est. 2007

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The Grenville Phillips Column – Get Out of the Stupid Boat

You are wealthy when the money you have invested is giving you enough money to pay for your monthly expenses.  Responsible investment guidance was clear until the end of 2018.  Now, much of that guidance has been proven not to work, and must be revised. Before November 2018, there was near unanimous agreement that the…

You are wealthy when the money you have invested is giving you enough money to pay for your monthly expenses.  Responsible investment guidance was clear until the end of 2018.  Now, much of that guidance has been proven not to work, and must be revised.

Before November 2018, there was near unanimous agreement that the most secure investments on our planet, were the treasury bills of governments that respected individual property rights.  Therefore, every person on Earth with a retirement savings and/or pension plan, likely had much of it invested in such treasury bills.

In October 2018, our Government passed a law to confiscate a significant amount of our collective retirement savings and pensions.  There was no opportunity for the vast majority of investors to be heard.  The financial institutions that managed our investments appeared to be politically compromised.  They stopped acting in the best financial interests of investors, and instead appeared to support grand larceny, by allowing the confiscation of our money without our consent.

Confidence in the Government’s ability to properly regulate private investment companies in Barbados was already shaken by the Trade Confirmers and CLICO scandals.  However, the confiscation of our retirement savings and pensions was a warning for us to seek better investment guidance.  That is the focus of the remainder of this article.

Steps to Investing

To put investing for wealth in context, consider a mortgage.  Each of us may deposit money in our bank account.  The bank pools this money and offers a family a 30-year mortgage of say $300,000.  The family must repay the $300,000 of our money, plus interest of about $400,000 for a total repayment of about $700,000.

What we get back is essentially the $300,000 we invested.  The bank keeps the $400,000 interest payment and gets wealthy.  You receive whatever you put in and get to live hand-to-mouth.  Do not worry, most of us are in the same stupid boat.  So what can we do about it?

Deciding to get out of the boat is the first step.  Avoid paying interest is the second, and making wise investments is the third.  To demonstrate that you have taken the first step, and to prepare you for the third, start to freely invest in others.

There are several Barbadian products that are of an international standard.  We can facilitate them getting global recognition if we all agreed to promote, at the same time, one product on our social media sites each week.  Why should we unselfishly promote others’ products?  Because we would want others to unselfishly promote our products.

The second step is to avoid paying interest.  Credit cards should be paid in full or not used.  Potential homeowners can avoid mortgage interest payments by working together.  For example, 100 families can form a company to construct 100 starter houses for themselves, by paying the company $2,000 each month for 8 years, instead of paying the bank $2,000 for 30 years.

Each 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom house can be constructed for under $200,000, and within 6 months.  To reduce defaulting risks, each participating family should have already secured their land.  This risk can also be managed by allowing those who have secured their land to have their houses constructed first.

The final step is to make wise investments.  You are likely to get a faster return on your investment if you pooled it with others.  For example, 100 people can invest $1,000 each to manage an event.  To protect your investment, the event should be cancelled if it cannot attract enough participants to make it profitable.

Losing It All

Can you lose your entire investment in such initiatives?  Yes.  If the person managing the business intends to steal your money, they can easily do so.  The risk of losing your money in this manner is significantly reduced by investigating the professional reputation and personal integrity of the persons managing the investments.  In Barbados, the pool of trust-worthy managers has been muddied considerably, so that selecting a competent and honest person is like a lottery.

Previously, trusting a politician, lawyer, banker, professional, or senior manager was automatic.  However, politicians regularly accuse each-other of gross corruption, lawyers are commonly accused of misappropriating their client’s money, and many managers received unmerited promotions for political reasons.  Therefore, the risk of selecting an unqualified person is unacceptably high.  Tragically, the risk of overlooking a highly qualified person is even higher.

Political operatives normally try to damage the good professional and personal reputations of our most accomplished citizens, if they deem them threats to their political party.  They have also interpreted their instructions to mean that the national economy must be reserved for supporters of the political party they worship.  These irresponsible actions can sabotage promising wealth initiatives that can lift many out of poverty.  Their political masters can change this divisive and corrupting system any time they wish by issuing new instructions, but they never do.

Grenville Phillips II is a Chartered Structural Engineer and President of Solutions Barbados.  He can be reached at NextParty246@gmail.com

136 responses to “The Grenville Phillips Column – Get Out of the Stupid Boat”

  1. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    A little over two decades ago, in October 1997, the New Yorker published an issue devoted to the topic “What Next?” as the world entered the twenty-first century. One of the articles in the issue, on “The Next Thinker,” was written by the New Yorker’s talented economic correspondent John Cassidy and was entitled “The Return of Karl Marx.”
    Cassidy contended that 150 years after the publication of the Communist Manifesto the most important thinker to read was none other than Marx himself. His article created a big stir on the Left.
    In the New York office of Monthly Review — where he occasionally showed up to speak to its editors Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy, and where I dropped in from time to time — Cassidy’s article repeatedly arose in the conversations in the days and weeks after its publication.
    The way Cassidy told the story, he had been vacationing that summer with an old friend, “a highly intelligent and levelheaded Englishman” who was in the upper echelons of a big Wall Street investment bank. They were casually discussing when the big financial boom of the late 1990s would end, when, as Cassidy recounted,
    [H]e brought up Karl Marx. “The longer I spend on Wall Street, the more convinced I am that Marx was right,” he said.
    I assumed he was joking.
    “There is a Nobel Prize waiting for the economist who resurrects Marx and puts it all together into a coherent model,” he continued quite seriously. “I am absolutely convinced that Marx’s approach is the best way to look at capitalism.”
    I didn’t hide my astonishment. We had both studied economics during the early eighties at Oxford where most of our teachers agreed with Keynes that Marx’s economic theories were “complicated hocus-pocus” and Communism was “an insult to our intelligence.”… Nevertheless, I decided that if my host, with all his experience of global finance, reckoned Marx had something worthwhile to say, perhaps it was time to take a look.
    Cassidy decided to do a crash course in Marx that summer. He picked up copies of the German Ideology, the Communist Manifesto, and Capital, and a collection of Marx’s selected writings edited by David McLellan, all of which he studied during his vacation, also “nibbling” at the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and Theories of Surplus Value.
    He then wrote up his conclusions in his New Yorker article. He made it clear that he didn’t swallow Marx whole, declaring straight out: “In one way, Marx’s efforts were a failure. His mathematical model for the economy, which depended on the idea that labor is the source of all value, was riven with internal inconsistencies and is rarely studied today.”
    We were then told that the new Principles of Economics textbook by the Harvard economist N. Gregory Mankiw mentioned Marx on just one of its 800 or so pages, and that Marx lacked a lot of the mechanical models — production functions, game theory — that peppered neoclassical textbooks. Marx was not very useful, Cassidy surmised, in answering the everyday issues of price determination, while his underlying method was flawed.
    Nevertheless, Cassidy went on to point to an array of unrivaled insights Marx had into the capitalist economy, including: the conflict of wage labor and capital, the centrality of accumulation (“Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the Prophets!” as Marx put it), the business cycle, the reserve army of labor, monopolization, globalization, increasing inequality (called “the immiseration thesis” by Marx’s critics), the expansion of finance, the class character of the state, and more.

    One would think that Cassidy might have concluded that there must have been something to say in the end for Marx’s core method, relying on the labor theory of value as the means of understanding capital’s inner logic.
    But instead his readers were led to believe that although Marx got the big picture on capitalism mostly right, he did so with the wrong method. In contrast, orthodox economics largely missed the big picture on capitalism, but had the right method.
    As Cassidy was reading the Communist Manifesto, the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis was heating up. Shortly after, in the first year of the new millennium, the dot-com bubble burst.
    And seven years later, in 2007, the Great Financial Crisis began, lasting into 2009 and shaking the entire world economy. The subsequent weakening of the financialization process — which for years had been lifting the capitalist economy — produced a new normal of seemingly endless stagnation.
    Economic growth is weak both in the core of the system and in the world economy as a whole (though a few economies, notably China, have shown themselves to be relatively immune to the economic setback).
    Workers in most of the world have experienced a worsening of their conditions, a change often summed up with the word “precarity.” All of this has sparked a resurgence in interest in Marx’s critique of political economy, and in Marxian theories of monopoly, stagnation, and financialization.
    Curiously, in his 2010 book on the Great Financial Crisis, How Markets Fail, Cassidy had very little to say directly about Marx. Perhaps he thought it would have been viewed as unsportsmanlike, equivalent to kicking neoclassical economists when they were down.
    Still, the two thinkers most lauded in Cassidy’s book were both heterodox economists, well-versed in Marx: Hyman Minsky and Paul Sweezy. Minsky was in part a product of the socialist tradition (his parents met exactly a hundred years ago this month at a party to celebrate the centennial anniversary of Marx’s birth) while Sweezy was the leading US Marxist economist for many decades.
    It was “Minsky and Sweezy,” Cassidy insisted, who had shown that “the fortunes of the economy at large couldn’t be divorced from what happened on Wall Street,” and who provided the most penetrating explorations into the relation between the real economy and the financialized economy.
    It was Sweezy (together with Harry Magdoff) who had most forcefully insisted throughout the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s that stagnation and financialization were caught in a “symbiotic embrace.”

    The years since the Great Financial Crisis have thus seen a dramatic upsurge in Marxian political economy. The increasing focus on financialization facilitated the rediscovery of the classical value-form theory by thinkers such as Michael Heinrich, the author of An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital, highlighting the monetary relations that were at the very foundations of Marx’s analysis in Capital, vol. 1.
    This in turn contributed to the development of the macro-monetary interpretation of Marx’s economic analysis in Fred Mosely’s Money and Totality and in the work of Riccardo Bellofiore.
    The result has been nothing less than a revolutionary breakthrough regarding the so-called “transformation problem,” once regarded as the Achilles’ heel of Marx’s economics.
    The old Bortkiewicz-Sweezy solution to the transformation problem, on the relation of value to price in the Marxian scheme, is now seen in this new interpretation as something of a blind alley that failed to perceive the full extent of Marx’s revolutionary break with David Ricardo’s political economy and indeed with all forms of bourgeois economics — both classical and neoclassical.

    So important are these new developments that they bear directly on the statement of Cassidy’s friend, quoted above, where he said: “There is a Nobel Prize waiting for the economist who resurrects Marx and puts it all together into a coherent model.” Such a “Nobel Prize” (really the Swedish Central Bank’s Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel — not an actual Nobel Prize) could well be given to such theorists as Heinrich, Moseley, and Bellofiore for putting Marx’s value theory into a more coherent model — that is, if the so-called “Nobel Prize” in economics were not controlled by an exclusive right-wing club.
    The same could also be said about some of the other greats of contemporary Marxian political economy: Samir Amin, Paul Burkett, C. P. Chandrasekhar, François Chesnais, Gérard Duménil, Diane Elson, Ben Fine, Duncan Foley, Jayati Ghosh, Joseph Halevi, David Harvey, Makoto Itoh, Costas Lapavitsas, Prabhat Patnaik, Alfredo Saad-Filho, Anwar Shaikh, John Smith, Jan Toporowski, Immanuel Wallerstein, Richard Wolff, and Michael Yates — the list could easily be extended. What is abundantly clear is that we are currently in the midst of a new great age of Marxian critique.
    In fact, the ongoing revolution in Marxian thought is much wider than even the economic-centered remarks above would suggest. Marx was much more than merely a political economist, of course, and his work has long reverberated throughout the social sciences and humanities, penetrated into the natural sciences, and shaped modern revolutionary politics.
    The renaissance in Marxian thought today similarly stretches across a wide range of fields. Particularly noteworthy in recent years are the converging historical-materialist critiques in “ecology” (by ecosocialists building on Marx’s theory of ecological crisis, or the “metabolic rift”), gender (in the form of the new social-reproduction theory), and race (in pioneering historical-materialist treatments of racial capitalism) — all of which are increasingly focused on the complex interplay between expropriation and exploitation, which sets the parameters for capitalism as a whole. It is no mere accident that these latest theoretical developments are closely attuned to actual movements with respect to gender, race, and the environment on the logical-historical boundaries of the system (outside the capitalist exploitation process itself) where much of the struggle in the neoliberal age is to be found.
    Today, what most characterizes developments in Marxian theory is the recognition of Marx’s open-ended critique of capitalism, requiring that we struggle once more to probe into the historically specific system of capital accumulation at its deepest level — not simply to understand it, but in order to transcend it.(Quote)

  2. Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right Avatar
    Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right

    @ Theophillus Gazerts

    I have no doubt or reservations about how low Mugabe and her imps will go.

    Many might believe that she would not do a Khassogi on me or another opponent or dissenting voice BUT I HAVE SEEN HER SOUL and it is black.

    To explain that blackness I would have to expose other details but they are on a timed release so…

    6 Months!!!

    What does that mean Theophillus?

    In 6 months after her ascension to the throne of the Crime Minister MUGABE’S FATHER WAS A KNIGHT.

    Now, in and of itself, that act has drawn many comments here by a few who recognise the diplomatic exception accorded to Daddy when he is travelling with his passport or title but here are a few details you wont know.

    Here is the Requitements & Procedure associated with being Knighted by the Monarchy.

    The designated party must make significant public service contributions to the British Empire

    A requirement which many say that, barring his handling of the murder case in the Caymans? Sir Mugabe ent do one shy$e

    They stated that “…Self-nomination is not encouraged…” so we have go rescind the Knighthood that Sir Simple Simon President for Life gave herself.

    Now we come to recommendations.

    As an Barbadian, you must demonstrate that you have made a great contribution to Great Britain to become a candidate.

    “…Recommendations by government departments, the prime minister, commonwealth member states and the public make up a biannual list that’s approved by the Queen…”

    NOW HERE IS THE THING THAT IS TO BE NOTED ABOUT THIS BIANNUAL LIST!!!.

    “..The list is published on New Year’s Day and in June on the (current) queen’s birthday…”

    I DO HOPE WUNNA PEOPLE UNDERSTAND WHAT BIANNUAL MEANS???

    Sheeple wont know that word.

    It means that for you to be included in these 2 lists you have to to be IN A CYCLE FOR 6 MONTHS!!!

    But de old MSN continues.

    “…Candidates are nominated by the U.K. Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if you’re not a British citizen…”

    “…Responsibilities of The Secretary of State. They have overall responsibility for the work of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, with particular focus on:

    Policy Unit
    intelligence policy
    cyber security
    honours
    oceans…”

    The current Foreign Secretary is Jeremy Hunte and the former one was Boris the ***

    Now de ole man said all if that to say that the mere complexities of processing the Knighthood for her Daddy meant that Mugabe was doing this campaign for a year

    AND THAT SHE WAS MAKING REPRESENTATIONS IN THE CAPACITY OF THE SOVEREIGN REPRESENTATIVE OF BARBADOS, while she was thd Leader of the Opposition!!

    UH LIE???

    Wunna got to read between the lines and understand the true scheming that Mugabe is capable of and what Owen Arthur has been speaking about when he called Mia Mugabe Mottley a despot

  3. Barbados 2019 Avatar
    Barbados 2019

    @ Dame Bajans

    I know that you are an elderly Bajan living overseas in your seventies, however, you should be much wiser by now.

    How can you attempt to defend @Piecesunderthecrook who attempted to fleece local Bajans by running several unpaid ADs or Posters on BU blog to solicit funds for a GoFundme page which proved to be unsuccessful?

    The conman then attempted to blame Mia Mottley and her associates for his unsuccessful efforts and for attempting to firebomb his home in 3 places in the USA with a pathetic picture to highlight his fraud to gain sympathy.

    The USA where there is local Police, FBI and other Agencies to investigate firebombing yet not a peep,

    I am not here to defend Mia Mottley or her Party but this conman is disingenuous, to say the least.

    The people of Barbados are who brought down the last government after getting tired of their standard of living continually decreasing and exposed corruption.

    I would give Patrick King credit MORE than anyone else as he exposed many corrupt acts AIDED by BLP party leadership in his expose.

    @Pieceunderthecrook is the worst of a Bajan living locally or abroad and should be arrested and prosecuted for Deception, Slander and Defamation.

  4. WARU, Crazy & Unstable, Hogging the Blog Avatar
    WARU, Crazy & Unstable, Hogging the Blog

    “Wunna got to read between the lines and understand the true scheming that Mugabe is capable of and what Owen Arthur has been speaking about when he called Mia Mugabe Mottley a despot”

    ALL despots have to pay for their crimes against humanity…ALL..

  5. WARU, Crazy & Unstable, Hogging the Blog Avatar
    WARU, Crazy & Unstable, Hogging the Blog

    Owen should have TALKED…by not talking and being PM in the 90s…HE IS COMPLICIT.

  6. Barbados 2019 Avatar
    Barbados 2019

    A man faked his death. His ex-wife faked his funeral. Then their son found him alive.

    The body was found in the bushes on the side of a dirt road in a rural town in Moldova on the morning of Oct. 1, 2011, and within hours, Irina Vorotinov’s phone was ringing halfway across the world.

    From her home in Maple Grove, Minn., she shared the dreadful news with her two grown sons: The body was that of their father, Igor Vorotinov.

    The circumstances were strange. The well-dressed man didn’t appear to have been beaten or shot, at least as far as the one investigating police officer could tell, and his body was already decomposing. Enlisting the help of his son, the police officer promptly took the body to a state morgue, an old and dilapidated building without refrigeration or air conditioning, whose single green door was reachable only by a dirt path. There, the medical examiner determined that the man found in the bushes had died of a heart attack. He was carrying Igor Vorotinov’s passport, among other identifying documents.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/a-man-faked-his-death-his-ex-wife-faked-his-funeral-then-their-son-found-him-alive/ar-AAB1yO8?ocid=spartandhp

  7. nextparty246 Avatar
    nextparty246

    Dear Dame Bajans:

    When Piece publicly dedicated himself (last year on BU) to promoting Atherley’s party and attacking me, I tolerated it for months, while many sat back and watched or participated. I recently decided that he can promote Atherley’s party as much as he likes, with no response from me; but I will challenge his lies about me – and your response is to try to defend him. That is your right, but please be honest, because you cannot defend evil.

    Treason is a crime of attempting to overthrow the government. So, if after repeatedly calling PM Mottley a despot and a dictator, someone was stupid enough to repeatedly call for her to be removed and overthrown, can that not be interpreted as treason? If it can be, then why are you asserting that it is not. If it cannot be, then why can’t it?

    By his own admission, Piece has embraced evil. That never ends well. Jesus was clear on this matter. “When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44)

    You can assume that every negative thing Piece said about me, since he dedicated his life to attacking me in September 2018, is a lie – he is speaking his new language.

    He keeps claiming that PM Mottely gave me a pick. Since he said it, it is likely a lie – and it is. You should not repeat any of his lies in an attempt to attempt to give them any legitimacy. Instead, try to be an independent and honest thinker.

  8. nextparty246 Avatar
    nextparty246

    Hi Northern:

    There are many persons living with their parents. They want to leave and their parents want them to leave. Therefore, there are enough people in the market to have several of these 100-participant businesses with varying home-occupancy dates.

    The persons with ‘skin in the game’ are the investors (soon to be homeowners). Each investor can arrange independent inspections to confirm compliance with the construction contract.

    Setting up the business is inexpensive and relatively quick. The main risk, as I pointed out in the article, is the integrity of the persons managing the business, since ‘white collar’ crime is a valid concern. This is the main weakness of the initiative. It can appear to be addressed with an ironclad contract, and frequent audits, but that only addresses the issue after the theft. if someone intends to steal, they will find a way.

    On Piece, you can assume that every negative thing he writes about me, since he embraced Atherley’s party, and dedicated his life to attacking me in September 2018, is a lie. I have no ill-will towards you (as Piece asserted) or anyone – even the deranged Piece is redeemable, but his rabid treasonous and defamatory remarks are not.

  9. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Hal Austin May 9, 2019 10:59 AM
    This is a good summary of contemporary thinking around Marx. Thank you.

    There is also Capital in the Twenty-First Century, a 2013 book by French economist Thomas Piketty. It’s not Marxist, but tries to show mathematically why capital always breeds growing inequality. As such, it was interpreted as support for the political left in the tradition of Marx.

  10. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    @PLT

    Have you read Thomas Piketty”s book?

  11. Georgie Porgie Avatar
    Georgie Porgie

    LET IT BE KNOWN TO ALL

    PIECE OR ANYONE ELSE WHO DOES NOT SUPPORT GRENVILLE OR BELIEVE THAT SOLUTIONS BARBADOS DO NOT HAVE ANY SOLUTIONS FOR BARBADOS ARE DREADFUL SINNERS WHO HAVE COMMITTED THE UNFORGIVEABLE SIN.

    THEY WILL BE REMOVED FROM THE BOOK OF LIFE FOR LIFE AND CAST INTO THE LAKE OF FIRE

    MR PIECE, PEACE BUT I PERSONALLY WILL BE COMING TO PUT YOU IN THE LAKE BECAUSE GRENVILLE HAS DECLARED YOU TO BE the deranged, rabidLY treasonous and REMARKABLY defamatory.

    PIECE YOU ARE THE SCUM AND SCOURGE OF THE EARTH AND IN THE EYES OF OUR AUTOCRATIC WOULD BE BUT WILL NOT BE PRIME MINISTER GRENVILLE THE TENOR AND TONE OF YOUR TORMENTOUS TAUNTS ARE TIRING AND TERRIBLE

    PIECE MUST BE CAPTURED AND DELIVERED DEAD, HALF DEAD OR VARIANTS OF THE TWO.

    PIECE AND PEACE TO FC, THE LEADING SHADOW MINISTER IN GRENVILLE’S NEVER NEVER PRIME MINISTER SHIP

  12. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Hal
    Yes, most of it, but some of the mathematics was beyond me.

  13. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    @PLT

    This is when I get angry with your bluffing. When the book first came out I mentioned it on BU and suggested it as a good tome to David BU. I have an autographed copy in my garden shed, and at its launch in the UK, I attended his public lecture at the London School of Economics, where he taught.
    There is no mathematical complexity in the book, and I am a maths dunce. I think we are talking about two different books. It has statistics, lots of them (and more available online), you are an engineer so these should be no problem. Economics is not a mathematical science. Econometrics is another discipline.
    On another Bajan blog, at the time, a silly young man claimed he reviewed the books and tore Piketty apart. Young Bajans? I saw an LSE economics professor, now retired, debating with Piketty and being made to look a fool. I predict Piketty will get a Nobel Prize – about time someone other than Yankees won.
    But plse re-read the book. It is good on wealth re-distribution and he is not a Marxist.

  14. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Hal
    Statistics is mathematics. And it is one of my least favorite parts of mathematics.

  15. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Hal
    The statistics is in the technical appendix to each chapter. My copy is electronic, are the technical appendces not a part of the print version?

  16. Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right Avatar
    Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right

    @ Barbados 2019 (he whom I have invited to count every single hair in my greying a.ss.holl.)

    I find that sheeple like you are the very worst type to even look at furthermore converse with.

    But I have some moments that I can spend on this matter

    I know the purpose that you have been sent for .

    To secure enough cross references from my statements here to tie the anonymous Pieces the Legend TO THE PERSON THAT YOU THINK I AM.

    ANDREW STRAUSS.

    Heheheheh.

    Everything that you are gathering is circumstantial

    Without verifiable information from

    1…my hard drive with cross referencing hash marks YOU CANT SAY DAT I BE “I”.

    2…There is no IP to confirm that I BE “I”

    https://www.dnsleaktest.com

    3…The Honourable Blogmaster though now one of your understands, AND FEARS THE REPERCUSSIONS of assisting you, cause if I BE “I” well…he, and his, can be and maybe is or was…confusing as that will be…to be of not to be.

    Heheheheh

    4…where was this crime of Deception??? Slander ??? And Defamation committed

    In Barbados, in the United States, or in the node rather end point of the Honourable Blogmaster’s hosting jurisdiction?

    5…Where will you serve the papers?

    6…How can you tie a virtual crime?? to a physical party without having the Excel Spreadsheet being released and showing this to be a personal vendetta?

    Heheheheh

    I am getting wunna real vex now and wunna starting to panic because wunna cannot make and headway with any of the items with de ole man loose

    Heheheheh

    Plus de FAQ dat I is leveraging *** and that is authorship is it not?

    So…wunna ass is grass…till at least wunna serve de ole man and den what…???

  17. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Hal
    It seemed to me cheating to have claimed to have read Picketty without grasping what was going on in the technical appendices, so that’s why my caveat about the math being beyond me.

  18. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    @PLT

    No. There is an online database. I like books and spend too much money on them (even if some people find books and mention of them annoying). The print book is about wealth re-distribution and Piketty is no Marxist. He is mainstream French and I predict he will get a Nobel Prize.
    By the way, I knew you were cheating. But the average BU reader won’t know, or care. They have most probably never heard the name Thomas Piketty.

  19. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Hal
    My copy is a PDF that includes all the technical appendices. I agree that Piketty is no Marxist. You will note that I never said he was… but his work is relevant to contemporary interpretations of Marxism. I do hope he gets the recognition of the Nobel Prize.

  20. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    @PLT

    Have a look at Ernest Mandel’s An introduction to Marxist Economic Theory. I can send you a copy f you cannot find it on Amazon. It is only a pamphlet.

  21. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Hal
    I’ve never read that… thanks for your offer, but it appears to be freely available online at https://www.ernestmandel.org/en/works/txt/1967/intromarxisteconomic/.

  22. Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right Avatar
    Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right

    @ Barbados 2019 (counter if ghe grey hairs in my a ss holl)

    You said and I quote

    “…@Piecesunderthecrook who attempted to fleece local Bajans by running several unpaid ADs or Posters on BU blog to solicit funds for a GoFundme page which proved to be unsuccessful?…”

    How you know that they are unpaid?

    Heheheheh…you and the Honourable Blogmaster have communications?

    How many times do I have yo say that your “success spectrum” is not mine?

    Let me see if i can explain what the effort was.

    GFM Strategy 1

    Support JOTFORM FOR REPORTING TEIFING LAWYERS for Bajans

    GFM Strategy 2

    Question How would you like to support a JOTFORM FOR REPORTING TEIFING LAWYERS

    BU Strategy 3

    4 ATTEMPTS TO GET JOTFORM LAUNCHED.

    First strategy did it work?

    You dont know because you dont have enough information to see that it was launched albeit by a party who heheheheh.

    GFM Strategy 2. How many comments did this garner?

    Who saw it? What was its purpose? What was its design? Did it meet its objectives of the Conman?

    But You continue ….

    “…The conman then attempted to blame Mia Mottley and her associates for his unsuccessful efforts…”

    There you go again.

    The objective was

    1…to get thd JOTFORM launched on BU and

    2…determine the loyalties of David King at Barbados Underground with regard to

    3…his true commitment yo change and broadcasting the results of the JOTFORM.

    You nor your plagiarist leader Mugabe Mottley are NOT IN MY CLASS. your hands are too short yo box with GOD.

    You then continue pathetically

    “…and for attempting to firebomb his home in 3 places in the USA with a pathetic picture to highlight his fraud??…”

    Where?? Where was the firebombing? By whom?

    “… to gain sympathy…” from whom?

    You continue with your version heheheh which reads…

    .. .The USA where there is local Police, FBI and other Agencies to investigate firebombing yet not a peep…”

    It is evident that you are no Sherlick Holmes but you would have done well to leave this story alone as it was…

    Viewership of that item was 1,000 via one channel.

    What the objective is, is 20,000 for one encounter.

    So one must build an encounter platform that reaches 20,000 in one sitting across multiple platforms

    You are right when you say..

    “…I am not here to defend Mia Mottley or her Party…” because you are doing a really bad job with your Scooby Doo investigation skills

    THE CONMAN who demands that you call me Piece the Legend, is not being “disingenuous, to say the least…” but I am working on a single integrated Social Messaging system for use by the Third Party Movement that is going to displace you boss Mia Mugabe Mottley IN 2023.

    you and Mia can do what you may to stop this but IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN LIKE MY EFFORTS TO REMOVE THE DLP RESULTED IN A 30 -0 WHITEWASH FOR THEM.

    Here is one of my Biopics that ousted every single DLP candidate.

    http://imgur.com/gallery/TsBT6Dm

    And this is nothing compared to what is coming for Mugabe when Elections roll around

  23. Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right Avatar
    Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right

    @ the Honourable Blogmaster your assistance please with an item here for Barbados 2019

  24. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    @PLT

    While I am in the mood, let me introduce to Aime Cesare on Marxism and Pan-Africanism. See his Letter to Maurice Thorex.

  25. Georgie Porgie Avatar
    Georgie Porgie

    @Hal
    I like books and spend too much money on them

    FIRST THING I LEARNED AT HC FROM THIS NOTE ON THE FRONTISPIECE OF A BOOK WE HAD TO READ…….I HAVE NEVER FORGOTTEN IT

    A GOOD BOOK IS THE PRECIOUS LIFE BLOOD OF A MASTER SPIRIT

    SIR MAURICE BYER TAUGHT THAT ONE SHOULD READ EVERY DAY ON THE SUBJECT OF THEIR GREAT INTEREST

    SO READ ON

  26. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    @ Georgie Porgie,

    Thanks. Reading keeps me off BU.

  27. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Hal
    Thanks for that. My second greatest pleasure is learning new things. The only Cesaire that I’ve read is Discourse on Colonialism.

  28. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Hal
    I received my copy of Pan-Africanism in Barbados by Rodney Worrell in the mail today.

  29. peterlawrencethompson Avatar
    peterlawrencethompson

    @Hal
    I found a translation of Aimé Césaire’s letter to Maurice Thorez online at:
    http://abahlali.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/153945859-Aime-Cesaire-Letter-to-Maurice-Thorez-1956.pdf
    Many thanks.

  30. Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right Avatar
    Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right

    @ the liéd Grenville Phillips (who refuses to supply the information tha Peter Lawrence Thompson has asked for for 4 years)

    I observe that you have been advised not to defame Piece the Legend by your customary lies

    You said and I quote

    “…Treason is a crime of attempting to overthrow the government.

    So, if after repeatedly calling PM Mottley a despot and a dictator, someone was stupid enough to repeatedly call for her to be removed and overthrown, can that not be interpreted as treason?…”

    You said “someone” you did not say piece the Legend

    Like you said in your previous posts.

    Then you go on with your crafty comments which are

    “…If it can be, then why are you asserting that it is not.

    If it cannot be, then why can’t it?…”

    So you are being crafty to construct your sentences.

    But why Grenville?

    Why do you have to do this?

    Let us take your word for it to say that I have been paid to destroy you and your pretensions to be Prime Minister.

    Let us say that I am on the payroll of these 5 political parties to destroy the NonSolutions Barbados party…

    Let us say all of the above were true

    Why would ig be that you, A PRETEND MAN OF GOD WOULD BE SO CRAFTY IN COMPOSING THAT SENTENCE?

    Whu after all Grenville, all you have to say is the same thing that the message that *** is circulating about treason which is Mugabe’s strategy.

    It is the single methodology to affect the Voice of The People IS IT NOT?

    Now here is a thing for your readers to see.

    http://imgur.com/gallery/xjHmuH2

    During the tenure of Fumbles 11 of his followers sought to unseat him BUT THAT IN YOUR OPINION WAS NOT TREASON.

    De ole man does not want Mugabe to continue to unfair bajans with her teifing scams and in 2023 I am campaigning for a third Party Movement to come to power .

    Aset oc people who have balls UNLIKE YOU, and suddenly you are dissembling about Someone WHO IS TREASONOUS?

    While you are calling God’s name

    You are a dog Grenville AND I WILL SEE TO IT THAT YOU NEVER ENTER PARLIAMENT because your trickery in your speech here shows you to be the lowest oc tricksters AND A MAN WITHOUT BALLS.

    WAIT TILL NEXT WEEK THOUGH

    I going have a new ting for you then as soon as I get sorted out

    Heheheheh

  31. Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right Avatar
    Piece Uh De Rock Yeah Right

    The Honourable Blogmaster has refused to let this item sho so I will submit again

    @ Barbados 2019 (counter if ghe grey hairs in my a ss holl)

    You said and I quote

    “…@Piecesunderthecrook who attempted to fleece local Bajans by running several unpaid ADs or Posters on BU blog to solicit funds for a GoFundme page which proved to be unsuccessful?…”

    How you know that they are unpaid?

    Heheheheh…you and the Honourable Blogmaster have communications?

    How many times do I have yo say that your “success spectrum” is not mine?

    Let me see if i can explain what the effort was.

    GFM Strategy 1

    Support JOTFORM FOR REPORTING TEIFING LAWYERS for Bajans

    GFM Strategy 2

    Question How would you like to support a JOTFORM FOR REPORTING TEIFING LAWYERS

    BU Strategy 3

    4 ATTEMPTS TO GET JOTFORM LAUNCHED.

    First strategy did it work?

    You dont know because you dont have enough information to see that it was launched albeit by a party who heheheheh.

    GFM Strategy 2. How many comments did this garner?

    Who saw it? What was its purpose? What was its design? Did it meet its objectives of the Conman?

    But You continue ….

    “…The conman then attempted to blame Mia Mottley and her associates for his unsuccessful efforts…”

    There you go again.

    The objective was

    1…to get thd JOTFORM launched on BU and

    2…determine the loyalties of David King at Barbados Underground with regard to

    3…his true commitment yo change and broadcasting the results of the JOTFORM.

    You nor your plagiarist leader Mugabe Mottley are NOT IN MY CLASS. your hands are too short yo box with GOD.

    You then continue pathetically

    “…and for attempting to firebomb his home in 3 places in the USA with a pathetic picture to highlight his fraud??…”

    Where?? Where was the firebombing? By whom?

    “… to gain sympathy…” from whom?

    You continue with your version heheheh which reads…

    .. .The USA where there is local Police, FBI and other Agencies to investigate firebombing yet not a peep…”

    It is evident that you are no Sherlick Holmes but you would have done well to leave this story alone as it was…

    Viewership of that item was 1,000 via one channel.

    What the objective is, is 20,000 for one encounter.

    So one must build an encounter platform that reaches 20,000 in one sitting across multiple platforms

    You are right when you say..

    “…I am not here to defend Mia Mottley or her Party…” because you are doing a really bad job with your Scooby Doo investigation skills

    THE CONMAN who demands that you call me Piece the Legend, is not being “disingenuous, to say the least…” but I am working on a single integrated Social Messaging system for use by the Third Party Movement that is going to displace you boss Mia Mugabe Mottley IN 2023.

    you and Mia can do what you may to stop this but IT IS GOING TO HAPPEN LIKE MY EFFORTS TO REMOVE THE DLP RESULTED IN A 30 -0 WHITEWASH FOR THEM.

    Here is one of my Biopics that ousted every single DLP candidate.

    http://imgur.com/gallery/TsBT6Dm

    And this is nothing compared to what is coming for Mugabe when Elections roll around

  32. Freedom Crier Avatar
    Freedom Crier

    • Georgie Porgie May 9, 2019 4:20 PM “@Hal

    …A GOOD BOOK IS THE PRECIOUS LIFE BLOOD OF A MASTER SPIRIT
    ….ONE SHOULD READ EVERY DAY ON THE SUBJECT OF THEIR GREAT INTEREST”…

    GP your Recommendation to Hal was a ‘Good Book’. Hal and PLT Love Marxism and have quoted books and Articles as Hal has posted here…GP you are a Christian and often quote from the Good Book…Hal and Peter on the other hand can quote Marxist Dogma with many references and Books.

    Their interest is the idea of focusing on African Marxism. Christov¬Bakargiev, “The urgent call to revisit African/Black Marxism and to rethink its immense innovation and creativity …This I intend to do by paying homage to two key figures in African/Black Marxism: Abdel Khaliq Mahgoub (1927–1971), the founder of the Sudanese Communist Party, and Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), who Hal Quoted who was member of the French Communist Party.

    Given the info below would we say that “MARXISM IS THE PRECIOUS LIFE BLOOD OF A MASTER SPIRIT” Certainly Hal & Peter considers the Subject of MARXISM “THE SUBJECT OF THEIR GREAT INTEREST”.

    Communism is estimated to have killed at least 100 million people, yet its crimes have not been fully compiled and its ideology persists. The history and beliefs of this movement, has been a source of Tyranny and Destruction since it emerged.

    Marxism, communism, and socialism hijack, play on, and distort our innate sense of kindness, fairness, and empathy for others. It dehumanizes all who dare oppose and justifies the deaths of the many for the sake of the “oppressed”.

    In a 1948 speech, a French writer-intellectual, Andre Malraux, stated that Stalinists do not want to debate with but personally destroy their opponents. (As in PLT to John and GP)…This Stalinist characteristic has been inherited by today Left and effectively used against its adverseries. In addition, the Left has incorporated into Marxism the Hegemonic conceptualization of political struggle developed by Antonio Gramsci: to acquire power, the communist party has to first dominate and submit the cultural, educational, and governmental structures of society. Now the Marxist have settled in nicely on BU while sporting their wares quite acceptably.

    “I was born and grew up in a Soviet-block European (communist) country. I am proud to say, that by the age of about 20-22 I figured out, that the prevalent ideology (Marxism-Leninism) was a cover talk and cover for unbridled life-and-death, raw, ruthless POWER. NOTHING ELSE mattered. All other talk and posturing was nothing but BS to mislead and fool the masses. (A lot were fooled too – but by no means all). The neo-marxist, postmodernists; it MUST be pointed out incessantly, so perceptive (and thinking) people recognize it for what it is. They are indeed dangerous (as GP 11 insightfully says of PLT) –

    The reason modern day Marxists are so reprehensible is that, unlike the Russians in 1917, we know that it has failed, and in doing so cost the lives of millions of people. Anyone who knows this and still wants to ‘give it another shot’ is at best callous; at worst psychotic.

    DON’T ACT LIKE JACK ASS…

    https://assets.infowars.com/2019/05/253522_image.jpg

  33. Georgie Porgie Avatar
    Georgie Porgie

    RE A GOOD BOOK IS THE PRECIOUS LIFE BLOOD OF A MASTER SPIRIT

    i LEARNED THAT AT HC

    SINCE 1968 I HAVE GENERALY READ THE BIBLE AND BIBLE COMMENTARIES
    I HAVE ALSO READ BOOKS ON REAL ESTATE AND TEXT BOOKS

    SIR MAURICE BYER TAUGHT ME AS A MED STUDENT THAT ….ONE SHOULD READ EVERY DAY ON THE SUBJECT OF THEIR GREAT INTEREST”…

    IN THOSE DAYS I LOVED TO READ “UPDATE” & “HOSPITAL UPDATE” –JOURNALS OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF GENERAL PRACTIONERS OF ENGLAND”

    I AM NOT INTERESTED NOR DO I CARE WHAT OTHERS READ

  34. Hal Austin Avatar
    Hal Austin

    @Freedom Crier

    GP your Recommendation to Hal was a ‘Good Book’. Hal and PLT Love Marxism and have quoted books…(Quote)

    I am beginning to question your motives on BU. You have intimated this before and I have said I was not (and am not) a Marxist. I believe Marx was a racist and I am black. Young black men and women in my formative years bitterly opposed the Marxists, especially the Communists.
    I do not care which authors PLT likes, that is his business. To quote someone does not mean you agree with them. Plse stop your nonsense. You are being annoying.
    I will volunteer what I do not like and that is the pseudo social theories of lots of Yankee idiots, black and white, such as Thomas Sowell, a man many of us used to laugh at back in the 1960s, now he is taken seriously by those incapable of thinking for themselves. Sowell could not think himself out of a crocus bag.
    By the way, when and where did I quote Aime Cesare? I of course admire him, the greatest poet to come out of the CARIBBEAN, but what you call a quote was a recommendation to @PLT to read one of his essays. What does that mean? You admit you were born in the Soviet bloc; I also suspect you are of a certain ethnicity, which explains the nasty propaganda masquerading as serious contributions to BU.
    I recommend you read Were Marx and Engels White Racists?, by Carlos Moore; The Supermarxists and Pan-Africanism, by Opoku Agyeman. Maybe you will get rid of the scales on your eyes. .

  35. Freedom Crier Avatar
    Freedom Crier

    This is the Video Freedom Really wanted to Share…Economist Thomas Sowell – From Marxism to Capitalism

  36. Freedom Crier Avatar
    Freedom Crier

    Hal you have been Seduced by the gospel of Envy, as human beings when we break the commandments and love the breaking of anyone of them it would lead to loss of Freedoms and the introduction of Servitude. The GOOD BOOK teaches us of our Natures and out tendencies to make wrong choices. When we discipline our children, we teach them by the discipline to make better choices but we do not Kill them. However, in Marxism when you step out of line Premature Death is Guaranteed. Under Marxism/Communism, your only value is your Value to the State. There is No inherent Value in you as a human being, the only value you have is if you do what you are told.

    Christov¬Bakargiev, “The urgent call to revisit African/Black Marxism and to rethink its immense innovation and creativity …This I intend to do by paying homage to two key figures in African/Black Marxism”. One of them was Aimé Césaire (1913–2008), who you so admire Hal, was member of the French Communist Party. Your Recommendation to Read The Supermarxists and Pan-Africanism Opoku Agyeman who Quotes [Cesaire, 1956], “I think I have said enough to make it understood that it is neither Marxism or Communism that I renounce, but it is the use that certain people have made of Marxism and Communism of which I disapprove. What I want is Marxism and Communism to be placed in the service of the black peoples and not the black peoples in the service of Marxism and Communism”.

    Communist do not have a Colour, Communism is a Philosophy of Totalitarianism.

    The Difference between you and Thomas Sowell is that you are still Stuck mentally in the Sixties BUT Sowell EVOLVED in his thinking…You do not like Sowell because Sowell was a Marxist who went From Marxism to the Market so you Scoff and Degenerate this Brilliant man. That is also why you do not like “Yankee” America because Free Market Capitalism was responsible for Americas Prosperity, You Hal are an Anti-Capitalist, what does that make you?

    “Back in the days when I was a Marxist, my primary concern was that ordinary people deserved better, and that elites were walking all over them. That is still my primary concern, but the passing decades have taught me that political elites and cultural elites are doing far more damage than the market elites could ever get away with doing…

    While my desires for a better life for ordinary people have not changed from the days of my youthful Marxism, experience has taught the bitter lesson that the way to get there is the opposite of what I once thought.” Thomas Sowell

    I know that you have a different opinion from me and you are welcome to it, it’s only when you spread Totalitarianism Ideology dressed up in different Clothes, do I open my mouth.

    LISTEN TO THE MAN WHO YOU SO ENVY…WHO GRADUATED FROM HARVARD IN 1958.

    Economist Thomas Sowell – From Marxism to Capitalism

    https://youtu.be/uiYH66HznW0?list=RDqjMpoQarbHo

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