Vote For Better Ideas, Not Just The Same Old Clowns, Or Their Clones

Biden-Obama Versus the Perspective of Real Change For the Best

The New York Times accepted the following comment of mine on Up, Up, Up With Elizabeth Warren (in seconds: things have changed!)

Biden was the closest associate to Obama. And being associated to Obama’s rule of hypocrisy, dissembling, and raising inequality is why, more than any other factor, Clinton was defeated (careful post-election studies have shown this). So Biden would be defeated by Trump, for the same reason Clinton was; the global oligarchic multinational oligarchy and plutocracy has to be rolled back. 

Another advantage of pushing Warren’s candidacy is that she fights for progressive ideas, not just for acquiring power for herself, personally. Even is she would be defeated by Trump, her defeat would make these progressive ideas advance in the collective consciousness (and that’s sorely needed).

A careful examination of the graph above is revealing: first the previously quick augmentation of US life expectancy was curbed by plutophile Reagan… And then life expectancy started to go down outright big time under Obama: it turns out that Obamacare took care of you the way the Mafia usually takes care of the commons…

Whereas we saw the Obama-Biden work before: nothing happened, except a direct continuation of George W Bush’s, and Clinton’s main thrust, more efforts to push for GAFAM monopolies and to give away ever more power to multinationals such as the Trans Pacific Partnership, decimating US jobs, and laws… 

It is better to fight the good fight, for progress, rather than giving one’s fate to the usual back-stabbers… if nothing else, the latter strategy has been tried since 1980, and the result has been ever more inequality in nearly all ways, and now even reducing life expectancy. If one wants a new and better country, one will need a new and better mind, this is what Warren offers, and Biden doesn’t.

Patrice Ayme

Voluntary Servitude Not Just From Fear, But Also From Lazy Self Hypnosis Denying One’s Own Culpability

Why does propaganda works? Because People want to be propagandized, they want to belong and be owned. As long as they ask to be guided by what’s “in”, they are out as independent minds… And that’s exactly what they want. And the way to get there is collective hypnosis.

“In a democracy, everything depends upon the consent of the people” (Thomas Jefferson, 3rd president)… Well, even more so in a dictatorship:

Free, domineering, bold, happy alive:”The Woman Of My Dreams“, Nazi movie, August 1944. (the date is important).. Nazism was exactly about the opposite: caged, subjugated, scared, very sad to be still alive and gnawing on an obsession with death. The other contradiction: this movie was made just as the Great Reich was in full collapse, most of its great cities, smoking rubble, and flying armadas of thousands of Allied bombers bombing Germany while ruling German skies. Thus that movie depicts the world as the opposite of what it was. Nearly all healthy German women who got in touch with a vengeful Soviet army, got to serve hundreds of time a day, come 1945…

What’s the subconscious of a collective? That is the question. However I talked of the support of US plutocracy for fascism in the 1930s with all too many US citizens with world consciousness and they were EXTREMELY HOSTILE to this general approach. Like totally enraged.

[Esteemed reader] Kathleen Hawes Watkins: Maybe it comes down to attribution of conspiracy vs. exploitation. I suspect people are less hostile re opportunistic actions (fate/luck) than conspiring acts (intended/evil). So until they see evidence of full-scale conspiracy they are falling into default judgement – – they assume the pluts are catching all the breaks but are not really evil?

Dear Kathleen: you make an excellent point, and it’s probably true. We The People prefer to believe they are not victim of a conspiracy of evil. We The People wants to believe they are subject to the hand of fate, not the hand of man… hence, and here is an example: the “me too” problem: victims of rape, literal or effective (through career denial) and victims of gender discrimination don’t want to believe they were predated upon… and not just because they fear for their careers or places  in society, should they dare to complain.

“Woman of my Dreams” Dream On! 1944…

First, one has to realize society holds together with collective hypnosis. Apparently, cerebral imaging, and other tests, show that hypnosis is a real effect, and politics is its “terrain de prédilection”, its favourite ground. Two-thirds of the population are highly susceptible to hypnosis (and 10% not at all, including probably all genuine philosophers). Hypnosis is very comfortable: one does need one’s brain anymore.

Second, realizing that they were ruled by an evil conspiracy would be a letdown to the subjugated ones: that would show they aren’t living in the best of all possible worlds… and that they were dumb not to have noticed before. 

Third, that would entail that common people have been accomplice of the system, by refusing to see the obvious, and have been accomplices to their own subjugation, hence that they are themselves evil: if they subjugate themselves to submit t evil, who else do they subjugate?

At the time when “Woman of my Dreams” hits Reich theaters, here is August 1944 stark reality: The Nazi governor of Paris, Von Choltitz (on the table), surrenders to General Leclerc his 17,000 soldiers (Leclerc is the 3 star mustachioed general turned towards camera on the left of the Nazi in the picture above). General Leclerc had warned the Nazi he would be arrested as a war criminal, should he obey Hitler’s orders to “burn” Paris. Leclerc commander of the French Second Armored Division, next informed fanatical SS formations which had refused to obey Von Choltitz’s order to surrender that they would be charged of crimes against humanity, if they didn’t surrender. Suddenly getting smart, the SS surrendered to Leclerc. So the SS didn’t obey Hitler’s own commander, but they obeyed the French general! Notice the WC sign behind. The soldier with the armband is from the FFI (French Forces Interior).

Behind the Discours de la servitude volontaire d’Estienne de La Boétie lays a much more troubling fact: the implied discourse on servile criminality by the multitude, accomplice in its own criminal subjugation… 

Indeed, here is a little recapitulation of Estienne de La Boétie’s arguments of the Discourse on Voluntary Servitude:

– The power of tyrants is based only on the abandonment of power, by the people.

– The tyrant is often a weak man, like any other. Only the gullible can idolize him.

– Free spirits will be oppressed.

– The people are the cause of their submission to the tyrant.

– The use of reason will disappear among the people so they can be deceived and dominated.

– Tyrants create very elaborate power structures, consisting of a multi-level hierarchy empowered by conspiracies of accomplices.

To sum up La Boétie: political regimes [of the Renaissance] are based on fear, which is used to conceal the lack of legitimacy of the government. Thus, the people subjected to the self-government in place by simple habit, historical inertia, imprinting.

Gustave Le Bon (1843-1931) disagreed a bit: he thought crowds incapable of reason: “An individual in a crowd is a grain of sand amid other grains of sand, which the wind stirs up at will“.  Being incapable of reason, only emotion worked with crowds. He saw the likes of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, or Obama and Trump for that matter: “The leaders we speak of, are usually men of action rather than of words. They are not gifted with keen foresight… They are especially recruited from the ranks of those morbidly nervous excitable half-deranged persons who are bordering on madness.”

I said one needs more than fear to explain why people love voluntary servitude: hypnotism, intellectual laziness, comfort zone as a religion, and the fact that, by denying they are victims of an atrocious dictatorship, people in their deepest recesses, can then deny that the’re suspects and perpetrators of said dictatorship (as there is no dictatorship, they insist).

Hypnosis seems to be real, according to neuro-imaging. It impacts collectives best. This is, even more than fear and greed, is what brings “servitude volontaire“

An example of this, the denial of dictatorship, is the French, and not just the French, attitude to Napoleon… to this day. Napoleon, on the face of it, is one of the most abominable tyrants, ever. Moreover, he stole the Revolution to enrich and endow himself and his gang… all this for his futile pursuit of “power” (which he admitted to be completely hypnotized with. Nap called George Washington the “greatest man, ever” for renouncing power on his own…)

Napoleon is the dictator who sent to Haiti 600 huge dogs specially trained to eat black people (the escaped slaves, the “Marrons” resistants in the mountains [1]). Napoleon also organized his dictatorship so well, that it functions perfectly well to this day (with disastrous consequences for France, hence Europe, hence the world: consider the unelected “prefect” system, straight out of the decaying Late Roman empire). Napoleon, an enslaver, war criminal & criminal against humanity, is the world’s most admired Frenchman. When will the world grow up? His conquests exploited the Revolution: other French generals were better: they respected the Republic.

Fairey, who created this poster was (as I was then) very much taken by Obama at the time. (“Hope” was suggested by the Obama propagandists.) However, Fairey realized later that was gross propaganda. Fairey was jailed countless time, and condemned by the Justice system to 500 hours and a huge fine. By then he realized Obama personally authorized one deadly drone strike every twenty minutes during his 8 years reign. [Compare with Trump, fake left!]

That the plutocrats are not followers of Pluto is Biden (and Obama) main point. Said Biden:”Billionaires are really nice guys!” The truth, though, tends to be the opposite. Granted, real, formally educated engineers such as Bezos or Musk bring real added value (and they are both building reusable rocket systems, for space colonization, among other things). 

However, most billionaires are either so motivated by greed, that they succeeded, or then financed by the greedy (private investors, banks) using dirty tricks that should be unlawful (and have typically been installed by politicos such as Biden and Obama). Thus typical billionaires are criminally profiting from a criminal system, and it’s just a matter of time before their own criminality is very conscious. 

The end result is that each plutocratic individual or organization contributes to a global plutocratic mass. Just as a critical, big enough mass of Plutonium, the Pluto mass can become critical and undergo a chain reaction, where it overwhelms all. 

A good example is right now the GAFAM, the world top tech monopolies, the world’s most “valuable” companies, in market capitalization: a deliberate effort, probably driven by the US Deep State (NSA, etc.) was made to create world monopolies of information, to, simply, rule the world (the GAFAM themselves being controlled by the Deep State and associated stealth investors: foundations, trusts, etc.). 

If a society doesn’t react to plutocracy before it reaches critical mass, a chain reaction of evil will ensues, from which it is hard to escape: most societies fall into it, self-devouring, or then getting weak enough to be devoured by more democratic, hence stronger societies (story of the world under European domination). Contemplate for example Russia, which has been unable to escape the rule of evil… for centuries (although it came close to escape under the last years of Tsar Nicholas II’s rule… until the Bolshevik coup of 1917).

Hence, it turns out that, to have a more worthy society, more worthy because having more ideas, more science, more understanding, more stuff, more power on nature… and more military might, one needs more, enough collective psychoanalysis to free oneself from the delusion of prior collective hypnosis of a more primitive type, including the erroneous notion that the evil masters are not evil masters…

Yes, it was no accident that Alexander’s army knew Alexander was not a god: therein the superiority of the Greek-Macedonian army. That fact had escaped Alexander (until the army went on strike, after observing that India was significantly larger than Alexander had thought… And thus that going to the Pacific was not reasonable).

It’s striking, when one looks at Nazi movies (some of them pretty good artistically) how much in collective dreamland they were. Consider the extract of “Woman From My Dreams” (August 1944, just when Paris was liberated): https://alchetron.com/The-Woman-of-My-Dreams

To get out of voluntary servitude, one needs enough energy to build one’s brain anew, better and more faithful to reality. Work: there is no substitute. No personal mental work, no freedom

To fight stupid propaganda, to fight stupidity that propagates, there is just one way: more intelligent propaganda, clever enough, and brutal enough, to get people out of their comfortable hypnotism and fake moral righteousness… it can’t be just more sophisticated ideas, it has to shatter with emotional impact.

If one doesn’t want people to behave like ants, one will have to kick the anthill... All the more so, because as I said, the ants are not that innocent, and covering that up, makes it even more difficult to extricate. As Greek mythology has it, Pluto is not just evil: it can make himself invisible.

Patrice Ayme

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[1] It turned out that Napoleon’s man eating dogs were not racist: they also ate wounded white soldiers…

Understanding Quantum Mechanics: Why It Didn’t Happen Yet, And Why It Matters

Conflict Mentality, Militarism, Petty nationalism Got In The Way Of Quantum Understanding:

Abstract: Civilization advances by jumps, a bit like Quantum Mechanics. Most places, most of the time, contributed nothing to civilization. Look even at Antique Athens: it is mentally creative only over a few generations. Even after a century of Macedonian imposed plutocracy, when Second Century BCE Athens was free and prosperous again, covered with new monuments, having recovered the heart of its old empire (Delos), its famous intellectual class was also present, but amounted, in the end to… nothing. Why? Because the hyper power, the fascizing Roman Republic turning into a plutocracy, is lurking in the background, making Athens gifts it can’t refuse.

Quantum Mechanics was built by Europeans from various conflicting tribes (hence a desire to avoid finding too much truth). Starting in January 1938, the French “War Ministry“. following the lead of Nobel Irene Curie, imposes complete secrecy on the French nuclear bomb program, launching a new mentality of secrecy and military financing of physics festering to this day. So no wonder, the “Shut Up And Calculate!” mentality completely overwhelmed physics: even a top iconoclast physicist such as Feynman grew up working and breathing the Manhattan (nuclear bomb) project.

“High energy physics” was of course military financed: always has been always will be: the more energetic military wins…

However, nowadays, it’s possible to do Quantum Foundations physics, experimentally. They will require to push tech further, just as the detection of gravitational waves did. Actually, many obvious Foundations experiments will have to use similar tech, with refined optics.

Pushing for an understanding of Quantum Mechanics is not just that, it is pushing for what deeper understanding is, in general, and why it’s what humans do. The “Shut up and Calculate” mentality is just a glorification of intellectual fascism, and that, per se, is enough to reject it.

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I spent most of my life, decades of it, trying somewhat obsessionally, to understand Quantum Mechanics. It made me lots of enemies: I still remember a friend of mine, a Fields Medal sneering that I “meditated too much” after a seminar on Black Holes I gave at Stanford Physics department. The gist of my drift being that understanding Quantum Mechanics was crucial to Black Hole theory. At the time, although Hawking radiation was known as a possibility, it looked as if I mixed the unmixable… I found better recently: General Relativity itself depends on Quantum Mechanics [1]. What I didn’t understand at the time is that intellectuals are for sale, and the first thing they sell is the mood of conventionalism, not thinking too deep, as this is crucial to the sustainability of the establishment. Digging deep into Quantum Mechanics is the ultimate debasement of conventional thinking. In particular the Copenhagen Interpretation of QM rests on mystical intellectual fascism:”Don’t ask, don’t tell…” (Same as Clinton’s policy with “gays”)

Sean Carroll in New York Times, September 7, 2019: Even Physicists Don’t Understand Quantum Mechanics. Worse, they don’t seem to want to understand it.

By Sean Carroll (Dr. Carroll is a physicist.

“I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics,” observed the physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman. That’s not surprising, as far as it goes. Science makes progress by confronting our lack of understanding, and quantum mechanics has a reputation for being especially mysterious.

What’s surprising is that physicists seem to be O.K. with not understanding the most important theory they have.

This has to do with how Quantum Mechanics evolved, from a number of intellectuals, who knew each other very well, united by debating physics, although they were also deeply antagonistic to each other, below the surface (some were Jews, secular, or hidden, some were Nazis, blatant, or fellow-travelers, some were Germans, some French; they ended up working on nuclear bombs against each other…). Here is Sean Caroll:

“Quantum mechanics, assembled gradually by a group of brilliant minds over the first decades of the 20th century, is an incredibly successful theory. We need it to account for how atoms decay, why stars shine, how transistors and lasers work and, for that matter, why tables and chairs are solid rather than immediately collapsing onto the floor.

Scientists can use quantum mechanics with perfect confidence. But it’s a black box. We can set up a physical situation, and make predictions about what will happen next that are verified to spectacular accuracy. What we don’t do is claim to understand quantum mechanics. Physicists don’t understand their own theory any better than a typical smartphone user understands what’s going on inside the device.”

Good analogy. Now the difference between somebody physics minded and someone who is not, is that the former wants to understand. Under-stand, stand-under. 

“There are two problems. One is that quantum mechanics, as it is enshrined in textbooks, seems to require separate rules for how quantum objects behave when we’re not looking at them, and how they behave when they are being observed. When we’re not looking, they exist in “superpositions” of different possibilities, such as being at any one of various locations in space. But when we look, they suddenly snap into just a single location, and that’s where we see them. We can’t predict exactly what that location will be; the best we can do is calculate the probability of different outcomes.”

The reason for behaving differently when looked at, is that looking at is itself what I call a QUANTUM INTERACTION. The observation used to be called “Wave Packet Collapse”, then, in an effort to tone down controversy, got to be less ominously named”The Measurement Problem”. 

My own SPQR theory deals with the brutal switch over from linear waves to particle, by spreading out a Linear Real Wave (LRW), the GUIDING linear part of the DELOCALIZED particle, all over the “phase space”. LRW is proportional to the usual Quantum Wave (QW)… But LRW reacts nonlinearly to poking by other QWs, and then contracts at a speed greater than 10^23 times the speed of light. 

The immense speed gives the impression of being in several places at the same time. 

The discovery of the Double Slit (above) by Polymath MD Young impacted physics hard: Laplace left the particle theory, thus removing his BH prediction…[2]. After that, light was viewed as wave  Aragot’s attempt to deny waves by predicting a spot, which was indeed observed![3] Light being E-M waves (Maxwell), “explained” interference… until Einstein claimed the existence of “Lichtquanten), a rebirth of Newton’s light corpuscule (as used by Laplace). Einstein insisted the photon was localized in space. SQPR, instead says the photon is linearly extended with “most” of it nonlinearly concentrated, but guided by the linear part, thanks to the nonlinear behavior the “linear” part is ready to exhibit (for those who shake their heads here: this is how oceanic waves, which are nearly linear behave… the slight nonlinearity make some wave go faster than others, generating rogue waves…

Sean Carroll, poking at Textbook Quantum Mechanics  (TQM) finds that:

“The whole thing is preposterous. Why are observations special? What counts as an “observation,” anyway? When exactly does it happen? Does it need to be performed by a person? Is consciousness somehow involved in the basic rules of reality? Together these questions are known as the “measurement problem” of quantum theory.

The other problem is that we don’t agree on what it is that quantum theory actually describes, even when we’re not performing measurements. We describe a quantum object such as an electron in terms of a “wave function,” which collects the superposition of all the possible measurement outcomes into a single mathematical object. When they’re not being observed, wave functions evolve according to a famous equation written down by Erwin Schrödinger.

But what is the wave function? Is it a complete and comprehensive representation of the world? Or do we need additional physical quantities to fully capture reality, as Albert Einstein and others suspected? Or does the wave function have no direct connection with reality at all, merely characterizing our personal ignorance about what we will eventually measure in our experiments?

Until physicists definitively answer these questions, they can’t really be said to understand quantum mechanics — thus Feynman’s lament. Which is bad, because quantum mechanics is the most fundamental theory we have, sitting squarely at the center of every serious attempt to formulate deep laws of nature. If nobody understands quantum mechanics, nobody understands the universe.”

Then Sean hits the nail:

“You would naturally think, then, that understanding quantum mechanics would be the absolute highest priority among physicists worldwide. Investigating the foundations of quantum theory should be a glamour specialty within the field, attracting the brightest minds, highest salaries and most prestigious prizes. Physicists, you might imagine, would stop at nothing until they truly understood quantum mechanics.

The reality is exactly backward. Few modern physics departments have researchers working to understand the foundations of quantum theory. On the contrary, students who demonstrate an interest in the topic are gently but firmly — maybe not so gently — steered away, sometimes with an admonishment to “Shut up and calculate!” Professors who become interested might see their grant money drying up, as their colleagues bemoan that they have lost interest in serious work.

This has been the case since the 1930s, when physicists collectively decided that what mattered was not understanding quantum mechanics itself; what mattered was using a set of ad hoc quantum rules to construct models of particles and materials. The former enterprise came to be thought of as vaguely philosophical and disreputable. One is reminded of Aesop’s fox, who decided that the grapes he couldn’t reach were probably sour, and he didn’t want them anyway. Physicists brought up in the modern system will look into your eyes and explain with all sincerity that they’re not really interested in understanding how nature really works; they just want to successfully predict the outcomes of experiments.”

How did such a mood grow among physicists? One thing led to another. The psychogenetics of Quantum Mechanics are fascinating:

1)Extremely respected senior Prussian physicist Max Planck solves the two major problems in physics by proposing energy emission is quantized: E = hf (f frequency of radiation). 1900; the year before Jules Henri Poincaré started to teach at La Sorbonne E = mcc from looking in detail at electrodynamics.

This is already fascinating: Jules Henri Poincaré and Max Planck devise new mechanics, Relativity (Jules Henri Poincaré) and Quantum Mechanics (Planck) by looking at translating light (Jules Henri Poincaré and light in a Black Box (Planck).

2) Opportunistically, in typical Einstein style, extending Planck’s supposition, Einstein supposes that light travels as a quanta (“Lichtquanten”), and thus energy gets absorbed in packets, explaining the photoelectric effect (discovered by some Frenchman 80 years prior; documented in detail by Hertz who promptly died). His sponsor Planck the Prussian hates Einstein for the photoelectric effect, but then Einstein gets the Nobel for it in 1921.

3) Bohr proposes a half baked atom theory (1913)… 

4)…spectacularly explained by De Broglie in 1924, with the invention of QUANTUM WAVES.  Bohr and company could only dislike the irruption of this medievalist, a hyper wealthy Prince, with the famous experimental physicist brother… Einstein, enthusiastic, himself confers the (recommendation for) De Broglie’s thesis.

5) A group of germanoid (Danish, lots of Germans, Austrian) physicists around Bohr then captures all of QM genesis… But they are careful to hide the connection with De Broglie: most of their work is an obvious consequence of the French Prince’s work…

As Sean Carroll puts it:

“This attitude [not really interested in understanding how nature really works]can be traced to the dawn of modern quantum theory. In the 1920s there was a series of famous debates between Einstein and Niels Bohr, one of the founders of quantum theory. Einstein argued that contemporary versions of quantum theory didn’t rise to the level of a complete physical theory, and that we should try to dig more deeply. But Bohr felt otherwise, insisting that everything was in fine shape. Much more academically collaborative and rhetorically persuasive than Einstein, Bohr scored a decisive victory, at least in the public-relations battle.”

Roughly it was a battle between Einstein, well-to do archetypal international Jew, allied to the cosmopolitan, immensely cultured and fortunate, sophisticated French Prince, against a Germanic horde not inclined to subtlety (mostly made of crypto Jews and Nazis, or Nazi sympathizers, not a crowd too inclined to dig deep in its own motivations…).

Sean:

“Not everyone was happy that Bohr’s view prevailed, but these people typically found themselves shunned by or estranged from the field. In the 1950s the physicist David Bohm, egged on by Einstein, proposed an ingenious way of augmenting traditional quantum theory in order to solve the measurement problem. Werner Heisenberg, one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics, responded by labeling the theory “a superfluous ideological superstructure,” and Bohm’s former mentor Robert Oppenheimer huffed, “If we cannot disprove Bohm, then we must agree to ignore him.”

Around the same time, a graduate student named Hugh Everett invented the “many-worlds” theory, another attempt to solve the measurement problem, only to be ridiculed by Bohr’s defenders. Everett didn’t even try to stay in academia, turning to defense analysis after he graduated.”

As I am hinting above, tribal strife (French against German; Jew against Nazi) was one of the main reason the search for the deepest knowledge became irrelevant to the elaboration of present day physics. Unfortunately, Sean Carroll just fed it some more, just above: the “Bohm” theory was actually invented by Louis De Broglie (Nobel, 1/1, 1927). But De Broglie is French, Bohm US born, so much better, never mind that Bohm was thrown out of the USA during McCarthyism…

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Sean:

“A more recent solution to the measurement problem, proposed by the physicists Giancarlo Ghirardi, Alberto Rimini and Tulio Weber, is unknown to most physicists.”

As Wikipedia puts it: GRW differs from other collapse theories by proposing that wave function collapse happens spontaneously. GRW is an attempt to avoid the measurement problem in quantum mechanics. It was first reported in 1985…. Yes, “first reported”, but, well, as far as I am concerned, I got and advertised the idea first (in Stanford, Berkeley). Today’s SQPR is much more sophisticated and deep than GRW (and thus can explain Dark Matter)

Sean:

“These ideas are not simply woolly-headed “interpretations” of quantum mechanics. They are legitimately distinct physical theories, with potentially new experimental consequences. But they have been neglected by most scientists. For years, the leading journal in physics had an explicit policy that papers on the foundations of quantum mechanics were to be rejected out of hand.

Of course there are an infinite number of questions that scientists could choose to worry about, and one must prioritize somehow. Over the course of the 20th century, physicists decided that it was more important to put quantum mechanics to work than to understand how it works. And to be fair, part of their rationale was that it was hard to actually see a way forward. What were the experiments one could do that might illuminate the measurement problem?”

My own SQPR implies Dark Matter: that’s an enormous, super massive implication (not at all like the tiny, but crucial, postdiction of the Mercury precession by GR, and the prediction of light deviation by the Sun being double of what Newton got…).

Sean:

“The situation might be changing, albeit gradually. The current generation of philosophers of physics takes quantum mechanics very seriously, and they have done crucially important work in bringing conceptual clarity to the field. Empirically minded physicists have realized that the phenomenon of measurement can be directly probed by sufficiently subtle experiments.”

Applied French Physicist Michel Devoret, purchased by Yale, revealed the Copenhagen Interpretation is hogwash. See Absence of Presence Is Not Presence of Absence: QUANTUM JUMPS PREDICTED, Copenhagen Interpretation SHATTERED

Sean:

“And the advance of technology has brought questions about quantum computers and quantum information to the forefront of the field. Together, these trends might make it once again respectable to think about the foundations of quantum theory, as it briefly was in Einstein and Bohr’s day.

Meanwhile, it turns out that how reality works might actually matter. Our best attempts to understand fundamental physics have reached something of an impasse, stymied by a paucity of surprising new experimental results. Scientists discovered the Higgs boson in 2012, but that had been predicted in 1964. Gravitational waves were triumphantly observed in 2015, but they had been predicted a hundred years before. “

Well, Laplace predicted gravitational waves in the Eighteenth Century. Poincaré made them relativistic in 1905. Then of course they appear in GR, a spacetime wave theory. 

Sean:

“It’s hard to make progress when the data just keep confirming the theories we have, rather than pointing toward new ones.

The problem is that, despite the success of our current theories at fitting the data, they can’t be the final answer, because they are internally inconsistent. Gravity, in particular, doesn’t fit into the framework of quantum mechanics like our other theories do. It’s possible — maybe even perfectly reasonable — to imagine that our inability to understand quantum mechanics itself is standing in the way.

After almost a century of pretending that understanding quantum mechanics isn’t a crucial task for physicists, we need to take this challenge seriously.”

We humans are understanding machines. denying us understanding is denying us humanity. However, few places, and then rarely so, were devoted enough to understanding, to develop it, in spite of everything else… Which is, what it takes….

Patrice Ayme

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P/S: Sean Carroll (@seanmcarroll) is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology and the author of the forthcoming book “Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime,” from which this essay is adapted.”

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[1] I sent that General Relativity (GR) depends upon QM, to a well-known physicist, on her well-known site… She apparently didn’t publish it… Probably to present soon the idea as hers (she has a physics career, as a pigeon has a career eating crumbs)… If she didn’t do it already. My reasoning in a nutshell: Special Relativity (SR) can be deduced from Local Time. But Local Time (LT), the photon bouncing around, itself is the essence of QM. So GR, as its locally SR, depends upon QM, through LT. Nobody made these simple remarks, before yours truly… 

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[2] When 2 slit appeared, light looked like waves, so Laplace reasoning about Black Hole looked fishy, so he removed it from his book.

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[3] Aragot predicted destructive light interference behind a sphere. That was viewed as unlikely, implausible, and was bound to destroy the wave theory of light: light + light = dark? Impossible! However, that Aragot spot was observed… After that, waves ruled, until Einstein 1905…

Why Is Portugal Collapsing? From Deindustrialization and Dummification. Same As Rest of EU

The problem for Portugal, and, more and more for all European countries, more or less: what are they living from? What do they sell? What’s their job? European countries need gas, oil, and high technology: but (differently from the USA) they import all this… well, OK, France has Airbus … But France used to have much more! 

Europe has fallen asleep. The Court of Auditors in France has said that Arianespace is two years old to find a solution to the competition of SpaceX, Blue Origin (with their reusable rockets). Meanwhile, SpaceX continues its experimental efforts at a torrid pace, staggering, India is trying to land on the moon, or a Chinese robot has just made a weird discovery.

China, India and, of course, the US have fully understood that the future and independence can come only from technological dominance, so they make enormous efforts. Europe concentrates on tourism, museums, comfort and widespread mediocrity … And especially on the German industry secretly financed by small bankrupt banks financed by the German states … Unfortunately, the rest of Europe suddenly deindustrializes. ..

Population Collapse, Working Population Collapse: Thank You, Great EU Planners

All vital imports for Europe must be paid: with what money? Unlike the United States (or even Great Britain!), Europe does not create enough funding to finance industries that could create currencies for Europe to pay for what it needs.

In the fourteenth century, Portugal, then a tiny country of a million inhabitants, just released from five centuries of Muslim yoke, had the most advanced technology (maritime) in the world (and against attacked Muslims in Morocco). And now? Where is the Portuguese or even European technology? Now, technology is asking for the moon…

Historians are often baffled by the undeniable rise of the European society and economy by the Eleventh Century [2]. Soon north-west Europe had around the same demographics as the entire Roman empire (more 54 millions), and achieved greater productivity. It doesn’t take very long to find out why: Europe was stuffed of windmills, water wheels, heavy steel ploughs (to turn over fat rich soils of northern European plains), hydraulic hammers, and slow or fast ships all over, enabling trade all over, for example between Scandinavia and the Middle East, Norway and Sicily…

It’s so obvious that many non-European powers have perfectly understood the lesson. So why has Europe forgotten it? Because Europe is the revolutionary center …that mostly came from the driving engine of the early Renaissance, Western Francia, which was divided in 60 states in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries. because Europe is the revolutionary center, the European media, owned by the plutocracy, has been excellent at making Europeans believe in the opposite of common sense and their self-interest. Instead, they learned to play, sing, dance and get drunk on their past…

As long as this is not understood, Europe, and Portugal in particular, will sink [3].

Patrice Ayme

[The preceding was machine translated from French original below!]

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[1 ] After all transistors were mass produced, and invented, in France, in 1948, with the help of two German scientists… and not by US, as corrupt Swedish Nobel organization claims…).

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[2] Berengar of Tours (c. 999 – 6 January 1088), in Latin Berengarius Turonensis, was an 11th-century French Christian theologian and archdeacon of Angers, a realistic scholar whose spectacular leadership of the cathedral school at Chartres set an example of intellectual inquiry. He was excommunicated for his fostering of reason, but, protected by the enlightened William of Normandy, kept on prospering and his ideas spread all over, forever after…

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[3] Even the crazed out Boris Johnson understands perfectly well that the fate of Great Britain rests in developing more advanced technology (hence is extolling of the… JET, the Joint EUROPEAN (!) Torus…).

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French Original:

Le problème pour le Portugal, et, de plus en plus tous les pays Européens, plus ou moins: de quoi vivent-ils? Il leur faut du gaz, du pétrole, et de la haute technologie: mais ils importent tout cela (bon d’accord la France a Airbus…).

L’Europe s’est endormie. La Cour des Comptes en France a dit qu’Arianespace a deux ans pour trouver une solution à la concurrence de SpaceX, Blue Origin (avec leurs fusées réutilisables). Pendant ce temps, SpaceX continue ses efforts expérimentaux à un rythme torride, sidérant, l’Inde essaye d’atterrir sur la Lune, ou un robot Chinois vient de faire une découverte bizarre. 

La Chine, l’Inde et, bien sur, les USA ont parfaitement compris que le futur et l’indépendance ne peuvent venir que de la domination technologique, donc ils font des efforts énormes . L’Europe se concentre sur tourisme, musées, confort et médiocrité généralisée… Et surtout sur l’industrie allemande financée en secret par des petites banques en faillite financées par les etats allemands… Malheureusement, le reste de l’Europe du coup se désindustrialise… 

Toutes les importations vitales pour l’Europe doivent être payées: avec quel argent? Differemment des USA (ou même de la Grande Bretagne!), l’Europe ne crée pas assez de financements pour financer les industries qui pourraient créer pour l’Europe des devises pour payer ce dont elle a besoin.

Au quatorzième siècle, le Portugal, alors un tout petit pays d’un million d’habitants, juste libéré de cinq siècles de joug Musulman, avait la technologie (maritime) la plus avancée au monde (et contre attaqua les Musulmans au Maroc). Et maintenant? Ou est la technologie Portugaise, ou même Européenne? Maintenant, la technologie, c’est demander la lune…

80 Years Ago, France Declared War To Hitler

September 3, 1939. Hitler had invaded Poland two days before, and had been served by an ultimatum from France and the UK:”Get out of Poland, or we declare war!” Yes, Great Britain declared war too. But the UK had just a few divisions, and France more than 104 divisions… on the north-east front, ALONE (2.25 million soldiers on that frontier)! France would engage 11 armored divisions in May 1940, one more than Germany… Britain would engage just one armored division; the absence of the Second Armored British division at Sedan, enabled the Nazi “Sickle Cut“… With its superior Matilda tanks, and highly trained professional soldiers, there is little doubt that the British Second Armored division could have held up the Nazi army long enough until the main French formations could have maneuvered to back it up… And crush the Nazi snakes.

In 1939, Germany mobilized some 7 % of her population, France 12.5 %. French public opinion was grim in 1939, but determined: one had to do away with Hitler. Both in Britain, and France, all believed that, because of their gigantic empires, the Franco-British victory was unavoidable, and would follow the same pattern as during 1914-1918: a successful blockade, and blocking, followed by revolution in Germany.

However, France had lost more than 1.4 million soldiers killed, fighting German fascists, just 20 years earlier…  And now, France was facing a conspiracy and alliance of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, and Stalin’s Soviet Union. Even for the combative French. that was a bit much. And then there were snakes like Sweden, arming Hitler to the hilt, with the “Iron Road”…. We are still waiting for Swedish collective psychoanalysis.

I followed a documentary of WW2, to commemorate September 3, 1939, on the Franco-German channel Arte. The writers didn’t find anything better than extensively quoting Simone De Beauvoir, who, sure enough, claimed nobody knew why WW1 was fought… Well it was fought because the fascists attacked…. Now, for De Beauvoir the concept of “fascists attacking” doesn’t exist. By 1944, De Beauvoir would pursue a career of collaboration at Radio Vichy, tight with one of the worst collabo… who was executed by the Resistance in 1944 (De Beauvoir being smart, she was able to put the mask of a feminst and leftist later).  

Bombing of Warsaw, September 1939, Luftwaffe picture… Zentralbild
II. Weltkrieg 1939-45 Überfall der faschistischen deutschen Wehrmacht auf Polen am 1.9.1939.UBz: Flugzeugaufnahme des brennenden Warschaus, das am 27. September 1939 kapitulieren mußte.
3250-40

Hitler’s ally, Stalin, attacked Poland jointly with the Nazis, and then attacked Finland late in 1939 (with the idea of grabbing all of Finland; Stalin would end with smaller, yet crucial parts). The French government then outlawed the French Communist Party and stripped of French citizenship those who fled to the USSR. It was then decided to attack Hitler’s crucial ally, Sweden, to come to the rescue of Finland. France was really fighting over all fronts, including an internal one.

This outlawing of Communist Party is not an anecdote but the cause why many French fighter aircraft were armed too late in Spring 1940 (smart politicians were afraid of French communist workers seizing weapons). By 1940, the French government of PM Daladier was losing its smarts, often freaking out about the hundreds of thousands of German refugees in France (who were of course all anti-Nazis, but that the French government suspected nevertheless…)

Attacking Poland from west (Nazis) and east (Stalin) was no accident: German generals, now Nazis, had trained in the USSR, secretly, in violation of the Versailles Treaty, for years… Poland capitulated in 4 weeks. France would be attacked later, by tanks fueled with Soviet oil….

Bravely, the US, after first condemning and punishing France and the UK, finally instituted “cash and carry”. The grim determination of the French and British navies may have helped. Although out gunned (280 mm against 200 mm), the Royal Navy destroyed the battleship Graf Spee in Rio Della Plata…

The destruction of the Graf Spee clearly showed that France and Britain were going to strangle Germany.. as long as they could separate it from Stalin…

A major problem was that Belgium was “neutral”. It means that the French army entered Belgium only after Hitler invaded Belgium. Worse: it means that, when two-thirds of the entire German army entered Belgium… Belgium did NOT notice! The French High Command was not told. Had it been told, huge French forces, like the unstoppable Super Heavy Third French armored division, just north of Sedan, could have been fueled and move south and block, or, better cut from behind, the Nazi armor thrust. Also forces could have been moved from the Maginot Line and long range guns thereof got ready (they didn’t in the few hours they could have been effective).

9 April 1940, Hitler attacks Denmark, Norway:  they are neutral, but Hitler and the Nazis were aware of a secret alliance between Norway and France to produce heavy water, as part of the French nuclear weapon program (somehow the Nazis could tell when the heavy water was transported to France, and intercepted the aircraft… However, by then the French had substituted on the airfield the heavy water for granite; the heavy water made to France, and, later, Buckingham Palace’s deepest and most secure cellar… With the Corwon Jewels…).

Even more worrisome for Hitler, France and Britain were getting ready to attack Sweden, Hitler’s ally (yeah, I know, the Swedes claimed, claim, to be neutral… they were not. Not at all. Sweden enabled Hitler in a crucial way, with the 88mm gun, and all that high quality iron ore to make hundreds of thousands of tanks and planes with…) 

Even before invading Poland, Hitler had given a (very) secret discourse to his top commanders, explaining that speed and brutality would win the war in Poland. Hitler explained that the “SS units with death heads” would kill all the Jews and Poles to enable the Germans to acquire the “Lebensraum” (life space, vital space) they needed. Accordingly, Hitler displaced 600,000 Germans of German ancestry, to settle them into West Poland. There they created the Warthegau, nicknamed, the “Blonde Province” (Himmler:”I am going to create here a blonde province!” … funny neither he, nor Hitler or Goebels were blonde… And lots of Poles were blonde… such blonde kids were taken from their parents, and “germanized”. We know of 30,000 such cases. There were more.) 

When the Nazis killed the Poles, they killed some secretly, but they also killed dozens of thousands, very publicly… To scare the rest. 

10,000 assassinated in the first few weeks in the Warthegau alone, for all to see, 10,000 leading Poles, typically intellectuals, doctors, etc…

Between 12 November 1939 (first attempted attack, stopped by weather), Hitler gave 20 orders of attack of France. However his generals were not keen… and resisted The generals knew that they were going to be defeated. But then they had no choice: time was working against them. The Manstein plan finally selected had a low probability of success. But, at least, it had some. The other plans (dully anticipated by the French) had none. The Prince of Wales, Inspector General of the British army, helped, telling his friend Adolf where to strike. Gott mit Uns did the rest…

Finally, the USA relented a bit, and established the “Cash and Carry” program, enabling France and Britain, and only them to use the USA to help arm themselves (as the Nazis were locked out of the Atlantic, by the French and British navies, they couldn’t carry anything…), to buy weapons in the USA (one such weapon ordered by Brits and French was what became the famous “Mustang” fighter aircraft, later the main long range superiority fighter of the US Air Force!)

The Nazis expelled the Jews from Germany, threw them in Poland, and in ghettos, but then those became unmanageable. Then a propaganda operation over Germany claimed the Germans had build lots of western Poland, just to see it invaded, starting in the 17 century by eastern ethnicities (the Jews).

The US Americans finally clicked morally in a correct way later in the war (after Hitler declared war to the US, Dec 11, 1941). By then they reacted similarly to the French in 1939, 1940…

Detailed Nazi plans had anticipated to kill all the Jews, and then march to death, towards the Urals, 50 million Slavs. Then German colonization could proceed, in axes of cities, towards Leningrad, Crimea…

Why the USA didn’t move immediately to help its parents, France and Britain, against Nazism, stays a mystery as US intelligentsia refuses to consider the subject [1]. Ah, you may say, there is not such a thing,as a US intelligentsia… Yes, but then loom at French intelligentsia: De Beauvoir, the collabo, is a towering figure there, so low have the expectations sunk…

Madness of the crowds need to be analyzed… So that, for example, one can steer better as in crises such as Hong Kong, Brexit, or biosphere collapse. That is why the US American attitude astoundingly inhuman at the beginning of WW2 will have to be answered… Only by effecting such analyses will things turn out for the best (often, they don’t, but now we have no choice)

Anyway, that was just a little memorandum, a community service… Remembering that France and Britain did the right thing on September 3, 1939. Not only they end up losing their empires, replace by the US empire, but, together, they suffered more than three million killed… The French empire alone suffered nearly three million killed (worst estimates) most of these losses in French Indochina… Such losses are hard to understand to Anglo-Saxons: the UK (451 K) and the US (419 K) suffered together around as many killed as metropolitan France.

World War Two end up killing 85 millions (at least; latest evaluations, 2019; for political reasons, massive underestimates were long presented)… That’s 3% of world population… Killed, by the Second World War. If the USA had come to the help of its parents, France and Britain, in 1939 or 1940, it would have kept losses at a fraction of that. No Jewish holocaust…

Had the US intervened in the first half of 1940, there would have been an anti-Nazi coup… German fanatical support for Hitler paradoxically augmented later in the war, not really because it was nice to see German cities burn, like the Jews, but because too many military personnel and authorities, let alone simple Germans, had helped the Nazis with their crimes…

Weirdly, the Allies were kind with many of the top Nazis. For example Field Marshall Erich Von Manstein was capable of exerting his evil Nazi influence on the German army in the 1950s, 1960s and beyond. Never mind that he ordered all Jews to be killed at some point: he couldn’t quite recall… Manstein became militärische Kult- und Leitfigur… who made sure that those who organized the coup against Hitler were NOT honored (German policy has changed since Von Manstein died in 1973… Weeks before the last Nazi Feldmarshall, another condemned war criminal).

To learn to analyze madness of the crowds, one needs to study particular cases. All the more, as much worse is potentially around the corner…

Patrice Ayme

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[1] My well known position is that the US Deep State and US plutocracy had empire envy, and felt Hitler was a good enough tool to grab the European empires. So US media and Plutos and Deep State all collaborated with their C in C, FDR…

EARTH OUT OF OXYGEN: 1) Basic Reasoning, Objection From Atmospheric Scientist

Yes, we can run out of oxygen. When they burned the Jews, nobody came: they were not Jews, after all, and had never heard of such a thing. Now they, the same suspects, superficiality, small-mindedness, greed, idiocy, ignorance, sheer viciousness, brutishness, and madness of the crowds, burn the planet’s atmosphere. Will somebody come?

This is an extension, an update, of what I already explained more than six years ago:

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/global-hypoxia/

My basic theory, in a nutshell: Increased heat and drought caused by the augmentation of CO2 launched a holocaust of primary forests, worldwide, that, in turn feeds the rise of acidity of the oceans, killing the phytoplankton. So yes, should CO2 keep on rising, the biosphere will run out of oxygen!

CAN WE RUN OUT OF OXYGEN? YES, OF COURSE! AS THE BIOSPHERE COLLAPSES, we don’t expect any less!

Philosophy is what happens when one thinks hard about the foundations. 

Civilization class philosophy is vastly superior to all the thinking done before, because before knowing (that’s called science), one has to guess what there is to know (finding out what is more significant in the morass of possible knowledge). 

Foundation thinking often reveals we don’t know enough to have the deep foundations usually assumed. French President Macron went all out for the burning forests, in Siberia, Amazonia, Indonesia and Sub-Saharan Africa, burning to an extent never seen before, and I thank him for it. This unprecedented holocaust (holo-caust means all-burn in Greek) is one more step in the desertification caused by man. 

“Our house is burning. Literally. The Amazon rainforest – the lungs which produces 20% of our planet’s oxygen – is on fire,” Macron wrote in a tweet“It is an international crisis. Members of the G7 Summit, let’s discuss this emergency first order in two days!” UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres reinforced the oxygen message, August 22, 2019: ”I’m deeply concerned by the fires in the Amazon rainforest. In the midst of the global climate crisis, we cannot afford more damage to a major source of oxygen and biodiversity. The Amazon must be protected.”

However articles sprouted all over, from US scientists insisting in the world media that French president Macron got it wrong, and that, whatever we did, we will not run out of oxygen. My first reaction was that those scientists are either feeble minded, or liars: we can run out of oxygen, thanks to the likes of the Amazon burning. 

At first, such scientists reminded me of Nazi scientists claiming under the Third Reich that nothing wrong could possibly happen with Nazism, or with the Jews.

We have not thought hard enough about the foundations in the matter of climate.

Some US scientists have even claimed that forests, as a system, actually produce no oxygen. Here is below what Dr. Scott Denning, Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University says. Before I quote his entire article in The Conversation, let me point out that I do not disagree with the science he exposes, just his conclusion. This will be explained in my next essay, and Professor Denning’s kind answer:

Professor Scott Denning:

“Amazon fires are destructive, but they aren’t depleting Earth’s oxygen supply

26 août 2019

Fires in the Amazon rainforest have captured attention worldwide in recent days. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who took office in 2019, pledged in his campaign to reduce environmental protection and increase agricultural development in the Amazon, and he appears to have followed through on that promise.

The resurgence of forest clearing in the Amazon, which had decreased more than 80% following a peak in 2004, is alarming for many reasons. Tropical forests harbor many species of plants and animals found nowhere else. They are important refuges for indigenous people, and contain enormous stores of carbon as wood and other organic matter that would otherwise contribute to the climate crisis.

Some media accounts have suggested that fires in the Amazon also threaten the atmospheric oxygen that we breathe. French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted on Aug. 22 that “the Amazon rainforest – the lungs which produces 20% of our planet’s oxygen – is on fire.”

The oft-repeated claim that the Amazon rainforest produces 20% of our planet’s oxygen is based on a misunderstanding. In fact nearly all of Earth’s breathable oxygen originated in the oceans, and there is enough of it to last for millions of years. There are many reasons to be appalled by this year’s Amazon fires, but depleting Earth’s oxygen supply is not one of them.

Oxygen from plants

As an atmospheric scientist, much of my work focuses on exchanges of various gases between Earth’s surface and the atmosphere. Many elements, including oxygen, constantly cycle between land-based ecosystems, the oceans and the atmosphere in ways that can be measured and quantified.

Nearly all free oxygen in the air is produced by plants through photosynthesis. About one-third of land photosynthesis occurs in tropical forests, the largest of which is located in the Amazon Basin.

But virtually all of the oxygen produced by photosynthesis each year is consumed by living organisms and fires. Trees constantly shed dead leaves, twigs, roots and other litter, which feeds a rich ecosystem of organisms, mostly insects and microbes. The microbes consume oxygen in that process.

Forest plants produce lots of oxygen, and forest microbes consume a lot of oxygen. As a result, net production of oxygen by forests – and indeed, all land plants – is very close to zero.

There are four main reservoirs of oxygen on Earth: the terrestrial biosphere (green), marine biosphere (blue), lithosphere (Earth’s crust, brown), and atmosphere (grey). Colored arrows show fluxes between these reservoirs. Burial of organic material causes a net increase in atmospheric oxygen, and reactions with minerals in rocks cause a net decrease. Pengxiao Xu/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

Oxygen production in the oceans

For oxygen to accumulate in the air, some of the organic matter that plants produce through photosynthesis must be removed from circulation before it can be consumed. Usually this happens when it is rapidly buried in places without oxygen – most commonly in deep sea mud, under waters that have already been depleted of oxygen.

This happens in areas of the ocean where high levels of nutrients fertilize large blooms of algae. Dead algae and other detritus sink into dark waters, where microbes feed on it. Like their counterparts on land, they consume oxygen to do this, depleting it from the water around them.

Below depths where microbes have stripped waters of oxygen, leftover organic matter falls to the ocean floor and is buried there. Oxygen that the algae produced at the surface as it grew remains in the air because it is not consumed by decomposers.

Tiny phytoplankton in the ocean generate half of the oxygen produced on Earth.

This buried plant matter at the bottom of the ocean is the source of oil and gas. A smaller amount of plant matter gets buried in oxygen-free conditions on land, mostly in peat bogs where the water table prevents microbial decomposition. This is the source material for coal.

Only a tiny fraction – perhaps 0.0001% – of global photosynthesis is diverted by burial in this way, and thus adds to atmospheric oxygen. But over millions of years, the residual oxygen left by this tiny imbalance between growth and decomposition has accumulated to form the reservoir of breathable oxygen on which all animal life depends. It has hovered around 21% of the volume of the atmosphere for millions of years.

Some of this oxygen returns to the planet’s surface through chemical reactions with metals, sulfur and other compounds in Earth’s crust. For example, when iron is exposed to air in the presence of water, it reacts with oxygen in the air to form iron oxide, a compound commonly known as rust. This process, which is called oxidation, helps regulate oxygen levels in the atmosphere.

Don’t hold your breath

Even though plant photosynthesis is ultimately responsible for breathable oxygen, only a vanishingly tiny fraction of that plant growth actually adds to the store of oxygen in the air. Even if all organic matter on Earth were burned at once, less than 1% of the world’s oxygen would be consumed.

In sum, Brazil’s reversal on protecting the Amazon does not meaningfully threaten atmospheric oxygen. Even a huge increase in forest fires would produce changes in oxygen that are difficult to measure. There’s enough oxygen in the air to last for millions of years, and the amount is set by geology rather than land use. The fact that this upsurge in deforestation threatens some of the most biodiverse and carbon-rich landscapes on Earth is reason enough to oppose it.

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[I beg to differ: actually I have a master reason to believe we do NOT have “millions of years” of oxygen (next essay). Hint: permafrost!]

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Well, thanks, professor Denning (from the prestigious U of C at Boulder. That university got several Nobels in physics, is located next to the delightful Flatiron/Green Mountain park, where I have climbed and unwittingly charged a very large mountain lion which was stalking (long story). I was actually going to NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) when that happened… My spouse was doing there hard core programming on Sun Atmospherics. All this to say Denning is coming from what maybe the most qualified place in atmospheric matters!

However, as I will explain in the next essay, the very science professor Denning unfolded above leads me to the opposite conclusion from the one he draws.

Another point, see P/S below: up to very recently, it was viewed that forests (now burning) produced HALF of the planet’s oxygen. Professor Denning says: not so (well, OK, he is the specialist, he should know better… but I am curious to see the science…) In particular, up to very recently, the scientific literature widely quoted the Amazon as producing 20% of the world oxygen. It’s only very recently that US scientists (not just professor Denning!) changed their music. Is it that they heard that they better change their tune, should they want to be financed some more by the Trump administration, the fossil fuel plutocracy, or its delegates, surrogates and agents? Anyway, the P/S below shows what used to be the official science…

Another point is that an easy computation shows the atmosphere contains around 10^15 tons of oxygen. So some anti-Macron, and anti-panic about oxygen have argued we have millions of years of oxygen to consume, even if production stops. As I will show in the next essay, not so! Indeed, that simplicity overlooks an entire dimension. It may be frozen, but it’s all the more potent as it will come alive, all putrescent, rotting and belching all over: permafrost. 2.5 million years of it, no less! Glaciations may have help foster humanity, by creating new, exotic and demanding ecological niches which favored greater intelligence. By receding now, ice and climate change will require more creativity than ever… And better science.

Patrice Ayme

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P/S:

The following tables offer estimates of oxygen cycle reservoir capacities and fluxes… before the latest science professor Denning says is true…. Latest science which basically says it’s OK to destroy the forests, as far as oxygen production is concerned!!!!!!!!!!! (I don’t believe it, and I have a counter-reasoning, destroying professor Denning conclusion above… with his own logic!) These numbers below were taken for granted until very recently, and are based primarily on estimates from Walker, J. C. G.:[10]… 

Such numbers below were what Macron and Gutierrez based their O2 claims on…

Reservoir	Capacity (kg O2)	Flux in/out (kg O2 per year)	Residence time (years)
Atmosphere	1.4×1018	3×1014	4500
Biosphere	1.6×1016	3×1014	50
Lithosphere	2.9×1020	6×1011	500000000

 

Table 2: Annual gain and loss of atmospheric oxygen (Units of 1010 kg O2 per year)[1]

Photosynthesis (land) Photosynthesis (ocean) Photolysis of N2O Photolysis of H2O	16,500 13,500 1.3 0.03
Total gains	~ 30,000
Losses – respiration and decay
Aerobic respiration Microbial oxidation Combustion of fossil fuel (anthropogenic) Photochemical oxidation Fixation of N2 by lightning Fixation of N2 by industry (anthropogenic) Oxidation of volcanic gases	23,000 5,100 1,200 600 12 10 5
Losses – weathering
Chemical weathering Surface reaction of O3	50 12
Total losses	~ 30,000

Hint on the hidden O2 catastrophe: The mass of the biosphere: of the order of 4x(10^12) tons. Prof Denning says it can absorb all O2. OK. Indeed, notice microbial oxidation.

Suppose it all dies.

Not enough? Well, think a bit about all what got frozen during the last 2.5 million years of glaciation: the bill is coming due…

PA

Latest Pluto Brexit Outrage: Dictator Johnson Suspends UK Parliament

BORIS JOHNSON WILL SUSPEND U.K. PARLIAMENT, HINDERING BREXIT REBELS

LONDON — Unelected Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday announced plans to lengthen an upcoming parliamentary break, an expected maneuver that would make it harder for lawmakers to prevent Britain from exiting the European Union without an agreement with the Union.

Mr. Johnson said Britain will leave as French Napoleon Macron scheduled on Oct. 31, with or without a deal. Economists say such a “no-deal” exit would be chaotic and economically damaging, and could plunge Britain into a recession, but Mr. Johnson and the hard-line pro-Brexit faction in Parliament insist that it would be fine.

Opposition politicians — and some of Mr. Johnson’s fellow Conservatives — reacted angrily to the news.

Dictator Boris needs the approval of the dictating hereditary Queen to enact his plot. The two miscreants need to conspire together.

Brexit was a non-binding referendum, whereas the referendum for entry of the UK in the European Community, 45 years ago, was first legislated to be a binding legislation. Brexit was retrospectively made binding, a blatantly anti-democratic measure. Had the Brexit referendum known to been binding to start with, many would not have voted for it. Instead, Brexit was interpreted as a non-binding protest vote, so many voted to “leave” when they didn’t mean it.

In front of Westminster, the UK Parliament (above), is a statue of Richard the Lionheart. King Richard, symbol of England, spent more than 90% of his life in France (aside of time he spent in the Middle East, much of it representing his suzerain and companion of arms, Philippe Auguste of France). Richard was born and died, in France, and became king with the help of Philippe. Europe is one, that’s what the Lionheart statue in front of Westminster means. Brexit idiots don’t know this.

Now two unelected individuals, a hereditary (non-elected) queen, and an ex-journalist are going to act together to prevent any semblance of debate by elected “representatives”, while the UK decides to make economic, financial and fiscal war to its neighbors. 

Notice in passing that when Germans and Franks were led by kings, 15 centuries ago, those  were elected. Non-elected monarchs appeared relatively recently in European history, while wars augmented,

Some may not understand what I just said, let me explain in more details: the UK is a major tax haven. The EU was, increasingly, squeezing out tax havens. UK based plutocrats, coming from all over the world, but nominally based in Britain or its tax-free “dependencies”, couldn’t take it, and decided to have their tax haven, Britain and more than 15 tax-free dependencies, sail away.

So now we can contemplate what “representative democracy” has become: not even a fig leaf for raw global plutocracy anxious to keep its tax-free status.

What the world needs is real Demos Kratia, People Power, and that means People directly voting, and being clear on what they vote for (and not packs of lies like Brexit).

Patrice Ayme

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P/S: Does the preceding means I am a Remainer foaming at the mouth? No. (Some Brexit fanatics have told me I inspired them to launch Brexit, believe it or not…)

Actually, Brexit may help Europe, if it results of a bit of competition Europe needs. Let me explain: Direct Democracy in Switzerland has made Switzerland wealthy, productive and innovative. In the best possible Brexit strategy, Great Britain would mimic Switzerland (as the EU should do). That, in turn, would force the European Union to do the same…

Moreover, the UK will have to keep on cooperating militarily with France.

So Brexit doesn’t mean all the bridges are cut with the other side of the Channel… Far from it. In catastrophic scenarios where Scotland leaves the UK, because the UK left the EU, British nuclear subs, presently based in one spot in Scotland, are supposed to be based in France (France has four strategic nuclear subs based in their special base in Brest; and six 100 meters long attack nuclear submarines based in the deep rade of Toulon; the UK has three strategic “Trident” nuclear subs… the USA has 14 “Trident” nuclear subs, core of US Defense)…

Warning: War Can Be Very Surprising. The Case of the Battle Of France, May-June 1940

This is my answer to the following question: “Why didn’t Britain and France throw their full force at the western German pincer instead of evacuating at Dunkirk?”

At first sight, on paper, the French army had plenty enough power to cut the Von Manstein/Guderian “Sickle Cut” (an expression invented later by Churchill, apparently), just after it happened. It was tried and nearly worked (from the north, and from the south).

However, the nine French armored division north of the Sickle Cut couldn’t move (their supply lines were cut, inter alia). Actually they couldn’t move enough: they attempted to move from the north, but a British failure prevented them to go all the way. Immediately north of the Cut the formidable Third Heavy Armored French division had its fuel cut off.

French Tank B Which Held the fortress at Dunkirk. Nazi picture

One of the reasons the Nazis succeeded to pierce at Sedan is that only one, just one, French Reserve infantry B division faced four elite Nazi formations, including three Panzer Divisions and the superlative Gross Deutschland regiment. Plus the entire Luftwaffe. Weirdly (Guderian marvelled), long range guns from the Maginot line south didn’t engage. Worse: the Second Armored British division was supposed to be there, behind the French B division, but was not. Overall strategy assumed it was there… but it was not. Had it been there, with its superior Mathilda tanks, the Sickle Cut would not have happened.

The other reason, of course was surprise, Pearl Harbor style. A high German officer with the earlier German attack plan was in a plane that landed in Belgium (which was secret and implicit ally to France and Britain, but not officially so). He tried to burn the plan. The captured documents confirmed the correctness of the French strategy. However, the Nazi High Command, supposing (correctly) that the plans had been captured, was then forced into preparing a completely different plan, which was highly unlikely.

The Belgians had evacuated the Ardennes to the point they barely opposed any resistance, so little resistance that the extent of the enormous size of the Nazi attack through the Ardennes went undetected for several days. The French had assumed the Belgians could and would, have told them, had an enormous thrust happen through the Ardennes. The Belgians didn’t. “Neutral” small powers such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland, were crucially helpful to the Nazis in various ways: the Belgian and Luxembourgian incapacity to detect two-third of the German army passing through their territory or their unwillingness to warn the French High Command of the presence of millions of Germans, and dozens of thousands of vehicles in southern Belgium, was a necessary condition for the Nazi victory of May-June 1940.

At Sedan in 1940, ONE French B Reserve Division got attacked by the Second, First and Tenth Panzer (left to right), plus other elite formations and the entire Luftwaffe… An enormous, nearly unbelievable concentration of force. The Nazis were fighting with the energy of despair, because they felt that, barring a miracle, they had already lost the war. In contrast, the French and British fought with the over-confidence of those who are sure to win: they didn’t bother looking fot the worst possible case.

When Commander in Chief Maurice Gamelin decided to send general Henri Girauld’s mobile reserve of seven armored divisions (7th army) to the Netherlands, north of Nazi general Bock’s army groups pushing through Belgium (!), Gamelin’s adjoint, and second in command of the French army, general Alphonse Georges, vigorously protested as he pointed out to Gamelin that this exposed the entire French defense system to exactly what happened: a Sickle Cut out of Sedan. Maybe Gamelin thought there would be time to react, he was not just an arrogant idiot full of himself. Nobody thought an entire army, let alone a motorized one, could sneak through the Ardennes. As the entire Nazi army went undetected (except by one Spitfire pilot, who was not believed), for many days, the surprise was total, and it was not all Gamelin’s fault.

Next, the Nazis, full of amphetamines, didn’t sleep for ten days or so. surprising Gamelin with what he called “torrents of tanks, which had to be stopped”.

At some point heavy French tanks, in the night, arrived well within shooting distance of the top Nazi generals (including Guderian, who was heading the entire armored thrust, on the battlefield)… but they didn’t detect them.

Had the French kept the mobile reserve in reserve, by the Maginot line, the “Sickle Cut would have turned into a crushing defeat for the Nazis and probably a coup against Hitler…

Nazi Panzer Korps invading France, 1940

But just one man, general Gamelin, took all the foolhardy decisions… And one man can be very wrong. As soon as Nazi engineers made successful kamikaze charges, exploding themselves against French fortifications at Sedan, the Battle of France was lost, because of the disposition of the French (and British) armored formations.

The ceasefire occurred at the end of June because France had little taste for waging war further against Japan, Germany, Italy, the USSR and, implicitly, the USA. (The gigantic losses of World War One, when France fought Germany basically alone for a year, were fresh in memory).

Roosevelt was first to recognize the Vichy Coup and sent his right hand man, four star admiral Leahy as ambassador. In Roosevelt’s view, dismantling the French empire and making (say) New Caledonia into a new Hawai’i, was Hitler’s main function… The rest was details. 

Conscious that the White House and the US Deep State had instrumentalized Hitler,to wrestle their empires from the Europeans, the US press stayed mum about the Holocaust of Poles and Jews which the Nazis had started, in 1939… for all to see. Shocking truth, but truth nevertheless. A (still) uncomprehending New York Times (they should read me more!) now bemoans that fact: that they knew, and didn’t tell.

If it had been told to the American people that an holocaust was ongoing, and the president was willing (he was not, as he only obsessed about new Caledonia), the US would have engaged in the war early in 1940, and the war would have turned against the Nazis right away… Also France would have kept fighting. France ceased fire at the end of June 1940, mostly because the US refused to open fire… France refused to play the little US game leveraging Hitler, any longer, now that it was so clear. (That decision may have been subconscious, but it’s what happened, because, in retrospect, it was the most obvious reason on which to act…) 

Had France persisted to fight into July 1940, it could have held North Africa indefinitely… As it turned out, French Africa was back in the war, two years later. The French victory at Bir Hakeim, a modern Thermopylae on a grander scale May-June 1942) , crucially saved the British Eighth Army from annihilation, said Churchill, and evidence shows. Had the Eighth been annihilated, all the Jews in Israel, and all the oil in Iraq, would have been in Nazi hands…

A Nazi victory in 1940 was extremely unlikely, hence the overconfidence of the French and British High Command, and thus, paradoxically, their inattention to detail, or low probability, but extremely dangerous events… And overlooked the despair of the Nazi High Command, which led it to desperate, risky innovation. Thus the fact it was so unlikely for all to see, made it more probable, in the end.

The Sickle Cut through the Ardennes should have failed… And would have, had the British Second Armor Division been there, or the French Reserve been in reserve, or had simply the 200 kilometers of jammed Nazi troops and armor on three little roads been detected.

The one advantage the Nazis had on the French and British is that they had waged war for more than three years in Spain. So crucial little details worked perfectly on the Nazi side in 1940, like radios in tanks and ground to planes communications. Although the French and British and the Foreign Legion had just beaten elite Nazi units in Norway, that was not involving armored thrusts… The French and British learned, in a week, but by then the battle of France was lost. It was the most crucial battle of WW2, as it made the Nazi occupation of Europe possible: roughly 200,000 killed, including 50,000 elite Nazis, never to be seen again, 4,000 planes destroyed, half of them Nazis (and sorely missed during the air Battle of Britain, a few weeks later…[1]

In a drawn out war, the Franco-British naval blockade would have made Nazi Germany even more dependent upon Stalin than it already was…

Fighting a war is rolling the dice. The most unlikely events can occur. They did, in May 1940, when God was Nazi… And Roosevelt smiling. The USA just had to bark in 1940, to stop the Nazi charade, but didn’t. While the Canadians courageously landed in Brittany to stop the Nazi tide, the US, propagandized, dominated and perfused by base plutocrats, refused to help France, its parent…

The defeat of France in 1940 was nearly as surprising as if Russia and China pulled off a successful surprise attack on the USA, right now. Yes, French hubris played a role, as did Nazi despair. One may want to keep this in mind…

Not to repeat history the same way, one should learn it, right. But be careful what you learn. The most significant history is not the history of art, or pretty princesses. The most significant history is that of military history, and holocausts. It’s surprising how much it repeats itself helped by astounding twists and turns in what initially looked like details.

Patrice Ayme

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[1] Far from being a walk in the park, the Battle of France cost the Luftwaffe 36 percent of its front line strength, some 1,236–1,428 aircraft were destroyed. A further 323–488 were damaged. Luftwaffe casualties amounted to 6,653 men, including 4,417 aircrew (1,129 were killed and 1,930 were reported missing). No wonder the Luftwaffe lost next the (aerial) Battle of Britain, over Britain…

85,000 French soldiers died in combat (in 6 weeks; considering the size of the populations concerned, that would be as if 700,000 US soldiers died in combat in 6 weeks, nowadays). 3,000 Senegalese Tirailleurs were murdered after being taken prisoner (as the racial Nazis viewed them as dangerous half apes)… Britain had fewer than 10,000 killed in action (extending the atrocities visited even on some French officers, not just French troops, the Nazis cold blooded assassinated dozens of British prisoners who had surrendered)

 

Lies All Over, Not Just Germany: We Need Reality, Not Frivolity

Our great “democratic” emperors are meeting in Biarritz, flushed with the arrogance of a small oligarchy imprinted to believe they have a moral right to tell a planet what to suffer.

Seventy-five years ago, Paris was freed, after 50 months of Nazi occupation (Nazism would not have happened to the extent it did, without help from the world oligarchy, direct ancestor of the one we enjoy). It happened a few weeks after the tragedy in Warsaw: civilian insurrection of the FFI (Forces Françaises Interieur), with the full participation of police and firefighters. On August 19. Within five days, it was done: the Second Armored French Division (Leclerc) followed by the US Fourth Infantry Division were in the capital, ahead of several Nazi divisions converging towards it. In five days, 5,000 people had died in combat in Paris.

Could it get worse, in the future?  Watch the Amazon, it was supposed to burn in the distant future, it’s burning now. Of course, some will sneer, evil operators are setting those fires, in the usual slash and burning technique, so it’s not really the greenhouse causing this… Yeah, remember humans are evil, especially when in power, as many of these slash and burn operators are in the Amazon?

The extent of fires in Siberia and the Amazon is entirely due to the drought the CO2 catastrophe has brought.

Not any better with our leaders: evil, and, or, dumb: the CO2 catastrophe was entirely avoidable. In 2019, around 11% of the world’s electricity is generated by about 450 nuclear power reactors. About 60 more reactors are under construction (but not in the West), equivalent to about 15% of world existing capacity. 4,000 nuclear reactors could be making 100% of the world electricity carbon free. However, because of the likes of Merkel, it has become a platitude that CO2 is better than nuclear.

To make things worse, while corrupt Germany is burning coal massively, other countries have sacrificed themselves to reduce their CO2 emissions. France, once one of the world’s largest CO2 emitters, now emits half per capita of what Germany does.

Lignite mine in Germany. For scale, notice the church in the distance… Doing such a crime is one thing, pretending one is not doing it joins insanity to criminality.

So Siberia is burning, and so is the Amazon… where, so far, there has been 80% more fires than last year, 2018. The dry season ends in October…

What’s clear is that France made huge efforts in cutting down CO2 production in the last 60 years, and China exploded its CO2 production, a testimony to how much industry got implemented there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL5Hjg30b_M”

***

Consider France: Why So Stupid Now? (Because Stupidification Enables Plutocratization!)

That country, France, produces no indigenous energy (except for hydro power all over: any river and brook is getting dammed, never mind if it damns the ecology). The country has a prestigious intellectual and technological history, arguably, the world’s most prominent. One would expect such a country to invest massively in hydrogen, nuclear, photovoltaics, and deploy battery systems, electric and hybrid vehicles. This is what France would have done, had France the mentality it had 50 years ago.

Yet, it’s not the case: only .5% of French cars are electric or hybrid, in 2019 (half of one percent, yes!) Yet, fracking for GAS was outlawed in France (although France has one century of frackable gas, that’s apparently best being purchased from Putin in French PC opinion; and although French fracking would have been more ecologically correct than German lignite). Meanwhile France ruins itself purchasing energy all over the world… And doesn’t invest enough in the needed research and development to make its own energy (as the USA, or Russia do).

France has much more sun than Germany, yet, French Photo Voltaic is tiny relative to German PV (no development!)

Germany preaches the religion of no indebtment to other countries… like the Borgia pope preaching abstinence to naive children… Indeed, Germany cheats with public subsidies: it has them and deny them to others. Germany has thousands of Landers banks, which are bankrupt, thus supported by local government, yet crucial to the German economy … a discrete arrangement not extended to other European countries.  bringing lots of them to near-bankruptcy, economic stagnation, and research dissolution. 

The world has a Germany problem, ecologically (thus economically). Germany gave up on nuclear power, instead of deploying, safer nuclear systems. Thus Germany replaced nuclear by lignite (dirtiest coal)… a sordid example, imitated in many countries. It is the same instinct to cling to the past, deploy nothing really new.     

Hambach Lignite Mine, Rheinland… A SMALL portion of it: it’s going to be 85 square kilometers. An ancient forest used to be there. Now it is an unbelievable 500 meters DEEP. Just that mine produces 40 million tons of lignite, a year. Germany lies about its climate effort. It’s actually devastating the world, for comparative advantage. OK, the US is worse… but the US is trying harder…’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambach_surface_mine

Europeans are so afraid to do anything wrong, they prefer not to do anything new at all… and cling to the tried and true... In a world which makes yesterday so far away as to be useless. This is enforced by the 3% Euro deficit limit (imposed on all, yet eschewed by Germany, as I said).

[Only 12 NYT readers recommended the preceding comment of mine…]

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Comments in the NYT were illuminative, often for the character they displayed, from down below: the following one, approved by 135 sheeple, was neither here, nor there; it just shows the party of stupid wins: 

Ernest Montague

Oakland, CA Aug. 19

@Patrice Ayme Seriously? France gets something like 75% of its power from nuclear power plants. It has 68 of them. It gets over 90% of its power from nuclear and hydro. You’re not making sense, sorry. They are the world’s largest net exporter of electricity.

[135 Recommend]

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Notice the aggressivity: I make “no sense” Montague says. And no, he is not sorry sorry, just an arrogant twerp who doesn’t know how to read, and make Trump look like Einstein… Actually, his comment doesn’t address what I said. He is not sorry, his goal is to make a fool of me, and my sophisticate opinion. 135 readers of the NYT approve this dereliction of logic and exhibition of the Dark Side. In truth:

@Ernest Montague

France gets 40% of its power from nuclear energy, and 71% of its electricity from increasingly obsolete nuclear reactors (see the difference?) You are also confusing what France did 50 years ago, investing in new energy, before the obsession with debt, and deficits, versus what France is doing now, with a maximum 3% deficit to GDP ratio. The 58 French nuclear reactors are second generation, they were conceived and built in the 1970s, all are obsolete and somewhat dangerous (safe reactors could now be designed and built to replace them… but that’s not done). 

My point is that France has not seriously invested in energy… for 50 years. The EPR reactor has been an ill conceived disaster, symbolic of the decay of French technological investment. Tellingly, the EPR tech was purchased in Germany, not evolved in France from existing reactors.

The dearth of French investment in, say, photovoltaics, is striking in France, especially in comparison with Germany. 

[Nobody recommended my reply: readers love to kill, not learn!]

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David in Le Marche

Italy Aug. 19

@Patrice Ayme

The quantity of wrong “information” in your comment is astounding, given the ease with which one can get reliable basic (real) information from a 20-second Google search. France is famous for the Eiffel Tower, rich cuisine, and it’s massive investment in and reliance upon nuclear energy. Oh yeah, there’s Notre Dame…. the Mona Lisa. Pretty famous country. 

Germany does still use lots of coal, but is aiming for 80% reliance on renewable energy by 2050, not good enough but better policy than the USA has, given that our president and the GOP still deny human-caused climate change.

And don’t get me started on universal German healthcare and overall quality of life compared to most countries, including ours…

27 Recommend

I replied:    

@David in Le Marche

Please read my reply to Ernest. What Paul Krugman talked about is the situation now. Notre Dame was built 8 centuries ago, and the Eiffel Tower, 132 years ago. France was indeed a very high tech country, the most very high tech country since the collapse of the Roman state, 16 centuries ago. First heavy ploughs (14 centuries ago), first hydraulic hammers (ten centuries ago), first steam engine and steam boat (Papin, 17C), first balloons, first cars (18C), first photography (black and white, color), first planes (Ader, long before Wright brothers), first discovery nuclear chain reaction (Irene Curie, 1937), first transistors mass produced (1948), first integrated circuits, discovery of optical pumping (Kastler, Nobel 1953), etc. Relativity was even discovered by Poincare, including E = mcc (1899; Einstein just repeated Poincare’s work).

However, this is now Paul was talking about, and so I am… The debt obsession is recent, hypocritical, and of recent German origin (duplicating the erroneous policies of France in the 1930s, ironically enough…)

I know France extremely well (this is written from there, miles from my birthplace). 

Reading the Internet superficially and not critically will lead to believe lots of false information and fake news, and comforting but deluded, non applicable data. Let me recommend my site instead (it’s in English). You will find there a very different view of history (different because it’s more true than traditional lies…)

***

David replied to my comment very nicely (to be continued…)

Others focused on doing what they do best, aggressive lying:

Alan

Germany Aug. 20

@Patrice Ayme:

What? Germany is reducing coal mining and the use of coal, not replacing nuclear with coal. Energy costs in Germany are considerably higher than in the USA, due to  investments in ecologically better sources. Not always successfully, for instance the photoelectric industry has suffered from larger scale and cheaper manufacturing in China. But Germany is not going back to lignite.

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Well, Alan promoted lies: Germany depends more on lignite than on any other energy source. It’s not going back, because it’s already there. 

@Alan

Learn and meditate: In 2017, 171.2 million tonnes of lignite were mined in the whole of Germany compared to 169.8 million tonnes in 2009. Do you call this a decrease?

Lignite provides 35.3 % of energy in Germany. Highest percentage in the world, highest production in the world. How many more German misinformation do we still need?

German CO2 production has stagnated for five (5) years. Here is a heads up in the last few weeks: Michael Schäfer of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) spoke of the “disastrous results” of German environmental policy.

Opposition politician and Green Party environmental expert Lisa Badum called the latest reduction (due to warm weather) “a drop in the bucket,” demanding that the government “take a much more robust approach” to emissions reductions, including steps toward an “immediate phase-out of coal.”

Genug!

***

Several comments accused me of various forms of French, or German hating (won’t show them all). 

Kenneth Thomas

Boston Aug. 20 @Patrice Ayme France gets over 70% of its electricity from nuclear power (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country). This is nothing new. France is the biggest user of nuclear power in the world. How do you not know this? That you don’t know it makes me doubt all of your factual claims.

Reply to that: I never said France was not big on nuclear power. Inventing a false statement one denounces then as a lie is an old trick to build an ad hominem disparagement, as above. Disingenuous. Thomas believes in prophets, leaders to believe, he is not about knowledge, but faith. 

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Others opted for the pseudo-cogent approach: they want to correct “facts”, but they don’t know what “facts” are. Real facts are sincere. 

Nicolas Berger

FranceAug. 20

@Patrice Ayme

French nuclear reactors were not all built in the 1970s, the latest ones before the EPR (the so-called N4 designs) came online in the early 2000’s. French investment into nuclear power has been fairly constant since the 1960s, and it is not the case that “France has not invested in energy… for 50 years”. Please consider doing a quick internet search of your “facts” before posting incorrect information. (in this case, see e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_France)

My reply: Those N4 reactors, four of them, came online in 2000, but they were slight modifications of the old design of the 1970s, and those modifications were designed before 1984. Defects delayed them into 2000, and there are only 4 of them; so to call them 1970s design is fair, that’s what they are. They’re officially considered to be second generation… This sort of vicious comment appearing to be cogent is characteristic of disingenuous Internet manipulations. 

***

To come back to the gist of the first essay, erroneous German policies, could be done next, commenting on an arrogant and misleading comment by a German economist commenting unfavorably on Krugman’s editorial. But then I would have to repeat myself some more. Even Krugman didn’t hit the main point, namely Germany subsidizes itself, while preventing others to do the same…

We need reality, not frivolity. We live in dictatorship: a few dictate to the multitude. There is a war on truth. We can win it only by telling the truth about war. War is what all too many people love to do: it gives them meaning, analgesia. Like many of these asinine commenters at the New York Times… And of course our stupid, and, or corrupt leaders, who had the means to stop the CO2 catastrophe before it got rolling on its own, as it is presently starting to do.

Patrice Ayme

Ongoing German Lies Destroying Europe, & World: 2) Debt & Investment

In light of the Biarritz 2019 G7 Summit:

German lies have long reigned as European lies: one of the causes of Brexit. Nobody says it, so I will: the British could only feel good, because their central bank provided their economy with enough “liquidities”… Not the case in Europe, because the ECB, tied in by German (and secondarily) French plutocracies, barely provided enough money to keep hundreds of millions of Europeans alive. The British then, felt there was something right about the UK keeping its independance… and they were right.

For years, US presidents (in particular Obama and Trump) have asked the European Union to augment “consumer spending”, or “demand”. The US can’t ask loudly Europe to augment investment (except in military matters, where the USA have long asked for more EU spending) but they mean it More surprising, Europeans themselves are lackadaisical about investing… or anything else having to do with a better future….

***

We Are, Because We Lie… says the herd, and it moos, all together now. What makes a better bound than a lie?

Plutocrats and the plutocracies they depend upon, lie. Otherwise, they would not stay in power: only with lies can a few rule the billions. Those lies, initially imposed on the billions, are believed by the billions. Attacking those lies, thus, means attacking those billions.

For Estienne La Boétie (a close friend of Montaigne who was also a judge) the great mystery of politics was obedience to rulers. Why do people agree to be looted and otherwise oppressed by government overlords? It is not just fear, Boetie explains in “The Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, Le Contr’un,” for our consent is required (La Boétie naively thought). And that consent can be non-violently withdrawn (even more naive: as soon as one strays, one’s career is destroyed, thus the power to eat, let alone influence…)

To go beyond Estienne La Boétie, and his observations on voluntary servitude, one has to realize that obedience is not as much to rulers themselves, as to lies. Systems of lies.

***

German fascism rested on lies:

The camp of those who think Germany is lying has grown a lot: Trump is in it, and now even Trump’s nemesis Paul Krugman agrees with the liar in chief on Germany. German readers may object that France also lies (and everybody knows about delusional, Brexiting UK). However German lies are convenient for French corrupt politicians, Germany (in spite of all the fascist dictators), having a reputation for seriousness.

One may even argue that Germany ended up with monsters such as the Kaiser and Hitler, precisely because it had such  a serious, quasi-scientific repute… Which the Germans were the first to believe. 

***

Lies Rule History: 

How did Germany become this fascist, racist monster, Friedrich Nietzsche stridently condemned, telling us it would bring a disaster to humanity, a full 35 years before the Zweite Reich? By telling lies. And first of all, to itself.

How come France was so unprepared to fight a world war with Germany in May 1940, after declaring war to Hitler, eight months prior? By telling lies. In this case the lies were from the French High Command, to itself. And from the French government to itself: one doesn’t launch a world war without checking first one is ready (and to be ready, France had to go to war in Spain against hitler and Mussolini)

Disasters and holocausts are often accompanied with lies, or by their mildest, yet most pervasive form, “non-saids” (“non-dits” in the original French). One such lie, or enormous “non-said” pertains to erroneous attitudes of Germany in several dimensions. Nowadays. (Instead one focused on the Greeks.) Here are some of the errors, by order of importance: immigration, ecology, and European economy activity and the attending debt problem. I will ignore the attitude to (mass) immigration (of Muslims, not all of them integrable): its main effect was Brexit. Even Krugman, following Trump, sort of, has to admit there is something rotten in Germany… As I have said for more than a decade.  

***

Want to see what lies lead to? Consider carefully the two curves in the graph below:

Degenerating, increasingly impoverished Europe. The blue EU curve, above, is similar to that of France and Germany… Except. of course, France is increasingly lagging, as German policy has been effectively advantaging Germany Uber Alles, all along, as usual… Bankrupt banking in Germany is the great secret advantage…

I have explained that those things would happen, and why, for years. Now they have. Paul Krugman (leftist Nobel star editorial of the New York Times, famous “liberal” economist) didn’t understand for years, what the problem was and now, not only does it, but his position is quite close, in practice, to… Donald Trump. (And Trump is not as far from Obama in several dimension, from MAGA, America First, to debt and championing the US economically through mercantilist policies…)

Paul Krugman in The World Has a Germany Problem

The debt obsession that ate the economy.

“…he’s [Trump] preparing to open a new front in the trade war, this time against the European Union, which he says “treats us horribly: barriers, tariffs, taxes.” 

The funny thing is that there are some aspects of European policy, especially German economic policy, that do hurt the world economy and deserve condemnation. But Trump is going after the wrong thing. Europe does not, in fact, treat us badly; its markets are about as open to U.S. products as ours are to Europe’s. (We export about three times as much to the E.U. as we do to China.)

The problem, instead, is that the Europeans, and the Germans in particular, treat themselves badly, with a ruinous obsession over public debt. And the costs of that obsession are spilling over to the world as a whole.”

***

What the European sheeple doesn’t understand is that Public Debt can be defaulted upon. The USA did this many times. It’s painful for investors. But no big deal for a truly sovereign country (thus, not Argentina… or Russia…). 

I have explained many times: Public debt is, should everything go wrong, and a default on that debt occur, a possible, partial tax. Thus European governments, by substituting tax to debt, preventing the latter by splurging in the former, engaged in the worst outcome, basically taxation equating debt going into default, while calling this over-taxation, moral and prudent.

***

And Paul Krugman to explain:

“Some background: Around 2010, politicians and pundits on both sides of the Atlantic caught a bad case of austerity fever. Somehow they lost interest in fighting unemployment, even though it remained catastrophically high, and demanded spending cuts instead. And these spending cuts, unprecedented in a weak economy, slowed the recovery and delayed the return to full employment.”

Notice here that Krugman is criticizing Obama… now… whereas at the time he didn’t (but I did, stridently; Obama didn’t do then what Trump is doing now, namely beating the drum for a stronger economy by helping We The People directly…)

“While debt alarmism ruled both here and in Europe, however, it eventually became clear that there was a crucial difference in underlying motivation. Our deficit hawks were, in fact, hypocrites, who suddenly lost all interest in debt as soon as a Republican was in the White House. The Germans, on the other hand, really meant it.

True, Germany forced debt-troubled nations in southern Europe into punishing, society-destroying spending cuts; but it also imposed a lot of austerity on itself. Textbook economics says that governments should run deficits in times of high unemployment, but Germany basically eliminated its deficit in 2012, when euro area unemployment was more than 11 percent, and then began to run ever-growing surpluses.”

And Paul explains that “Why is this a problem? Europe suffers from a chronic shortfall in private demand: Consumers and corporations don’t seem to want to spend enough to maintain full employment…

The European Central Bank, Europe’s counterpart to the Federal Reserve, has tried to fight this chronic weakness with extremely low interest rates — in fact, it has pushed rates below zero, which economists used to think was impossible…. Indeed, much of Europe may well already be in recession, and there’s little if anything the central bank can do.

There is, however, an obvious solution: European governments, and Germany in particular, should stimulate their economies by borrowing and increasing spending. The bond market is effectively begging them to do that; in fact, it’s willing to pay Germany to borrow, by lending at negative interest. And there’s no lack of things to spend on: Germany, like America, has crumbling infrastructure desperately in need of repair. But spend they won’t.

Most of the costs of German fiscal obstinacy fall on Germany and its neighbors, but there are some spillovers to the rest of us… characterizing this as a situation in which Europe is taking advantage of America gets it all wrong, and is not helpful.

What would be helpful? Realistically, America has no ability to pressure Germany into changing its domestic policies. We might be able to provide a little moral suasion if our own leadership had any intellectual or policy credibility, but, of course, it doesn’t. There’s a sense in which the whole world has a Germany problem, but it’s up to the Germans themselves to solve it.

One thing is for sure: Starting a trade war with Europe would truly be a lose-lose proposition, even more so than our trade war with China. It’s the last thing either America or Europe needs. Which means that Trump is probably going to do it.“.

As we will see next the de-industrialization of Europe, for example France, and soaring mediocrity, is striking, and is directly related to the (plutocrat favoring) austerity… The main champion of this disaster has been the one who profited the most from it, relatively speaking, but not absolutely speaking, Germany. And its weapon of mass destruction of the neighbors, has been the attitude relative to debt and deficits: giant in the US, tiny in Europe… Whereas, in truth, Europe needs debt more than the USA does…

Germany developed and pushed that attitude, precisely because it provided it with an arrogant advantage inside Europe. But this is a childish, all too childish, game, the one which brought us world wars: intra European strife leads Europe only to ever greater degeneracy… not just relative to the rest of the world (aside from the even more degenerating Prophet land), but, more importantly relative to what is needed to preserve Earth…

Patrice Ayme