Joyce. Vulture capitalism is determined not by peculiarities in the Jewish psyche but by capital’s intrinsic tendencies to monopoly, to imperialism and to the triumph of rentier (‘casino’) over industrial (‘productive’) capital. Vulture capitalism is advanced capitalism pure and simple.
*
Read 2: “Why Labour Lost”
My second read, by Alexander Mercouris in Consortium News, isn’t a barrel of laughs either. To those like me who argued that four years of vile slurs on Corbyn played a huge part in Labour’s defeat in the most important election since 1945, it says ‘yes, but this was not the sole cause’.
To those who blame the Brexit fudge, citing the facts that almost all English seats lost were in Leave-voting Northern and Midlands towns (Scotland was lost long before Corbyn) it says ‘yes, but Labour’s youth and metropolitan Remainer vote was equally vital, and could equally have jumped ship had Labour ignored its cries of alarm’.
(All the same, Mercouris points to Corbyn’s underestimation of the EU issue, compounded both by lack of political capital and of political nous. A cannier operator, he insists – Harold Wilson is his comparator – might have managed better the challenges of that perilous faultline on Brexit.)
To those who’ll brook no criticism of Corbyn it offers a defence of his integrity. Further, it notes an absolute and relative vote greater than Brown’s (2010) and Milliband’s (2015) while equalling Blair’s (2005). Most important of all, it pays homage to Corbyn’s throwing down the gauntlet to decades of tory-lite Labour, in which cynicism, demoralisation and impotent fury had been read by the Westminster Village as consent.
And with those who say the scale of defeat has been exaggerated by those desiring a swerve to the right, it concurs.[3] Likewise with those who insist that political realities underpinning Blair’s successively shrinking majorities are gone forever.
The heartland vote can no longer be taken for granted, the way Blair and Campbell did when wooing the middle classes. As Brexit has at one and the same time reflected and exacerbated, Britain is a nation grievously divided.
The perspective is parliamentarian while mine is not. Yet of all the analyses I’ve read, and that’s a good many, this is the most thorough, nuanced, insightful and fair-minded.
*
Read 3: “Western moral decay: Syria – the war, the loss and the silence”
Of the hundreds of pieces I’ve read, and scores I’ve written, on the West’s criminality in Syria – its scale matched by that of a propaganda blitzkreig that has painted black white and deceived millions labouring under the delusion they live in sound democracies underwritten by free, fair and honest media – this piece from Jan Oberg comes closest to capturing my sense of fear and outrage on what has been done to that country in the risible name of humanitarianism.
It opens like this …
The liberation of Eastern Aleppo took place 3 years and a few days ago – December 12, 2016. On December 12, 2012, Western countries and allies, perversely calling themselves ‘Friends of Syria’ , carried through a regime change by statement and set up a Syrian National Council of people never elected by anyone in Syria and told the world that it was, from now on, the only ‘legitimate representative of the Syrian people!’
During the 4 years, Western, Saudi, Turkish and the Gulf States supported innumerable illegal, destructive and mainly foreign terrorist groups with the goal to undermine the legitimate Syrian government and destabilise the country – as had been recommended by US ambassador William Roebuck in Damascus as far back as in 2006.
December 12, 2016, marked a fundamental turning point. Aleppo did not “fall to the dictator/butcher/mass murderer” aka President Bashar al-Assad – no, it was liberated and the occupation by terrorist groups such as ISIS and al-Nusra during 4,5 years ended.
NATO Turkey had been singularly active in pillaging everything of value in Aleppo and its huge industrial zone, bringing it over to Turkey and converting money to weapons and training facilities for terror groups – a quite peculiar way to contribute to the US Global War on Terror: Like the US itself, Turkey did its utmost to support terrorism in Syria.
Also, Assad’s predicted genocide on his own people there and then – well, just didn’t happen.
I documented this historic moment of change and liberation of Syrians from occupation because I was there, one of the extremely few Westerners, and the only one from Scandinavia:
Six series with strong text and documentary photography – now seen by over 170,000 on the Internet – and lots of articles on The Transnational.
Regrettably, not one Western media wanted, or dared, publish any of it.
Aleppo was said to fall by the Western press. But what fell in Aleppo in December 2016 was: a) the regime change policy; b) the international war on Syria which is still, mostly and falsely, called a basically civil/domestic war, and c) the constructed Western media narrative filled with fiction, fake and – not the least, omission – omitted facts, history, complexities and perspectives including that of international law, voices, experts and argument.
… and goes on in the same vein.
Incidentally, as a keen photographer I can vouch for Jan Oberg’s splendid images of Syria. It was these – reminiscent of Steve McCurry’s iconic work from India, Iran, Cambodia and above all Afghanistan – that first caught my eye three years ago. Jan kindly allowed me to reproduce two of his photos from Aleppo in this post on the liberation of that city.
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BONUS: “Lies, Newsweek and Control of the Media Narrative”
Here’s a bonus read. I’d had it down for my third and final choice before Jan Oberg came in, a week later, with his post of December 20. As it happens, Oberg cites in that piece the author – former Newsweek journalist Tareq Haddad – of this my fourth recommend.
The corruption of mainstream media[4] informs both my second read (subverting meaningful democracy at home) and my third (abetting what Nuremberg declared the supreme war crime: the waging of aggressive war). It is a theme Mr Haddad is unusually well placed to illustrate from his own experience.
[1] On this logical error the sixties propaganda war on cannabis is also instructive. Most heroin users, we were told, start on cannabis. Does this mean cannabis users turn sooner or later to heroin? It might help to note that most heroin users also dabbled with milk before graduating to the hard stuff. (And that prohibition puts cannabis and heroin users in close proximity.)
[2] Joyce’s invoking of Jewish nepotism is laughable given the other clubs – Freemasons and Ivy League Frat Soc, Whites and Rotary Club, Eton and Bullingdon – in which the wheels of ‘free enterprise’ are greased.
[3] As I write this on Boxing Day, a bog-standard call for a return by Labour to ‘sensible’ policies appears in the Independent. I say, and not for the first time, there’s nothing sensible about trying to turn back the clock to an era whose defining psephological features have been swept aside by empirical refutation of ‘trickledown’ economics, and by the acceleration of neoliberal policies post 2008.
[4] I also recommend in this regard a Media Lens piece of December 19, The Arrogance of BBC News.
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Interesting article posted the day after Phil posted his article on Ashkenazi racial superiority at Mint Press:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/new-york-times-bret-stephens-jewish-eugenicist/263788/
It’s reminiscent of Rabbi Kook the Elder, the former Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Palestine’s pithy observation. ‘There is a greater difference between the soul of a Jew and that of a non-Jew….than there is between the soul of a non-Jew and that of an animal’. He remains a ‘revered’ figure in Israel, and his observation is mirrored by most orthodox and ultra-orthodox, and not a few secular fascists. So it’s much more than genetic. I am aware that very many Jews would regard these supremacist ravings as wrong and deeply harmful, but there are plainly very many who believe it is true, hence the barbarity of the oppression of the Palestinians, and the indifference to the suffering of their victims of Jewish economic criminality.
I’ve now read Andrew Joyce’s article (to which you don’t seem to link) and it seems to me that you (Philip) have gotten hold of the wrong end of his article-specific schtick, which he summarizes as:
.
To extend that proposition into some sort of justification for your verbalized Venn analysis would need a well-organized count of all, or a statistically valid sample of, “the most significant” ‘predatory (“vulture”) funds’, generally acceptably classified as such, against some agreed definition of “vulture” in that context, and then counts of those by their controlling interests (Jewish or non-Jewish) and primary extra-financial sociopolitical activity (Jewish/Zionist, other-exclusive, or principally non-partisan).
It is true that Mr Joyce asserts that
and goes on to document that all of those are certainly or probably Jewish-controlled, and–en passant–reiterates his assertion that Jews comprise the thick of it, but that’s all the latter are: assertions. To which you assert the contrary, adducing no actual statistics or documentation to support empirically (or not) your counter proposition. Looks like a goalless draw to me. I can’t imagine why you drew attention to it–the Occidental Observer can hardly be anywhere near the top of most Off-Guardianista’s reading lists–except that it seems to have enraged you. In which case I hope you’ve since had a good helping of leftover trifle: all of the cream is on the top but most of the sherry sinks to the bottom. & a HNY.
Zarathustrat, never spoke of ubermenshens in that context most idiots think it was about, fueled by an MSM and some obscure what, phsycologists, doctores, experst, to shrinks on/in all unthinkable direction/s about race, gender or creed, witch, in the origin of it, Ahura Mazda was an fire God.
And had nothing, abolutelly nothing to do with racism, period, its about human nature and what can humans “evolve” into with what we all came with, charte blanche, and racism, if you watch children, whom never is, on anything, to what they then become, its learned and what do we learn.
huh
More or less, nothing.
The flame represents the fire within, the origin of everything, the things without as to things within, the things that binds this all, is Light.
Our universe, in ancient norse/finnish, defined as the big room, not an open field, but an room a space with the rest above us.
And our universe is made by two things, well, an third one but its related to the prime source, Ather, and the thing that makes is, happen, and obliged to the confinment its made in, Ather whom “compresses ” and makes matter and matter is compressed Ather, into spinning reels, aka the swastice witch the buddists have to, the thing that creates this reality acodingly is light, nothing else, the fire within, any swinging dick, or not, whom tuched this and have been into this, because o be light you needed an mind of an warrior, focued and expanding, gaining wisdom, and a usefull metaphore, as to fight the greates enemy in your short time spane on earth, is your own mind, an formidable foe, to the path of manages to tuch the woid, and realise we are light.
Etc, read it again, for your self.
The filter, is our Mind, and thats it, body of course but its never the less the brain.
And so on.
WE warned them, if you just look around, as mentioned in the first book rewiue, the class war have just gotten worse, quantitative easying is plain theft of peoples welth and mooney, its as simple as that, but look how they managed to deal with that and whom payes the price, and thru this years of growth, to world wide NGOs, and color revolutions, etc, have managed to get more control over centrain consensusses and political raw power.
And orcestrated wars, remarkable before Libya, the difference before and during was done by jews in France, Levy an rotten Mofo, and the ex-pr. N. Zackofshit whom managed to make this war somewhat legitim, and then look at whom preaches open border to only our lands, and others gets away thru obvious reasons, the west will not as for I can see admit jack shit, the Wahabi run shitholes, to them saturated with Oil.
And ISISrael in the middle lead by an native bloody Polak/Lihuanian scumbag.
Semit my ass.
You know the drill.
You can solve this, we can, but the jews refuse, period, their reasons have fluctuated, but the facts we read is never ever been matched with the onsidedness in the western MSM and some others to.
But the facts remains, and now the King of Jews, aka Trump desided to alowe the chousen ones expand their territory, yeah, f…. the natives.
That, my friend is the problem about ISISrael and nothing else, everything else solves it self but nothing will happen before the jews do something and so far have done nothing and that is an cold hard honking f…. fact.
But the problem this jews have created, and refused to deal with, our world economy, and made the dumbf…. Trump, do whatever they want and force the rest to follow their piper whom is lelading the flock of pathetic vassals, an quire of mental/physical castrats with an economic policy witch can only be described to ordinary people as something similare to what happens when your boddy have cancer.
Somewhere down the line, reality crashed with the MSM induced numbness/dumbness and people realised at least how much MSM and Gov do lie and fake whatever they need when they know lying cant be enough.
Otherwise, I have read much, incl ancient texts, historical documents, read my self historical documents, and so on, not proffecional, I didnt somehow bother, and I was right on that, but old enough, I can start to travel a lot more, and have swon to my self with misty eyes, I will buy my self an electic bike/cycle (not to expencive but need range) and ride into our forests and mountain regions.
peace
“For their part, Ashkenazi Jews are overrepresented in many areas favouring intelligence: finance capital, yes, but also media, science, arts and the Left (Marx, Trotsky and Luxemburg exemplify a wider trend). The mean IQ of Ashkenazis is 107-15 against 90-110 in the population at large.”
Oh really? That’s your argument? Ashkenazis just happen to be smarter than all us lower Goyim. Based on what? A citation from Wales -O-Pedia based on some mythical IQ survey. Overlooking the fact that all psychometric testing has a CULTURAL BIAS. An argument that echoes Nietzsche’s
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
and Hitler’s
Mein Kampf
regarding the Übermensch.
You also seem to ignore actual historical examples such as the Pharisees and later those who practiced the Talmud in Babylon which later became the state religion of the Khazarian empire that Ashkenazis are the remnant of were traditionally the “money changers” of various empires which would actually explain the high proportion of Ashkenazi jews involved in what is known as “Vulture Capitalism”.
Funny how you label this “truth” as “antisemitic”.
Nope. You make three errors – I’m being kind – here. One is the gross misrepresentation of my claim on Askenazi mean IQ – your insertion of “all” is at best obtuse.
Two, I do not overlook the cultural bias of such tests and have said this below the line here. I see IQ as a flawed but not worthless metric.
Three, it is one of my arguments and the least important at that. My two main arguments are that overrepresentation of Jews in finance capital does not equate to overrepresentation of finance capital in the Jewish population. And that the essence of capitalism, especially in the age of monopoly, imperialism and dominance of finance capital, is vulture like.
I quoted you exactly and no where did I note that you modified this statement in anyway except in your response here. If I’m wrong please quote the exact passage from your article where state that you ” do not overlook the cultural bias of such tests and have said this below the line here. I see IQ as a flawed but not worthless metric.”
As far as I can see in the following paragraph you discuss cultural bias in general without mentioning IQ testing as “flawed” as you now say:
“So when we’re invited to conclude that Irish/Sicilian Americans are likely to be racketeers, Jews financiers, truth is being twisted by knaves to lay traps for fools. Even without those empirical explanations just given, if Group A is significantly overrepresented in a much smaller group, B, we may not (validly!) infer that B is significantly overrepresented in A.[1]”
By the way you are being disingenuous when you say that the author was discussing the Jewish population in general when he was pointing out the disproportionate number of Jews involved in Vulture Capitalism he was stating a fact which can be proven objectively and statistically without resorting to subjective culturally biased IQ testing.
One of the ‘antisemitism’ industry’s favourite tricks is to assert, usually hysterically, that the criticism of the behaviour of any Jew is, ipso facto, a genocidal, hate-driven, attack on ALL Jews, and signifies deep, genocidal, racist hatred of Jews, and a desire to exterminate them. That Jews, like all communities, comprise individuals with markedly different psyches and actions, is impermissible, and itself crypto-antisemitic.
He said it, as he clearly notes, “below the line” (i.e. in the comments), specifically in a respone to me. You didn’t scroll down far enough.
Oops, no. It was specifically in a respone to richard le sarc. His respone to me was a paraphrase that did not include the word “flawed” per se.
Thanks but I was referring to his article specifically not any later revisions in the comments section.
You are obviously not from the wrong side of the tracks. Hyman Roth in the Godfather II was not simply an antisemitic slur, but a very lightly disguised portrait of the life of Meyer Lansky.
While German Jews such as the Goldmans, Lehmans, Warburgs and Rothchilds were scaling the heights of finance in New York, London and Paris, lest we forget in New York Polish and Russian Jews such as Lepke Buchalter and Bugsy Siegel were competing and sometimes collaborating with the Irish and Italian mobs, of course the odd German Jew such as Arthur Simon Flegenheimer (aka Dutch Schultz) helped out.
Of course for capitalism to really work for you you need to be a tight family like the Bulgers, with Whitey the gangster, Billie the politician and Jackie the judge, that way everyone has each other’s back and the FBI lets nice Whitey play Mr Peachum in Boston on a permanent basis.
But Joyce (in that article) didn’t make any claims about “finance capital“. His claims concentrated on the predominance of Jews in “vulture capital“, which has a somewhat varying but generally agreed denotation amongst commentators and economists, and–specifically but more dubiously– the “most successful” practitioners of that, whom, without any solid statistics, he identifies as all-Jewish. Yes, “all” capitalism is, by your definition, namely
“vulture” or a precursor of that, but that does not address Joyce’s specific (and in the article sole) usage of the term “vulture capitalism” in its semi technical sense, it just sidesteps into a non-technical political denotation and uses an equally shaky approach to empirical verification to so do.
IQ testing manifested through Eugenics proper. Experimental Psychology repudiated that nonsense way back in the 70s, man.
Lombroso’s & Sir Francis Galton’s rhetoric is pseudoscience much like Astrology & Numerology is.
Epigenetic learning goes beyond IQ, Eugenics, & Psychometric Testing.
MOU
Which is why I cannot bear to read or watch the MSM. From the moment GWB suggested attacking Iraq, I felt I could have written the entire script for everything ever since. The same old boring shite over and over again produced by the same grovelling little pups to their overlords.
GWB was just following the script from the Oded Yinon Plan of 1982-start destroying all Eretz Yisrael’s neighbours with Iraq, then move on to Syria…
The Andrew Joyce quote is fascinating. He speaks of a “Jewish capitalism” which is:
• unproductive
• greed-motivated
• parasitical
• nepotistic
• exploitative
• “inorganic” (artificial?)
• linked to “white collar crime” and therefore an elite matter
• opposed to individual freedom and private property
• (by implication from the last line) communal, socialist, communist (cf. the Jewish Bolshevist plot)
By negative extrapolation, we see that “pure” or “true” capitalism must be:
• productive
• generous (?)
• non-parasitical
• open to all beyond narrow confines
• non-exploitative
• “organic” (authentic?)
• not linked to “white collar crime” and therefore proletarian
• geared towards individual freedom and private property
• (by implication from the last line) anti-communal, anti-socialist, anti-communist.
And by this cunning manoeuvre he has pushed all of the attributes of capitalism onto communism!
The point made in the article is that Jewish vulture fund vultures are, indeed, philanthropic, but overwhelmingly to other Jews, not the goyim. He may have been selective in his findings, but it is a very discernible tendency among Jews to first argue, in any circumstance, ‘Is it good for the Jews?’
The point made in the article is that there is no “Jewish capitalism” and no “Vulture capitalism”. There is only capitalism and it’s always the same old shite.
“Capitalism” was actually a pejorative neologism coined by Karl Marx in Das Kapital meaning a parasite that lives off the toil of others through financialization of the economy and theft by means of usurious interest imposed on capital borrowed for actual production of goods and services.
My goodness. You really haven’t studied Marx at all, have you? I recommend you start with the early chapters of Capital 1, paying close attention to the nature of value and origins of profit.
Das Kapital is open to interpretation just as any economic philosophy. So far you’re comparing apples and oranges when you refer to his earlier chapters on profit and not the later ones where he discuses interest.
Marx spoke about “capital”, “the capitalist”, “the capital system”, and “the capitalist mode of production”. But I don’t think he used the actual term “capitalism”. Furthermore, the words he used for the capital system were never meant in a pejorative sense. He saw this system as a clear advance over feudalism.
So he doesn’t use exact word but close enough. As far as considering it an “advance over feudalism” in fact he saw it as an extension of it and also he did indeed consider it a “pejorative” just as most true Marxists do.
The word “pejorative” is wrong since it suggests that Marx thought he could stand outside all of society as if from some objective standpoint and plan the ideal system from that stance. Marx saw the history of humanity as a societal evolution where each phase would lead to the next through its internal contradictions.
Capitalism is very different from feudalism in that the later system depended on a technological leap that would make mass production possible and lead to a system whereby goods would be produced for exchange rather than use. This was a revolutionary step in societal evolution and paved the way for much of the clearing out of feudal thinking e.g. the rise of a new outlook that saw humanity in terms of abstract individuals rather than specific groups defined by ethnicity, culture etc.
Capitalism also hastened the path towards secularism. These are ironic developments when you consider how conservatives adhere to feudal modes of thought and yet support capitalism with its necessary secularising – and then have the gall to blame the left for secularism!
The fact is that he distinguished capital i.e. Das Kapital AKA Financialization as part of FIRE from industry and actual production for a better explanation and interpretation I recommend Killing the Host: How Financial Parasites and Debt Bondage Destroy the Global Economy by Michael Hudson:
https://store.counterpunch.org/product/killing-the-host-digital-book/
The fact is that if you want to know what Marx said, you have to read Marx, not Michael Hudson.
If you don’t read German then you’ve only read Engels’ translation and interpretation of Marx. Your Piousness.
Whereas you have only read anti-Marxist interpretations of Marx.
I’ve read Marx translated by Engels’ just as you have but have also expanded my understanding of economics and political philosophy which you obviously haven’t if you say that Hudson is anti-Marxist in anyway. Actually if he’s anti anything it’s exploitive capitalism. I recommend reading the book or skip it if want you to remain ignorant.
Marx died in 1881-he simply cannot speak of how capitalism has developed since, although his premonitions and predictions have proved remarkable prescient.
Very true.
When I said “you have only read anti-Marxist interpretations of Marx” I wasn’t thinking of Hudson but was reflecting on your earlier remark about Marx:
That seemed a misjudgement of what Marx said for reasons I have already given.
I came to my own conclusions about Marxism after reading Marx or to me more accurate Marx as filtered through Engels. Just as I’ve to my own conclusions about Nazism reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf translated by Henry Ford.
Engels was Marx’s closest friend and close collaborator and, during all of Marx’s life in England, patron. As well as co-authoring the Communist Manifesto and other titles with Marx, he was the extremely respectful editor of Marx’s work before and papers after the latter’s death, including the later volumes of Das Kapital. When Engels had something independent to say, he said it as Friedrich Engels. Most of Marx’s major work in German was translated by others than Engels. Both Marx an Engels had a good command of English. To say that Engels “filtered” Marx without any significant qualification is close to impugning Engel’s integrity as Marx’s friend, collaborator and co-author as well as his professionalism as an editor.
Funny how you ignore your own contradictions. True Karl Marx was fluent in English. In fact spent much time in England in America. So why would Engel have to “translate” his most noted and famous works?
I know. Don’t bother asking that question. Just go with
“Both Marx an Engels had a good command of English. To say that Engels “filtered” Marx without any significant qualification is close to impugning Engel’s integrity as Marx’s friend, collaborator and co-author as well as his professionalism as an editor.”
Yada yada whatever.
By the way I didn’t impugn anybody but since you’ve probably never been published other than in the comments section than you should know that anyone writing on another’s behalf tends to put their own spin on things. So yes their work is actually being strained or filtered through another.
Mr. Self Righteous.
Marx saw capitalism as a valuable, indispensible stage in the dialectic leading to communism; the pejoratives, which were for Marx and are for most “true” Marxists, not pejoratives but facts, come about as a result of its collapse under the weight of its “internal contradictions” and the damage that its coming and going (date TBA) wreaked on its proletariat. See The Communist Manifesto.
Oh yes, he did.
Where?
Das Kapital (“Kapitalismus”) and in at least one other title (exercise for the reader).
Also in the English translation:
You really should do your own spadework.
–Robbobmarxism
I said above “I don’t think he used the actual term “capitalism” because that point came up in an author I read. Unfortunately I can’t recall where although it may have been Hal Draper. I downloaded a PDF of Das K and found the word “capitalism” mentioned twice. HD is good to read to figure out what Marx did say and – more to the point – what the terms hs used signified at the time. The “capitalism” issue isn’t that important and it kind of got out of hand.
Nope.
Well, that is plainly wrong, and a subterfuge. There are as many varieties of capitalism and capitalists as in any human enterprise.
No, Marx’s whole aim was to analyse capitalism and determine its basic tendencies. To say “There are as many varieties of capitalism and capitalists as in any human enterprise” is to make capitalism disappear into a vague puff of mist. Admittedly capitalism is a dynamic system that thrives and indeed needs change but it is always driven by the same force of exploitation.
It’s like dogs-some chihuahuas, some rottweilers, but all wolves underneath the surface.
The article was a review that does not acknowledge that fact that article being reviewed was using a common, semi-technical term in addressing a particular type of capitalism (the predatory, often unethical and/or antisocial exploitation of, specifically, “distressed” assets, usually by a relatively restricted range of financial manipulations) while setting that up against a much broader (and fluffier) reviewer’s expression of generalized anticapitalist sentiment. Mr Roddis is right to call out capitalism in general for what it now is and always inevitably would be (Marx, K. et al, q.v.) but not at the expense of running a rigged polemic.
Mr Roddis’s point is that capitalism, by its very nature, IS predatory, unethical and exploitative.
Exactly true George. And some of us are awake to the very nature of The System.
I’m not contradicting Mr Roddis’s point, I’m criticizing his omission of one of another author’s basic premises when making his own (uncontested by me) point in what is presented as a “review” of one of that other author’s articles.
Mr Roddis quotes the other author:
The implication is plain: the author is saying there is a certain kind of capitalism called “vulture capitalism” or “Jewish capitalism”. The implication is that this is different from “regular capitalism”. This is wrong.
Joyce wrote the whole article excoriating the behaviour of, specifically, the “most successful” vulture funds and implicitly relating that to Judaistic cultural traits. He is very likely anti-semitic per se, but attributing different ethnically characteristic behaviours to different ethnicities does not, in itself, imply any anti-attitudes. He is also, even more likely, rooted in capitalism and hence, compared to an anti-capitalist, far more inclined to distinguish different varieties of it as qualitatively important.
I have already referred to his sort-of ‘executive summary’, so I’ll here note that in his final summing up he wrote, as you note, “Vulture capitalism is Jewish capitalism”. But not “Jewish capitalism is vulture capitalism”. In other words, he is keeping within the constraints of both his thesis and his viewpoint with appropriate academic restraint, like it or not.
Sir Lew Grade, then head of EMI, said of his massive box office flop “Raise the Titanic” that if he’d known how expensive raising the Titanic was going to be, he would have put his money into lowering the Atlantic instead. Some would say that’s a typically Jewish remark. You would have nothing to communicate to those to whom you would berate the “some who would say” if you omit at least some outline of the joke itself and at least some of the relevant contexts that would inspire those “some” to say such an apparently ethnically discriminating thing, because they would interpret that as just prejudiced shouting at them.
And once again we reach the point where I say – yeah whatever.
Hi Rob. Just seen your exchange with George. Not for the first time I own up to sloppy writing on this point. I think George quite right in locating the thrust of Joyce’s argument in the title he chose: Vulture Capitalism is Jewish Capitalism.
But I should have added something. Joyce, in a far right journal, does not explicitly draw that fallacious conclusion (overrep of large group A in small group B = vice versa). But by failing to warn against an error easily made, and of the dangers of so doing, he invites his readers to draw it.
Socrates famous dictum was that “A life unexamined is not worth living”. It’s getting to be that way as we enter ever more deeply into the pre-Apocalyptic Neoliberal Endtimes.
So the election post mortem continues. Yet there is little insight from the superficial view that 31mn people – through free will and conscious rational means – voted to extend the legal-rational rights of Eurocentric bourgeois imperialism to continue and expedite its plunder of the rest of the world. For the profit of the North.
If we want to understand this – and generally, we don’t – then we have to go back to the start. To *Das Kapital*; Volume One; Chapter One; Section 4 – The Fetishism Of Commodities And The Secret Thereof.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch01.htm#noteb
To repeat: consciousness has a bandwidth of 2-5% according to cognitive neuroscience. The >95% of the preconscious cognition – of the (Collective) Cognitive Unconscious (CCU) – drives behaviour. The CCU is “structured like a language”. Though not in a Freudian/Lacanian sense – in a cognitive linguistic sense [see: “Philosophy in the Flesh” – Lakoff and Johnson].
Don’t worry: I have no intention of elucidating here. Except to note that we need a depth psychological interpretation of events emanating from the politico-economic unconscious. One Marx started to develop: but has become deeply distorted through much of Marxian analysis. The economisation of Marx is tantamount to the bastardisation of Marx. 31mn people voted from a deeply unconscious psychological drive for the idealisation of more self and the materialisation of more property (fetishised commodity-forms). The reasons for which are seeded in that passage – as elucidated by inter alia: Durkheim, Mauss, Goux, Levi-Strauss, Baudrillard, and possibly culminating with Debord.
We have become the passive consumers of our own advertorial imagistic preconscious narrative constructivism. The greatest part of this spectral illusion is that we are conscious rational decision makers and not passive commodified market consumers. So long as we maintain the fallacy of a separate subject and object – which in the global market economy becomes the fetishised commodity (which is the *Charaktermaske* of unequal exchange, globalised stratified social relations, and biospheric destruction) – Eurocentric bourgeois neoliberal imperialism will always be voted in.
Another part of this deeply unconscious narrative was that ‘socialism’ was on offer. It was not: and never can be as part of the market transformation of self and objects – commodified fetishes – into separate things with independent lives of their own. It’s all in Marx and the post-Marxian critical theory – especially the modern turn to ecological Marxism. You can’t make sense of the election without it.
“Britain is a nation grievously divided.”
No, Britain is an island containing several old nations. And, as the fag-end of the English empire continues to slide down the drain, that reality is exerting itself again, both in Scotland and in the empire-occupied six counties of NE Eire.
Also, as the English parliament, through its rabidly (and deliberately) anti-democratic electoral system, continues to be dominated by the English-tory minority faction – the self-perpetuating, ex-imperial English-raj class of rich-parasite-toffs and their rabble of bourgeois-chancer hangers-on – and times in Britain thus get steadily worse for the absolute majority, this tendency amongst the nations of Britain towards independent sovereignty may reassert itself in Cymru too, I hope.
Sureashell, this newly-reinforced government – in Paedominster – of the rich minority, for the rich minority isn’t going to lead to any sort of – always spurious – ‘one-nation’ unity. The other nations of The Isles are hardly going to be swept up by Eng.Nat. brown-shirtery. Noisy dissension and dissolution seems to be the real prospect, as we proceed into this new era of the Long Decent away from economic growthforever, and we plebs get squeezed progressively harder, to safeguard the privileges of the raj and their retainers.
Exactly what effect the monstrous world-cancer of the CityofLondon gangster-finance state-within-a-state will have on this unstable mix is obscure. But it surely represents a cancerous threat both to Britain and to the world upon which it parasites. Sooner or later, this cancer has to be zapped too.
If history allows such healing currents to run unhindered, then we may see a time eventually when The Iles become a confederacy of sovereign nations: actual, real democracies (supported by actually-honest media) becoming established amongst us, so that the outrageous anti-democratic result of the recent Paedominster election can never happen again. The other nations of The Isles are all now running PR-chosen parliaments; but this doesn’t have much useful effect so long as the political cess-pit of Paedominster continues to dominate us all.
Excellent ! I only wish I had your vocabulary !
Nice ironic jab 🙂
nothing ironic at all ,it was a very sincere comment, I meant every word.
😉 Clever
Thanks GEOFF.
The English Empire built up a whole mess of bad karma during the glory days of Empire. Nemesis is knocking at the door. BoJo is just the Ubumensch to get the job done properly.
Works such as Vulture Capitalism is Jewish Capitalism are usefull for depicting anti-neoliberalism as being just anti-semitism.
EVERYTHING is ‘antisemitic’ according to the ‘antisemitism’ industry but total and craven obeisance. The facts are as depicted in the article-vulture capitalism is an overwhelmingly elite Jewish form of hyper-parasitism and profit from others’ despair and suffering. The facts of how and where and when are clear, so we need to study the ‘why’, not retreat into denial and ritualised abuse.
Very true. As I’ve said many times earlier “truth has suddenly become ‘anti-semtic'”. Ironically even Jews who oppose this rapacious system of Vulture Capitalism and who oppose the genocide of the Indigenous population of Palestine are also labeled as “anti-semites” as well.
No, Jews who oppose this rapacious system of Vulture Capitalism are labeled by the likes of you “Judeo-Bolsheviks”, “fifth columnists” and “infiltrators of the Left”.
They are? My my when did you gain this physic ability?
‘Self-hating Jews’. The enemy are the Zionists and Talmudic fanatics, not ‘Jews’.
I’m not ‘antisemitic’. I just think that Abraham got off on the wrong foot.
Appreciate your recommendations Philip, however, think I’ll skip the ‘Vulture Capitalism is Jewish Capitalism’ one by Andrew Joyce. Far right racist creatures are not my cup of tea.
Regards turbo charged, vulture capitalism, there’s an excellent site called Neoliberalism Softpanorama, which, think I’ve mentioned here about 12 times. Or so.
I read ‘Syria, The War, The Loss, The Silence’ by Jan Oberg before Christmas at Dissident Voice, and just reread it then.
Very powerful and heartbreaking.
I also agree with Oberg’s summation, and was very struck by his moving collection of photos.
One sentence stood out: “The silence on Syria offers roaring evidence of Western moral decay, media deception and political decline”
Couldn’t agree more.
And then I think of all the useful idiots, the cretins, the fecken imperialist shills like Gilbert Achcar and Michael Karadjis, the International Socialist Org, Socialist Alternative here in Australia and the Jacobin crowd who cheered on headchopping jihadists, claiming it was a fecken ‘revolution’.
Diana Johnstone got it Spot On in an article she wrote a while ago on Syria and Trotskyists. And of course she’s no longer at Counter Thingy.
As you point out Philip – the only honorable exception has been the Socialist Equality Party, which I recently joined.
I also read the very unsurprising expose of Tareq Haddad about Newsweek censoring revelations about the OPCW leaked letter over at The Greanville Post penned by Caitlin Johnstone.
I salute him for at least doing the right thing and resigning from that establishment rag.
I greatly doubt tho, there will be many more like Tareq.
Re your first point, Gezzah, consider me the canary in the coal mine. The food taster for the prince. The hero who, with peg on nose, plumbs the depths of human depravity that others may be spared.
Come to think of it, I deserve a fucking medal!
I would give you a medal, or the raspberry chocolate muffin I have sitting in front of me (with a cup of coffee) but, unfortunately, am down here in the other hemisphere!
I’m sure there’s somewhere in Sheffield, where you can get a decent muffin!
Seriously tho, there’s way enough bullshit and garbage and censorship and shills in the World without wading thru that anti semitic crap.
Have a good day. I see it’s a balmy 11 degs there today.
Here in Melbourne, a scorching 41 fecken degs. Like your own natural sauna. With no off switch.
Phillip, is Joyce’s assertion, that ‘vulture funds’ are overwhelmingly run by elite Jewish predators like Paul Singer, true or not? If true, is that fact relevant to anything, and, if not, why not?
Since neither Joyce nor anyone else I’ve read quantify that assertion, I’m unable to say. Do you have the data? I look forward to your expanded and evidence based treatise on this aspect of the matter, preferably in an above the line piece.
Not, I’ll say this again, that I dispute Jewish overrepresentation in finance capitalism. My most important point – and I think from a comment you make elsewhere that we are in at least partial agreement on this – is that overrepresentation of a large group in a small one does not equate to overrepresentation of the small group in the large one.
And that latter error, as history has shown, is where the danger lies and where I find Joyce’s pitch quite odious. The implied whitewashing of capitalism, akin to Ted Heath’s depiction of Lonhro’s Tiny Rowland as its “unacceptable face”, is equally nauseous but I think in Joyce’s case this is more ignorance than malice. Antisemitism is his thing, not capitalist apologetics.
Well, if you dispute Jewish overrepresentaion in finance capital, then I’m afraid I must really question your bona fides. That assertion is equivalent to disputing Jewish overrepresentaion among great classical violinists.
Django wasn’t Jewish. But he was a fucking Romani.
He wasn’t a violinist, neither.
Gezzah, Joyce and ‘Occidental Observer’ in particular, may be bigots, but the facts remain facts. Simply traducing, thereby denying and covering up, facts, because the communicator is a rogue, doesn’t change the facts. It is the Zionists’ favoured tactic-slander and abuse the messenger, thereby discrediting the message.
Okay, point taken Richard.
Gezzah, I saw the article in Unz Review, which publishes many fine articles, and not a little racialist crapola. I ignore the White Nationalist etc, garbage, and concentrate on those authors who seem to me, less deranged.
Agree again. There are some excellent writers at The Unz Review, some of whom, like Edward Curtin and CJ Hopkins also publish articles at Offguardian.
Linh Dinh is excellent, and yeah, I do wander over there once in a while.
I wonder what our Chief Happy Clapper Rapturist is up too today?
Perhaps consulting with the United States ambassador over a lobster brunch at Kirribilli on how further to help in the fight for ‘freedom and democracy’ worldwide??
Or at Hillsong praying for divine intervention with the rest of the deluded sheep who go to such born again churches.
While thousands of Aussie are homeless from the bushfires, and a humanitarian crisis is looming on the South Coast of NSW with food running out, lack of sanitation, electricity, water, burns victims stranded.
And how many voted for the Liberals at the last election?
I remember your disgust at the time at The Saker, and at all those people who only cared about their own wallets $$$.
Wonder what they’re thinking now?
That’s if they have a conscience?
Getting slagged off by some bogans, I see. The pips are beginning to squeak, as they say. BIG explosion coming soon.
The point isn’t so much whether a raw fact is a fact; it’s what that fact actually entails and what conclusions and meanings we can draw from it given the qualifying details and context surrounding it. Otherwise we become simpletons who are easily led astray by white nationalist talking points about “black crime” and “Jewish malfeasance”.
You need to say ‘Jewish elite malfeasance’ which is, in my opinion, quite oxymoronic. To blame all Jews, or all members of any group, for the crimes and bad behaviour of some in that group, is bigotry, and collective hatred and punishment. Oddly enough, the Talmud approves of just such behaviour, which justifies the devastation of Gaza, for the ‘crimes’ of resistance to racist oppression, of a few.
Aaargh, Gezzah, you insulted Off-Guardian’s regular Canadian resident troll Norman Pilon’s favourite Sydney University academic Michael Karadjis. You will never be forgiven and you must resign yourself to being constantly abused by Pilon as an ignoramus.
With respect Jen…. Screw fake pseudo, middle class imperialist shills who parrot the Establishment narrative. Screw Karadjis, screw Pilon, screw Proyect, screw Achcar, screw Corey Oakley, screw the whole conga line of sellouts. Oh yeah, and screw Identity Politics as well.
I’m not sure I can say this any clearer?
Currently reading a history of the Socialist Equality Party right up to the present day. Met with a couple members earlier today.
I can’t just sit back and not do nothing anymore. Just dosn’t sit right with my conscience.
CIA led Western behavior in Syria can be explained thus:
1) the CIA creates US foreign policy, the president and state department follow.
2) a war is always needed to keep the US military-industrial complex funded, any war.
3) Through NATO the US coerces EU sheep far outside the North Atlantic.
4) Syria solo was relatively harmless but Ayatollah Iran’s growing influence there and in Lebanon was a thorn in the eyes of the Arab oil sheiks of KSA and UAE, plus Netanyahu Israel.
5) The US dollar without the rigid gold standard is since 1973 on the elastic Arab oil standard: therefore the FED can print unlimited banknotes or add zeros to their digital accounts and thus the CIA can pay off anybody including industry, Senate,House or press. They have the NSA to black mail them too, or the corrupt FBI to harness or black list.
Dear me-you’ve forgotten the Oded Yinon Plan, from Kivunim magazine in 1982, that outlines the Zionist plans to destroy all Israel’s neighbours by aggression and the fomenting of sectarian and tribal hatreds to sunder the countries into powerless statelets. Starting with Iraq, then Syria, just as has occurred. Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, await, with Libya a real bonus in bloodshed and destruction. How could you forget such a central religious text of really existing Zionism?
You mean “divide & concur”, the corner stone of the Great Britain’s old Empire?
Was the East India Company run by Jews? Were the British royalties Jews? etc.
Master Whitehall, senior apprentice – Langley, passerby: journalist Odin Yinon.
Religious text ??
Divide and Conquer is as old as the hills. How in all that is balmy, does the fact that the English used the tactic so well and often, relevant to Israel’s use of the process to foment internecine hatred and conflict, and thus tens or hundreds of thousands of deaths, in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan etc?
The fact is that the British Israelis who saw America as the “New Canaan” are just as bad as the genocidal occupiers of Palestine both operate or operated on the racist edict known as the “Doctrine of Discovery” promulgated by the Catholic Church:
https://doctrineofdiscovery.org
I have a good book called ‘Chosen People’ by Clifford Longley, concerning how the elites in England and the USA see themselves as the inheritors of the ‘Chosen People’ status of the Jews, in a covenant with God. Read it yonks ago, and a brief recent re-immersion was truly scary, given what is transpiring.
I’ll add it to my reading list. An excellent book on the subject of the belief in being “the chosen”, the “new Israelites” etc, etc I’ve read just recently was Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building by Richard Drinnon.
By the way it is interesting that the racist Papal Bull known as the Doctrine of the Discovery was promulgated after the Jesuits infiltrated the RC.
Yes-that’s a beauty. Read it yonks ago, but might do a re-read.
GB (+ France) created the weird borders demarcations for those countries, without much concern for tribes, cultures or natural borders. The result was indefensible borders and potential conflict.
Go on Google Earth / maps and see how nutty the border between India and then Pakistan was drawn in now Bangladesh: a drunken village idiot would have done better.
However the desire to exploit these borders, to destroy these States, by deliberately fomenting ethnic and sectarian hatreds (as Israel did in Lebanon during the Civil War there) is 100% kosher. In league with the Wahhabists, the USA and the UK. Israel is very adept at getting their stooges to do their dirty work for them, utilising the massively influential Zionist, Israel First, Fifth Columns in the West.
Why “central”? Because it fits the narrative you favor?
Why, yes, of course.
Syria was conceived, written and performed by the Zionist Mafia and its butt goys in Wahington and the UK.
What did Washington have to do with the establishment of Syria?
The United Snakes has been plotting to destroy Syria on behalf of its Zionist overlords since the country gained its independence from French colonial rule. The first occasion was in 1949.
A couple of years ago, Smotrich, a Likudnik fascist, and Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, openly stated on Israeli TV that ‘Damascus belongs to the Jews’. Damascus has been settled since c.6300 BCE and even back to c.9000BCE in local regions. And the Jews are only 3500 years old as a community. Yet it, and Lebanon up to the Litani, and the land ‘..from the Nile to the Euphrates’ belong to the Jews, not the local inhabitants, according to the ruling Zionist regime.
They want ALL of Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan.
And parts of Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
M. Binet was appalled by the undue, unwarranted concentration on a single, specific type of intelligence that Stanford brought to his far more inclusive, if differentiable per specific application, methodology.
Agreed. IQ is a narrow and distorted metric. Not worthless though, and fit for my rough and ready purposes. I am of course scratching the surface – as with Irish and Sicilian Americans – of complex phenomena. We could also cite, among other things, centuries of exclusion from some walks of life, and the high value traditional Jewish families attach to learning.
If forced to advance only one argument, in few words, against the thrust of Joyce’s odious piece, it would be the logical one: overrepresentation of Group A in (smaller) Group B does not imply overrepresentation of B in A. And who would deny that this latter conclusion is the one antisemites like Joyce wish us to make?
My remarks on the inherently parasitic nature of capitalism stand of course.
Now now, Philip. Don’t you know that people are thirsting to hear not about the macrodynamics of capitalist accumulation, but the inglorious wheelings and dealings inspired by the Talmud and how Trump is apparently trying to stop privatisation and institute socialist public ownership in line with the recommendations of Morales?
Are you actually saying that Joyce actually “forced” you to make such a straw man argument? I agree that not all Jews are responsible for the sorry state of the world but the fact is that many are overrepresented in rapacious and parasitical forms of finance known as Vulture Capitalism and that it has nothing to do with IQ.
Nope.
Care to quantify?
And we know this how?
I don’t have to “qualify” may argument since Joyce has already done this for me. Also application usurious interest has nothing to do with IQ. I stand by this statement and so far you haven’t proven otherwise.
Qualify?
I see. There are those who want an answer and those who demand what they think is the correct “answer”which one are you Phil?
Just out of idle curiosity, Phil, but are you an Ashkenazi Jew yourself?
Not considered relevant? Not worthy of reply?
Belatedly seen your question, richard. No, I’m not Jewish.
Or we could acknowledge the overarching value of Judaism’s most important religious festival, the weekly celebration of Shabbat, and its immeasurable contribution to family and community love, acceptance, understanding and solidarity.
Yes, indeed- ‘..family and community love, acceptance, understanding and solidarity’, are so much more important to Jews than non-Jews. Are Jews in any way related to these fine attributes, any different from Palestinians, ‘.. the victims of the victims’, as Edward Said observed?
Take an example of the early Christians who loved their enemies: all dead. Only because a Roman emperor got converted to Christianity the few left could ideologically concur Pagan Europe.
Did modern Jews convert the US emperor – the CIA? More likely an Israel fitted in their Anglo -Arab oil dollar protection racket as a bogey man for Arabs.
Israel and the Fifth Column sayanim began directly controlling US politics after the use of Jewish lucre to bankroll Truman in 1948. The control was total by 1967 when Jewish agents of influence prevailed on their asset, LBJ, to ignore the Israeli attack on USS Liberty and the slaughter of US personnel, even those straffed as they swam for their lives. Wahhabist corruption of US politics is great, but the Zionists control US politics, completely. Anyone witnessing US behaviour at the UN, protecting Israel for International Law, or seeing the Congressional invertebrates prostrating themselves before Netanyahu as he addresses the assembled slaves, hysterically shrieking their worship, lest they be accused of ‘antisemitism’ for less than deranged adulation, knows who pays the pipers in Washington.
Jews had to live with all kinds of targeted restrictions in North Africa and Europe; many jobs or income strategies were deliberately closed for them by “law”: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitism-in-history-the-early-modern-era-1300-1800
Not good, but pretty idyllic compared to the conditions imposed on the Palestinians by Israel.
How does that have any bearing on what Antonym was alluding to? Your concern-trolling is puzzling.
To paraphrase an old slogan of Harley Davidson riders. If he had to explain it to you then you probably wouldn’t understand.
True. I’m not “feeling” the ugly chauvinist undercurrent you guys are indulging.
Project much?
Yes, since those terrible restrictions were lifted, they’ve all become bricklayers, farmers and bus drivers. They no longer have to slave away in Wall Street and the City for a miserable pittance.
So all Jews are now rich? Better tell Jen, who laments about big income equality today in Israel.
The Jewish elites, about whom one is speaking when alluding to the blood-sucking vulture funds, are richer than Croesus. No-one in their right mind blames all Jews for the crimes of the worst of their collective.
Not richer than the Arab oil sheikhs, who also have a lot of oil in stock underground.
The piece on vulture funds was quite specific in establishing how the worst of these criminal extortion gangs are indeed run by Jewish human beings. Given that Jews are 2% of the US population this is a prodigious overrepresentation. To assert that these facts are somehow irrelevant or inadmissable, because other parasites in other parts of the capitalist Mafias are not Jewish, is a complete diversionary tactic. One could as easily dismiss the reality of the huge numbers of Jewish classical violinists but pointing to the great violinists who were not Jews. And to include the garbage about Askenazi innate genius, indeed the ‘greatest’ on Earth (the Chinese, Indians and Koreans must find that equally funny and idiotic)is simply the worst sort of self-deluding narcissism.
So, what are the “proper” lessons you’d like people to draw?
Can’t agree with you there, I’m afraid. To assert something is not to establish it.
Well, other than the fact neither you nor Joyce quantify the extent of Jewish involvement in finance capitalism – so rendering terms like ‘prodigious’ unhelpful – I agree that Jews are overrepresented. I thought I’d made that clear.
Just as well I don’t use it then, isn’t it? Mine are different arguments. One, overrepresentation of Group A in Group B does not imply a vice versa claim. Two, the nature of capitalism is that of a vulture. The first is a logical axiom, the second a claim I can back up if you seriously wish to dispute it.
This is a mangled argument. Think I’ll skip it altogether.
Also mangled – and strawman. I make no claim for Askenazi genius. I cite a small but real advantage on a flawed but not worthless metric. Nor do I claim the advantage to be the sole preserve of Askenazis. (Not for the first time you rush to make inferences not supported by logic or by anything I have claimed. Indeed, there are good reasons, rooted in colonialism and imperialism, why the ethnic groups you cite might have been less well placed to leverage such an advantage.) You then throw in needlessly inflammatory language like “garbage” and – mystifying, this – “narcissism”. Even if I am entirely wrong – and you’ve said nothing to show that to be so – how would it make me a narcissist?
Why, then, do you even mention the ‘flawed but not worthless (really?)metric’ of bashfully self -confessed Ashkenazi ‘genius’? If you are attempting to imply that Jewish elites are not massively over-represented in the ranks of the financial apparatchiki of neo-liberal capitalist parasitism, then you must be joking, and your piece appears yet more to just be an exculpation of Jewish elite economic crime. Perhaps you could bring facts, like the great prevalence of goyim in the ranks of vulture funds and associated entities, and name the principles, the goy Paul Singers.
Simply to deny the undeniable does nothing to remedy the situation. Vulture funds produce great and justified resentment, even hatred, in the victims of their predations. When anyone can see that these groups are controlled overwhelmingly by elite Jews, and then that fact is simply ignored or denied, and those who point it out are ritually abused as bigots and ‘antisemites’, then some victims will be driven to antipathy towards, not just the perpetrators, but to all Jews, and towards their apologists. Thus the Jewish people as a whole run the risk of being tarred with the brush wielded by the parasitic elites alone, which is a situation that ought to be avoided. Yours appears to me to be that familiar ‘argument’ of the ‘antisemitism’ industry, that criticism of the behaviour of any Jew, no matter how odious is that behaviour, is evidence of a hatred of all Jews just because they are Jews, and that is slanderous apologia for Jewish elite crimes, which do exist just as much in reality as does any good action by any Jew who opposes neoliberalism and its predations.
Dear me. Another thoroughly mangled argument. IQ flawed but not worthless – yes, really.
Bashfully self-confessed Asjenazi genius. When you attribute such absurd hyperbole to me I suspect I am not dealing with an honest broker. Ditto when you ignore my invite to explain how my views are narcissistic. Both have the whiff of stones thrown without regard to weight or accuracy.
Over and decidedly out. Shame, that.
Then I suggest you temper your “arguments” better by excluding such as controversial conclusions as the reason that Vulture Capitalists happen to be Jewish is because of their high IQ which is arrogantly racist in the extreme while pretending to be otherwise.
Well I disagree with your blanket dismissal of an admittedly flawed IQ but in any case I no more believe in any one reductive explanation for Jewish over representation in finance – and those other careers I mention – than I do for Sicilian overrepresentation in the mob. Sorry I didn’t make this sufficiently clear.
On my central assertion – overrepresentation of a large group in a smaller one does not equate to overrepresentation of the latter in the former – you, Richard and I seem to be in agreement. Perhaps even Joyce concurs. But given the obvious dangers, given the slant of Occidental Observer and its readets (see the btl comments) I’m happy to have taken the trouble to point this out.
I particularly dismiss culturally biased IQ tests just as I’ve dismissed Eugenics as pseudo science used by white supremacists to falsely affirm their position as the chosen ones.
Apologise for the ridiculous lateness of this reply, Gall. I’ve only just seen your comment whole re-reading this thread for another purpose.
I see IQ as biased to the tacit assumptions of a white worldview: a telling argument against psychologists like Jensen and Eysenck, who used IQ to support their view of white people as smarter than black people. But if we look to IQ as one strand of a wider explanation of the disproportionate success of white Jews in that white man’s world, racial bias of IQ testing is less problematic.
One of my mistakes was not to make clear that I was not offering intelligence as sole explanation. Others may be exclusion of Jews from many walks of life (witness the business success of Quakers in 18th and 19th century Britain) and high value attached to learning in many Jewish homes.
Another mistake (one I’ve perhaps just repeated!) was to offer any explanation at all. Rather, I might have asked those who cite Jewish overrepresentation in finance to show that it exceeds Jewish overrepresentation in other high status fields.
Funny you should mention “Jensen and Eysenck”. This article destroys the fallacy that genetics or race has anything to do with IQ:
“Scientific” Racism and the Evidence on Race and
Intelligence:
https://www2.le.ac.uk/departments/npb/people/amc/articles-pdfs/scieraci.pdf
While I’m on the subject of genetics and race. Contrary to Trump’s EO, Hitler’s Mien Kampf , the KKK among other white supremacists, Zionist Jews and Christians say Judaism is not a race. It is a religion.
Thus there is no genetic basis to the claim that Ashkenazi jews have higher IQs. Also IQ testing in general is not only racially and culturally but also tends to test mathematical and arithmetical ability which they falsely claim is the basis of “intelligence” when the fact is that there are factors involved such as discretion and discernment. The ability to detect nuances and many other things.
Take for example such military geniuses as Cochise, Red Cloud and Omar Mukhtar. None of these men had any formal “education” of any kind yet they were able to run circles around their foreign occupiers tactically and strategically.
Another one is the Mayans and the Arabs the latter being arrogantly bombed by the racist imperialist and the former being pushed off their homelands by rapacious capitalists aggressors both devised complex mathematical systems that archeologists and researchers are still trying to figure.
In fact the Mayans used sidereal calendars far more advanced and accurate than that sloppy Gregorian Calendar which has to adjust every four years for that extra quarter day. Even then its not all that accurate.
In the case of the latter the Pyramids stand as a testament to their architectural skill. Aside from the fact that it is the Arab system that is currently being used world wide. Instead of the cumbersome and annoying Roman numerals that are mainly used to introduce chapters in books.
Back to IQ. The fact is that after the Church of Rome outlawed the Templers. Many Jews took over in the area of finance and banking including the infamous Rothschilds.
In other words after Jesus was said to have thrown the money changers out of his father’s temple they were later embraced by the Holy Roman Empire after the demise of the Templers to handle and direct finance who looked the other way when they charged usurious interest on loans to gentiles something that was forbidden by both Moslems and Christians.
In fact Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is based more on fact than fiction yet this play is considered “antisemitic” even though it exposes the truth.
Thus Jews formed banking networks which required mathematical and arithmetical skills which probably explains this “IQ” skill which by the way does not prove they are smarter than anyone else though does prove how stupid those in Holy Roman Empire were in allowing them to have almost total control of finance which also explains why there is a higher percentage of Vulture Capitalists than there is among gentiles who Religiously have qualms about rapacious usury and theft by the “magic” of compound interest.
You are correct, in my opinion, re. Occidental Observer. They are definitely, in my opinion, Judeophobes. I saw the article reprinted in the Unz Review, which itself hosts some lunatic White Supremacist imbeciles, but does feature some very interesting commenters you won’t see in the NYT.
The irony is that many of these white supremacists racist yahoos are controlled by Zionists. Tommy Robinson is a perfect example.
That said Joyce does have a valid point. Of course the choose aren’t the problem it’s the Zionists both Christian and Jewish.
Here Phil can probably validly compare IQs here since most Zionist Jews are pretty smart while Christian Zionists for the most part are dumber than a wet bag of hammers.
It’s just like the ‘English Defence League’. The nomenclature, straight from Kahane’s ‘Jewish Defence League’ gave it away, immediately, but then the first proto-pogroms in Moslem areas, where there were more Israeli flags waving then Crosses of St. George, confirmed its origins.
According to the FBI’s stats the JDL and other Jewish Terrorists are way more active here than the poor Mooslims who allegedly are ‘sposed bringing in Sharia Law any day now according to the Zio-trash nutballs ignoring the fact that that Noahide Laws have been in effect since the ’90’s.
Trump’s already started trying to enforce them with this ridiculous EO making the ever expanding definition of “antisemitism” a thought crime on College Campuses now.
Of course this abridgment of the First was applauded by the Asshole-Nazis.
I agree but as I’ve said there are better ways of making your argument than going full on Mein Kampf and other racist doctrines of genetic superiority. All you’re doing here is comparing apples to oranges or Aryans to Ashkenazis. Fighting fire with fire tends to backfire.
The fact is that there are historical reasons that Ashkenazis excel in finance which have nothing to do with IQ. Just as there are reasons why many Sicilians tend toward organized crime going back to Sicily and the Sicilians who tended to be family oriented La Familia or Ma Familia truncated Mafia.
Actually the fact is that a bunch of Gentiles known as the Templers were more adept at finance than anybody who for this reason became a threat to the Church and the rest as you know is history.
See the Temple and Lodge:
https://archive.org/details/TheTempleandtheLodge/page/n1
It echoes, as just the most recent example, the fuss made about the loathsome Bret Stephens’ proclamation of Ashkenazi genius in the NYT. The Ubumenschen seem to be feeling their oats, as they say.
The only thing that’s heartening is the amount of pushback occurring in regard to this supremacist idiocy.
You, naturally, ignored the bulk of my argument. It is not you I accuse of narcissism, but those Ashkenazi Jews who peddle the myth of their universal intellectual superiority (unless you are an Ashkenazi Jew yourself).
Where did I say that your views are ‘narcissistic’? I only asserted, or intended to, that the narcissism was of certain, not all, Ashkenazi Jews, in claiming to be humanity’s intellectual elite. If I came across as accusing you, then I wrote awry, and apologise.
I’ve only just seen this, Richard. I am not Jewish. If I was wrong in taking your comment on narcisissm to be aimed at me, then I apologise.
To be fair, your misrepresentation of my words – as a claim for ‘genius’ I never made – was unhelpful.
“our” means “our”.
‘Israel’ is other people’s property, that the Zionists were happy to steal through terror, murder and expulsion, and continue to keep the rightful owners in a state of perpetual imprisonment, awaiting future mass expulsion or extermination. THAT is precisely what Paul Singer and his blood-sucking ilk represent.
Only Antarctica was never an “other “people’s property. Manchuria, Siberia , Alaska etc. were all once other people’s lands.
If “other” people occupy large tracks sparsely it is quite possible they lose some to refugees/ illegal immigrants.
What a lovely apologia for the German Nazi attempt to acquire ‘lebensraum in the East’. Just like the Zionists. Why am I not surprised. The transference is indeed spooky and ironic.
Funny how these lands that “people occupy large tracks sparsely” is usually after acts of genocide perpetrated by the invaders:
https://1.droppdf.com/files/43rm5/american-holocaust-david-e-stannardx.pdf
Very interesting reads there. Thank you.
Re: Jeremy Corbyn and Labour:
Let’s be honest and frank; cut to the chase. The 2019 General Election has been a completely corrupt, sickening affair – the landslide ‘result’ was mostly due to postal ballot fraud; Jeremy Corbyn has been forced into the current position because of this despicable corruption.
Jeremy Corbyn is a rare spirit – a most genuine, decent, gentle man yet strong, determined and focused with it. He has been right about all of the most important issues & subjects from the beginning of his career and has always kept his principles and integrity. The way he inspires so many people (not just in Britain but all over the world) is awesome and unprecedented. Brecauase of all this he should not have to step down. Jeremy Corbyn has every right to stay and finish the project. If he is forced out before he has even truly begun, the establishment will think they have won; they will get what they have dreamed about since the beginning of his leadership. They will have won due to despicable fraud and continued corruption; what a sickener.
If he was ready to become PM for five years why not stay on as leader for five more years? I hope Jeremy Corbyn stays and continues the fight to rebuild Britain into a strong, decent, fair and vibrant place for everyone (and above all, stop the assault on the vulnerable and voiceless); there is a colossal amount of respect and love for him out there and we are ready to support him all the way to the end – I hope he knows that for it is the truth!
Care to be forensically secific?
specific
I doubt you would believe it if you counted them yourself
Wrong again.
There is an on line petition for exactly that
Set up by a dweeb. Properly set up: good chance. Set up as is: too chubby to fat chance.
My wife used to work in local government, in the Vulnerable Adults section.
Time after time she witnessed savagely abused women return to their abuser rather than accept a new, free and independent life of safety. It seems to me that the British public made a similar decision at the last general election.
After being abused by the Torys for years they chose to return to their abuser. By the way does anyone have an explanation for why Liverpool and Greater Manchester remained overwhelmingly Labour?
Corbyn lost because his own party sabotaged his campaign by forcing him to include another referendum on Brexit as part of his party’s platform.
Claiming voter or election fraud seems to be the hip and trendy thing these days on both sides of the political spectrum as was the case recently in Bolivia.
True election or voter fraud can be suspected in cases where there is small variance in the results such as in the case of the election of George W Bush but when one has an overwhelming majority in the popular vote or in America of electors then it is time to for self examination.
Let’s daydream about a new political party – called, oh, I dunno, how about something like ‘The Workers’ Party’ – which suddenly recruited George Galloway, Ken Livingstone, Chris Williamson, and all the other honourable, decent socialist members who’ve been traduced and expelled by the kangaroo-courtery rackets of the B’Liarite rump from neo-Labour, particularly around the ‘anti-semitism’ bs.
Imagine Jeremy Corbyn agreeing to be it’s president-till-retirement-or-death, wcf. Imagine the great bulk of the rank-and-file current members of the Labour party switching allegiance to the new party and quitting Labour; leaving it no longer the largest, fastest-growing political party in Western Europe, that place having been grabbed by The Workers’ Party. And then, in the fullness of time, along comes an election, just as TWP completes its Britainwide party organising…
Now why should something like that be impossible. WhyTF shouldn’t it even be an urgently-necessary to-do, starting right now…?
In the narrators references to Corbyns failure to overcome the establishment, deep state, and financial wall of money, as a famous banker in the 18th century said I don’t care who is in government whoever controls the money controls the government, they fail to mention all of these any many more points. For example, the betrayal by New Labour by failing to reverse the 18 years of Thatcherite policies. The simplistic notion that Bozo, who increased his vote by 300,000 with a landslide victory compared to a Tweezer having 300,000 votes and 12 seaways less, was down to Jeremy Corbyn adopting a very mild socialist policy does not equate. It was the most intense propaganda campaign by the opposing forces to a mildly, reminiscent of Harold Wilson’s policies, that I have witnessed in my 6 decades on this Earth in the U.K. including the Cold War brainwashing period. However, despite the fact that the forces opposing a mildly form of democratic socialism have a temporary victory, they are losing the war long term. Hope lives eternal!
The Media Lens article referenced in the author’s fourth footnote gets the BBC bang-to-rights.
Much of it could also be applied the ‘Australian’ Broadcasting Corporation, notably in relation to its incompetent and viciously biased ‘coverage’ of British politics.
Oh, the ABC is worse, and has been getting steadily more so since the Howardisation after 1996, and the more recent Murdochisation as more and more Murdoch apparatchiki began to infest the corpse.
You’re right, 1996 was when it all started. The ABC’s ‘Code of Practice’ isn’t worth the paper (or cyber space) it’s written on and is routinely violated by the said apparatchiki. There’s no institutional way of dealing with it because the internal unit which allegedly “investigates” audience complaints is not independent and denies the import of clear evidence placed before it.