| "I don't want to start sort of going down the First Amendment route because that's a huge subject and one in which I don't understand because I've only been here a short period of time," Harry said. "But, you can find a loophole in anything. And you can capitalize or exploit what’s not said rather than uphold what is said." He said. "I’ve got so much I want to say about the First Amendment as I sort of understand it, but it is bonkers," he continued. |
If you are an anti-masker, Harry does not want to hear from you.
If you have a religious scruple against the taking of human life in the womb, Harry does not want to hear from you.
Harry is a counter-revolutionary who dreams, apparently, of becoming the ruler, nominal or otherwise, of an anti-democratic, Amerikan Empire.
He is, it would appear, a poorly educated and confused puppet of America's plutocracy that has become impatient with the democratic charade and wishes to govern directly and without the uncertainties and embarrassments of rule by bribery and blackmail of what are nominally the elected representatives of the people.
Related:
Johnathan Turley: The "Bonkers" Interview Of Bonny Prince Harry: Why The Attack On The First Amendment Should Concern All Americans
"He is, it would appear, a poorly educated and confused puppet of America's plutocracy that has become impatient with the democratic charade and wishes to govern directly and without the uncertainties and embarrasments of rule by bribery and blackmail of what are nominally the elected representatives of the people."
ReplyDeleteIt is also possible Harry is simply and truly in love with his wife and what's happening to him is the need to be blind to love such a woman is twisting his soul, intelligence, and any other abilities he may possess, into "bonkers" knots.
Perhaps love has made Harry weak and foolish. I would know, for I have been there.
Then the question becomes who is Meghan Markle? The King rules the castle and all therein, but the Queen rules the King, though the Queen resides in the castle.
There is a kind of precedent to this, in this very family. It was extraordinary that Edward VIII voluntarily abdicated the throne to marry Wallis Warfield Simpson. It was also extraordinary this did not destroy the monarchy right then and there. Add to this Lady Di and Prince Charles. It is easy to see how Harry would be susceptible to this kind of catastrophe.
(Forgive me for commenting on the British monarchy-- and to a Brit!)
Yes I agree that, to put things crudely, Meghan has Harry, however tenderly, by the balls, although I suspect that Harry, like his mother, has megalomanic ambitions, and is intent on, if nothing else, destruction of the British Monarchy.
DeleteWhat drives Meghan is more obscure. Is it mere egomania, cupidity, or is she the agent of a more sinister force?
But whatever motivates Meghan, my contention is that she and Harry are being used by greater forces to facilitate the Woke revolution.
This is a revolution to end America's ever less credible democratic form of governance, which is to be replaced by something that the Romans at the time of Caesar Augustus would have found familiar. That is a system in which qualification for a Senate seat is purely financial.
In the time of Augustus, the requirement was around one million cesterces (about $3 million US). In America today the threshold would have to be higher. There are reported to be 614 American billionaires, so a threshold of just over one billion would fill both Senate and Congress, exactly.
As for my being British, I suppose technically that is true, although I have lived in the same house here on Vancouver Island for most of the last 50 years. It is the case, though, that as a former Federal Public servant for a total of about eight months, I am sworn to allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada. So yes, my loyalty to the crown is unwavering.
Queen Elizabeth II, incidentally, is Queen of Canada by Canadian law, not by virtue of being Queen of England. In fact, it's odd that she is called QE II in Canada, since we never had a QE I.
"This is a revolution to end America's ever less credible democratic form of governance, which is to be replaced by something that the Romans at the time of Caesar Augustus would have found familiar. That is a system in which qualification for a Senate seat is purely financial."
ReplyDeleteThe plutocrats may well need some sort of deliberative body resembling the Senate. I don't believe we'll necessarily be privy to it, but I don't know. Maybe these plutocrats-- who are not aristocrats--require the adulation of the masses in ways the aristocrats of Europe never did.
I often doubt our billionaires, men such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg, Jeffrey Epstein, Mitt Romney and the others, are the real deal.
Is it not remarkable Warren Buffett and Bill Gates are so close? I believe Bill Gates, through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will be the largest beneficiaries of Warren Buffett's estate. Can it really be the case Warren Buffett, this down-home country-goodness real-nice-guy "Sage of Omaha" selects, of free choice, from out of all the world's people-- Bill Gates?
It could be.
It could also be there's something else or someone else for whom such a union is desirable. I doubt friendship and mutual admiration or trust or "character" has anything whatsoever to do with deals of that magnitude and at that level of influence.
I have wondered about Warren Buffett ever since he "rescued" Salomon Brothers Brokerage back in the 80's.
Michael Bloomberg was an employee of Salomon Brothers until 1981, when he was fired.
"I often doubt our billionaires, men such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg, Jeffrey Epstein, Mitt Romney and the others, are the real deal."
DeleteThere are several ways to get a great deal of money. One is by theft, fraud, murder, extortion, etc. This is perhaps the most common approach but not the most reliable.
Then there are what H.L. Mencken referred to as a the "few mundane tricks of swindling" but which most businesses raise profit margins.
And lastly, there is the method of providing honest goods or services at fair margins over a relatively long period of time.
As examples of the last method one might think of the great Quaker fortunes, for example of the English chocolate makers, Cadbury's, Rowntree's and Fry's, although there is reason to believe that all benefited from the use of child slaves in the cocoa plantations, so it is not clear that any of them qualify.
But in theory at least, it is possible to get rich honestly, but it depends on luck: in particularly, being in the right place at the right time with the right skills and with the capital to exploit the opportunity and the longevity to ride one's good fortune for decades.
Bill Gates is a good example of someone with all those advantages. As a boy, he was a computer geek who pursued this interest at University, making unauthorized use of Harvard's mainframe.
Then, with perfect timing, IBM developed a mass market microcomputer but not an operating system. And by sheerest luck, Bill's mother knew the President of IBM and used her influence to steer the contract for a PC operating system to Bill. Even more fortunately, Bill was able to raise $100K, presumably from his wealthy banker father, to buy an existing package called QDos, which was renamed MS Dos. The two were essentially identical.
Then, the icing on the cake, IBM made the PC open architecture, which meant that cheap clones were manufactured in Asia and sold by the million at a fraction of the price of an IBM -- each machine requiring a copy of MS Dos to run.
After that, it was just a matter of watching the sheckels mount up, although the flood of cash was not doubt hugely swollen by revenue from the heap of crappy Dos-, and later Windows-, based applications.
So although Gates is a sleaze, he probably got his money more or less honestly.
If we assume that Bill's initial stake -- as measured by the cost of his private school education, the cash to purchase QDos, the value of his mother's influence with IBM, etc. -- to have been around $10 million, then Bill has managed to boost his fortune about ten thousand fold.
DeleteI think if one looked, one would find that for a vast number of small businesses, the rate of capital accumulation, i.e., per year, is similar. However, few entrepreneurs start with anything like $10 million, or are free to start as soon as they drop out of university.
Most have to take a job and stick with it as they raise a family, and only think about their own business as they approach middle age. And of course, few entrepreneurs luck out in multiple ways, as did Gates.
But apparently, in acknowledgement of the benefits he has conferred on humanity, Gates thinks he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. LOL.
"Then, with perfect timing, IBM developed a mass market microcomputer but not an operating system. And by sheerest luck, Bill's mother knew the President of IBM and used her influence to steer the contract for a PC operating system to Bill. Even more fortunately, Bill was able to raise $100K, presumably from his wealthy banker father, to buy an existing package called QDos, which was renamed MS Dos. The two were essentially identical."
DeleteThe name of the guy who authored the Q-DOS system is Tim Paterson. At the time Paterson created QDos, he was working for a company called Seattle Computer Products, SCP.
Microsoft was going to act as a kind of middleman marketing SCP's Q-DOS (which became 86-DOS and finally, MS-DOS). Microsoft was going to sell licenses for the Q-DOS and for each license sold, SCP would get $10K to $25K, or something in that range.
SCP assumed Microsoft had a lot of customers lined up to buy Q-DOS and that SCP would have a revenue stream resulting from all these sales.
Actually, though, Microsoft had only one customer lined up, which was IBM. So Microsoft only sold one license and only had to pay the one fee to SCP. Thus Microsoft acquired a product for ~$50K to $75K which it would be making hundreds of millions of dollars yearly for many years afterward.
When Gates negotiated the deal with SCP, he didn't mention he had only one customer and that it was IBM. Certainly he didn't have to mention it, but without doubt had he mentioned this important fact it would have led SCP to reconsider the deal.
But also-- the thing Bill Gates had that SCP and others didn't have was the connection to IBM through his mother. If SCP had that connection, they wouldn't have needed Bill Gates, and it would be the people at SCP we'd know today, not Bill Gates. It is very suspicious to me IBM didn't just find someone with a DOS in hand, rather than using this middleman approach. I guess they paid for the mistake though-- in billions and billions going to Micro Soft rather than IBM.
Interesting. Thanks for the details on the Q-Dos deal.
DeleteThe dirt and the devil are in the details.
DeleteTime and time again we see Bill Gates pulling a fast one. While not usually breaking the law, he's double crossing a friend, betraying someone's trust, misleading someone, taking advantage, stealing someone else's (unprotected) creative work, often without any remuneration at all-- and making millions himself.
In the early days, interesting and useful software, created by hobbyists and computer buffs, was offered free to anyone who wanted it. It was not uncommon for Gates to get this software, copyright it, and then start selling it. The actual creators had no rights, and got nothing, while Gates made millions.
Once he had millions, Gates was in a position to plunder to his heart's content. He could hire away the best talent, buy out the smaller companies creating innovative products, and be basically unstoppable. Also, as Microsoft developed, he had teams of lawyers working for him, and smaller companies simply wouldn't have the resources to go against Gates in court, and they wouldn't try. This would allow Gates to "settle" out of court, paying someone a million or so, for a product he'd reap millions or billions owning and selling. (Another example of the way legal fees and "settlements" and so on are regarded by these giant companies as "just another cost of doing business.)
Gates doesn't seem to be a brutal man, and he is very careful with the law, but there's nothing nice about him. In person he isn't likable.
What if we'd lived in a society which truly rewarded creativity and productive innovation? A society which had created laws protecting hobbyists and others who did so much of the early work-- because it was fun? Instead, we live in a society which protects predators who see such people as ripe for the picking. (Laws were eventually created to ensure software offered free must continue to be offered for free.)
https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/b/bloomberg-bloomberg.html?_r=2
ReplyDeleteI knew I recognized this "unknown" and "obscure" company, Phibro:
ReplyDelete1. “The first enclosures were financial projections for our company [Salomon Brothers] after a proposed merger with Phibro, this almost unknown oil, metals, and agricultural commodities dealer.”
2. “We were told not to tell anyone until the public announcement the coming Monday. Nobody, inside the company or outside, had known that a sale was even being considered. (Still, my friend and partner Bob Salomon guessed, the day before, that whatever was brewing involved Phibro Corp. He showed me the company's symbol on his stock monitor before we drove to the Tarrytown meeting. Smarter than the rest of us!)”
3. “Although Phibro technically bought Salomon, Salomon soon ran the combined companies. The power shifted with record speed. Phibro took over when the transaction occurred, and Phibro became Phibro-Salomon. As the securities business boomed, the commodities business collapsed. Soon the entity became Salomon Inc., with Phibro Energy and Philipp Brothers as subsidiaries. The Philipp name went back to the obscurity it had had five years earlier. The acquirer never knew what hit it. The acquiree dominated almost from day one. A total mismatch.”
-- from Bloomberg's autobiography, as found in the NYT archives, linked above.
(to be con't)
Meet Mark Rick, the man Bill Clinton pardoned on his last day in office:
ReplyDelete1. Rich attended high school at the Rhodes Preparatory School in Manhattan. He later attended New York University, but dropped out after one semester to go work for Philipp Brothers (now known as Phibro LLC) in 1954 where he worked with Pincus Green.
2. At Philipp Brothers, he eventually became a dealer in metals, learning about the international raw materials markets and commercial trading with poor, third-world nations. He helped run the company's operations in Cuba, Bolivia, and Spain.[7] In 1974, he and co-worker Pincus Green set up their own company in Switzerland, Marc Rich + Co. AG, which would later become Glencore Xstrata Plc.
3. His tutelage under Philipp Brothers afforded Rich the opportunity to develop relationships with various dictatorial régimes and embargoed nations. Rich would later tell biographer Daniel Ammann that he had made his "most important and most profitable" business deals by violating international trade embargoes and doing business with the apartheid regime of South Africa.[10] He also counted Fidel Castro's Cuba, Marxist Angola, the Nicaraguan Sandinistas, Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, Nicolae Ceaușescu's Romania, and Augusto Pinochet's Chile among the clients he serviced.[8][11] According to Ammann, "he had no regrets whatsoever.... He used to say 'I deliver a service. People want to sell oil to me and other people wanted to buy oil from me. I am a businessman, not a politician."[10]
4. "Later, following the overthrow of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, during the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Rich used his special relationship with Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of the revolution, to buy oil from Iran despite the American embargo. Iran would become Rich's most important supplier of crude oil for more than 15 years. Rich sold Iranian oil to Israel through a secret pipeline.[12][13][14] Due to his good relationship with Iran and Ayatollah Khomeini, Rich helped give Mossad's agents contacts in Iran.[15]
5. Rich and Marvin Davis bought 20th Century Fox in 1981.
Look at that timeline. Look at these associations. These are the real connections. They aren't imaginary. There's also no way I would know of PhiBro if it was genuinely little known. And even if it was little known, it has had undeniable importance. And hey, this marriage of Salomon Brothers with PhiBro was no mismatch, nor was the speed with which Salomon, the acquiree, started calling the shots a surprise.
I'm glad this is still up because this gives me the opportunity to say what I really have to say about Bill Gates and the way he acquired his enormous wealth.
ReplyDeleteHe has consistently used the law to protect himself and his evil ways, while at the same time using the law to defraud (legally defraud) and harm everyone for whom or from whom he can derive advantages.
A crucial aspect of the Gates saga has been William Gates, Sr., Bill Gates's daddy. Gates Sr. is a lawyer, and a very good one. Gates Sr. has been there all along, from the beginning until well into the 2000's, though he has never attracted attention. (Sr. has attracted virtually no attention. It is as if he doesn't exist.)
Gates had to sign agreements with IBM which IBM could have used to crush Gates and Microsoft at any time. IBM, however, chose to be a good corporate citizen and not crush any of the emerging PC revolution. It really could have. Maybe, even, it should have. I don't know.
People refuse to understand the power of big corporations and deep pockets when it comes to our "legal" "system".
It is true you have the choice to not sign a contract they offer you, if it is true it is a choice when someone says "take it or leave it" or "your money or your life".
Once Bill had the deep pockets, people planning to sue him had to reckon with those deep pockets. It is the reality of the situation. If you have to fund five years of expensive litigation but have only enough for three years, you have to take that into consideration before filing suit. (There's always the chance you'll lose, and if so, not only is your money gone and wasted, but you are liable for the legal costs of your opponent.)
Bill was never, once he could crush others, a good corporate citizen. He crushed. And crushed.
And finally, Bill Gates became king. I am reminded of this quotation from Machiavelli's The Prince:
"And truly it is a very natural and ordinary thing to desire to acquire, and always, when men do it who can, they will be praised or not blamed;" -chapter 3.
Bill Gates succeeded and got away with it, and will now be praised or not blamed, regardless of the nastiness by which he acquired. If he had failed, he most certainly would have been reviled by all those he has crushed. That'd be what we heard about, if we heard anything.
Last year when Bill Gates popped up so extraordinarily, of all the horror I felt, no horror approached the magnitude I felt when I heard Bill say they'd have the vaccine no problem, but what they were working on now was a no liability clause. That's classic Bill Gates. He was going to use the law to arrange a "win-win" for himself...And he did. We're going to see to what degree that means a "lose-lose" for the rest of the human species. I say these tactics mean Gates's wealth is ill-gotten, even if we luck out and everything proceeds more or less smoothly.
Your distaste for Gates is vastly better informed than mine.
DeleteI dislike Gates chiefly for his presumption of expertise in matters of which his knowledge is evidently smaller even than my own; his monstrous conceit; his appalling and crazy gesturing manner of speech; and his megalomaniacal presumption to dictate to the world.
Hence my delight in his public exposure and ridicule as just another dirty, rich old man.
As a political force he is now surely done.
And as a financial force, let us hope that Melindy cuts his stature at least by half.
Melinda probably isn't that vicious. She could genuinely mess Bill over. Look at this: it is called the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They can't start calling it the Bill @** ******* Gates Foundation, can they?
ReplyDelete