Did Biden Just Tell Putin To Attack Ukraine? That Would Make Sense: The US Deep State Loves Wars In Europe! Yet, It Would Be Better To Deter Putin…

On Wednesday 1/20/2022, US President Biden told a news conference that Mr Putin would pay a “serious and dear price” for invading Ukraine, but also indicated that it will depend on how Russia went about it. Maybe, after all, there would be… no price. That would be nice for the hundreds of millions of Europeans who depend upon the astounding quantities of liquids and gas that farting Russia provides them with.  Europe gets 40% of its gas, and 25% of its oil, from Russia (2022)… making all too many powerful Russians feel indispensable, and their ways, splendid.

“What you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades and it depends on what it does,” Biden said. “It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion, and then we end up having to fight about what to do and not do etc.“

Thus Biden said that a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine could make “we end up having a fight” with European allies about the appropriate response! Those comments flustered European leaders with their suggestion of divisions that could further embolden the aggressive imperialist, Mr. Putin

Biden, logic, and proper sentence constructing are different concepts… Biden also predicted that Mr Putin will “move in” to Ukraine anyway. To make sure that Putin got the hint, Biden said, speaking of Putin:”He has to do something!” Full sentence: “I’m not so sure he has, he’s certain what he’s going to do. My guess is he will move in. He has to do something.“

Democratically elected Ukraine president Zelensky replied in a tweet: “There are no minor incursions. Just as there are no minor casualties and little grief from the loss of loved ones.”

Hey dictator Putin, Uncle Joe told you to do something! Remember Yalta, and before that, when Uncle Sam saved th skin of Uncle Joe? The other Joe, Stalin…

It’s freezing hard now in Ukraine… Finally… And Biden just gave the green light… For Putin’s “minor incursion“… Biden will apply minor sanctions, he hinted, thus, in practice, egging Putin on to attack… All that Putin worries about is to be able to sell his liquids and gas to Europe. Nothing else counts… relative to the great purpose of reconstituting imperial Russia… At its peak.

The US Deep State, a form of subconscious, and breathing or partying together, and also a business, the biggest business of them all, has long profited from wars in Europe. Starting in 1914-1918, then 1939-1945. The US was ambivalent: on June 1, 1914, Colonel House, right hand man of president Wilson, proposed a “racial” alliance to the Kaiser… against France!

As the world war started, US plutocrats provided to the Kaiser and his goons what they needed to pursue the war, while accumulating great profits… by breaking the Franco-British sea blockade. The short term profit motive was engaged, naturally. But the basic fact is that, while the two leading democracies, France and Britain, were fighting for their survival after being assaulted by the racist German dictatorship, US plutocrats were busy making a fortune from it, and the US government was betraying not just its allies and fellow democracies, but its parents and creators. In 1914-1917, the US was committing parricide, and again during the elaboration of the Versailles Treaty in 1919, and again in 1939-1941… 

In 1939, 1940, even 1941, US plutocrats profited from countless deals with Hitler. Prescot Bush quit his position as manager of “my most important war corporation” (dixit Hitler), only in August 1942. IBM leased his computer to the Reich throughout the war: IBM, managed from New York, had the monopoly of computing in the Reich. 

By 1945, all the victors were clients of the USA, depending on US big business to eat and reconstruct. 

Is this the US Deep State at work?. Once again? The US Deep State, made of countless universities, foundations, and businesses which live in symbiosis with the US government may, out of habit, believe that it would love another war in Europe…

But nowadays, things are different. Twentieth Century wars were mostly fought by proxies and drastically weakened European democracies… As intended by the US Deep State. Now the US can’t hide, and nuclear bombs could cause in the USA, in a few minutes, the sort of devastation which Poland (unsupported by the US in 1939-1945, and betrayed in 1945) suffered in World War Two. In World War Two around 20% of the Polish population was killed (including dozens of thousands of the Polish elite at the hand to the Soviets so admired by Putin). That was around six million people. In the USA, nowadays, that would mean 70 million killed… 

Now let’s be intellectually honest: the reason that the US Deep State betrayed France and Britain, its parents, and the leading democracies in 1914-1917 and 1939-1941 were multiple. There was, of course, the question that the USA was then a racist country (remember the work of MLK and the Kennedys, and even LBJ, to correct that, in the 1960s). Germany was racist, so the US, or at least its white leading classes, had great empathy for racist Prussianized Germany. More fundamentally even, the USA hoped to displace the European empire… as happened after 1945.

Now the latter point has been achieved, with America First and Amerika Uber Alles… The domineering instinct is still here, and pretty grotesque sometimes: consider the abrogation of Australian contracts with France in submarines and helicopters, under America First Biden. However, the US is only 350 million people, and Europe is closer to 600 million (excluding Russia, which is 146 million).

However, realism implies that the USA should make a strong alliance with NATO (30 countries; 945 million people…) and the European influence zone. Indeed to NATO one has to add the ex-European ex-empires (Commonwealth, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.) which share lots of values in common (consider for example Brazil, and all the Americas…) So the time of abuse and Americanization in the guise of decolonization should be over. As Biden himself pointed out many times, a conflict between (representative) democracy and dictatorships is looming. A conflict between open, democratic societies and closed, fascist oligarchies.

Putin and his goons, Xi and his politburo, plus their propaganda machines are claiming,and have apparently persuaded themselves that the “West” is corrupt, weak and degenerating. They confuse the severe critique of progressives such as yours truly, with the superiority of their fascism… forgetting that one of the main arguments is the alliance of Western plutocrats with Russian and Chinese autocracies… The same maneuver of outrageous alliance of Western plutocrats with fascists as in 1914-1917 and 1933-1945 (IBM had the monopoly of computing with, and for, the Nazis, until 1945…) 

So we have seen it before… Actually the fascist Lenin got the military alliance with the fascist Kaiser going as early as 1916… Lenin even joked about his alliance with the “capitalists”, aka plutocrats… “they are so greedy they would sell you the rope to hang them with“… The Harrimans would develop the Baku oil fields which enabled the USSR to defeat the Nazis…

Being persuaded of the weakness of democracy, because democracy argues with itself, was the mistake the Achaemenids Persians already made… As Persia discovered at Marathon, then Salamis and Platea… Among other enlightening battles… The Kaiser, and then Hitler, made the same mistake. Putin and Xi are repeating it presently.

Putin will understand one thing well, and only one: the inability to win. For several weeks, the ground in Ukraine was muddy. Then it became harder, but it snowed a lot and visibility was no good: what is the point of having aerial superiority, when one cannot see from the air?

Ukraine should be given anti-aircraft means, ASAP. To be able to defend itself. United Nations law recognizes the right to self-defense (and the right to help those who self-defend).

Because, after Ukraine, if a dictator is left to conquer it, in the name of ethnic purity, same as Hitler in 1936-1939, it will be the rest. And when the “West” threatens to switch to carbon free energy sources, Putin and, or his cultural successor(s) will be faced with the same dilemma as the Kaiser and his goons in 1912-1914: time was a wasting asset, militarily… Nothing to lose, let’s use it now. Having killed, poisoned, terrorized or jailed all his opponents, Putin, or his psychological successor(s) will have nothing to lose… Putin and, or, his goons just threatened the West with another Cuban missile crisis. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that the deployment’s possibility of nuclear missiles to Venezuela and Cuba “depends on the actions by our US counterparts”. This is a silly bluff, but indicative of a seriously delusional mindset in the Kremlin relative to the gullibility of the Western population. 

Patrice Ayme

Russian tanks deploying in Putin Occupied Crimea, Tuesady 18 January, 2022:

“We know that there are plans in place to increase that [Russian] force even more on very short notice, and that gives President Putin the capacity, also on very short notice, to take further aggressive action against Ukraine,” US Sec of State Blinken said on 1/20/2022.

Nota Bene: In an article the New York considered consequences of Biden’s “minor incursion” proposal.

Biden Strengthens Words on Ukraine After Flustering European Partners

After the president laid bare divisions over Russian meddling in Ukraine, his administration scrambled to get on the same page with European allies.

By Michael Crowley and Steven Erlanger, Jan. 20, 2022

BERLIN — President Biden on Thursday strengthened his warning to Russia about a potential attack on Ukraine, saying that any movement of Russian units across the Ukrainian border would be taken as an invasion, a day after the president triggered alarm in European capitals with his suggestion of divisions among allies.

I sent a first comment, critical of the US Deep State misadvising Biden, which was censored… and then, understanding that my critique of the Deep State had been censored, I sent a second comment, which was also censored. Here it is:

The US profited from WW1 and WW2 in several ways… in both cases intervening too late to enable the democracies to nip in the bud the fascist violations of civilization. 

 

Cynics could argue that it could well be a US tradition to favor war in Europe, hence the trial balloon of the “minor incursion”. Or maybe it was not a trial balloon?

 

This, that US institutions do not look too unfavorably to war in Europe, is a subject which is very hard to evoke in the US cultural sphere. One is immediately considered a “conspiracy theorist”. However, the fact is clear that, after 1945, the US displaced Europe. Worldwide. Yalta was also very clear: over the objections of France (not invited) and Britain (invited but furious), the US administration decided to give half of Europe to Stalin (then an accord was made by the dying FDR with Ibn Saud) . 

 

Fortunately Biden seems inclined to express solidarity with democratic Europe, this time… It’s not the Suez crisis of 1956, when the USSR invaded Hungary, killing 40,000+, and threatening London and Paris with atom bombing while the US was condemning France and Britain in the UN General Assembly (yes, amazing, but it can be readily checked).

 

So Biden slipped, and corrected himself the next day… The main problem remains, though, that Europe depends energetically upon Russia. And the worst is that this will not stop: Putin makes no mystery that he would be happy to reconquer the entire Russian empire at its maximal extent (“USSR”)… 

***

I view this sort of censorship as extremely despicable, and I claim that it should be unlawful. Who elected Mr. Erlanger and Crowley to adjudicate the level of thinking and knowledge the general population should be exposed to? Who, what, authorize them to force the level of considerations they hold, barely higher than gossip, to be the limit of what the population should be exposed. Or then, as agents of US plutocracy, how come do they get also support from the government and thus taxpayers, with the special prerogatives they have, as journalists?

In particular, unelected censors Erlanger and Crowley block the apparition of the concept of “Deep State“… Also known as “established, institutionalized plutocracy“. Since they are employees of it, and its existence depends upon not being noticed, and not being theorized about… There is a clear ethical conflict.

***

Want to prevent further invasion by dictator Putin? Send anti-aircraft missiles discreetly right away, by executive order!

Much Ado About Nothing January 6: Politicians Are Machiavellian, Or Are Not.

US Congress Chief Pelosi Is Machiavellian… So Is Putin. Not understanding this makes us sitting ducks:

Not a surprise: politicians have to be Machiavellian, even when they are puppets. In other words, they lie. Machiavelli, a high level official, wrote at a time of great trouble and great creativity in Italy. He was ultimately sacked by plutocrats, the Medici, taking over his native Florence. Machiavel first flattered the tyrannical Medici and served them. Later they arrested him for treason and tortured him with the strappado… but he didn’t confess.

Machiavel’s hero worship was centered on Caesare Borgia, nephew to his uncle the Pope, Cardinal in his teens, later would-be dictator of Italy, and ultimately a complete failure who died in an obscure combat in Spain.

The chief of the majority party in the USA is called the “Speaker”. Right now it’s Nancy Pelosi, an eighty something crafty arrivist who is a plutocrat in her own right. She thinks elected politicians should be able to own shares of company and trade… A practice the progressives and even the Congress Republicans now oppose (they want politicians to use blind trusts). 

Pelosi has launched prosecutions for what she and her minions call the “insurrection” of January 6, when Congress was breached while in session to validate the presidential election, under the presidency of the US Vice-President (an arcane, redundant procedure).  

Nancy forgot to inquire about the main perpetrator, herself, standing in the shadows. Everybody expected some trouble on January 6, because dozens of millions of somewhat dispossessed Americans increasingly do not believe the authorities, nor even that they need to be submitted to authorities. The wealth of the lower half of the country had augmented under Trump’s “America First” doctrine, and they were severely disappointed to be back under blatantly plutocratic rule.

An example of such blatant plutocracy is the Secretary of State, Blinken, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, never elected, and now in charge of saving democracy by confronting the several times “elected” thermonuclear dictator of Russia.   

Much ado about nearly nothing on January 6, then: the principal is not even under official suspicion. Disguising bait and switch, fully removing from view aiding and abetting, is part of the art known as Machiavellianism… 

If Pelosi wanted to be safe on January 6 2021, she had to have riot police at the Capitol. It was in her power, and only in her power, to do so. And it was her responsibility. But that would have been honest and naive, and Pelosi is neither.

Pelosi did not want riot police, not because she was not aware of wacko demonstrators, but precisely because she was. Pelosi’s obvious computation was Machiavellian 101. She wanted to give an “insurrection” a chance… by NOT trying to prevent it. Her choice. Not Trump’s. That’s the brutal reality.

Not one canister of tear gas was used January 6. Demonstrators mostly walked into the Capitol, unopposed.

So can we stop with the naivety of believing that someone who made an immense fortune while pretending to have at heart the interest of the lowest lives, is actually telling the truth for once, and was a total idiot that day… with its consequences which advantaged her so much?

Pelosi’s smarts are only relative to the stupidity of her gullible followers. 

 

Young investors on TikTok, including @ceowatchlist, @quicktrades and @irisapp, are using House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s stock trading disclosures as inspiration for where to invest themselves. One user called Pelosi the market’s “biggest whale,” while another called her the “queen of investing.”

***

This, in general, is the problem of the so-called “left” in the USA or overseas… And the so-called “ecologists” have the same problem: insufficient smarts. Dumbness helps neither progress nor civilization.

Pelosi is a smart arriviste promoting her family, friends, and social milieu. She is not Martin Luther King, nor the Kennedys, nor even Eisenhower, or FDR. FDR was a plutocrat, but he practiced an “America First” doctrine (so did his mentor and relative Teddy). We have sunk so low that even Nixon arguably looks more patriotic and more of a progressive…

Pelosi got used to get away with dastardly deeds, and thus upped the ante. Putin is a similar case, with 4,000 thermonuclear warheads at the ready. That makes Putin’s case much more vital than Pelosi’s… who is more like a cockroach, grabbing what she can and scurying back in the dark. 

Machiavelli claimed that his experience and reading history showed that politics have always been played with deception, treachery, and crime. A ruler who established a state, with dastardly deeds, including violence, should be excused when the intention and the result is beneficial. The likes of Pelosi and Putin hypnotize themselves with this sort of excuse.

In the case of Russia, dastardly deeds and violence with the goal of ultimate benefit to Moscovian Rus, has become psychologically institutionalized… in the last six centuries… So Putin is in a grand old tradition. Pelosi is from a more recent plutocracy, US based, which modulo two world wars it expertly enabled in a timely manner, came to rule the world, in collaboration with local potentates: Stalin, Mussolini, Hirohito, Hitler, and countless other potentates since… including Russian “oligarchs”. An oligarch claimed in 2007 had it that Putin has stashed 40 billion dollars in Switzerland, and other western countries just in case… After the Swiss president talked to him, Putin stopped invading Georgia… The inner circle of Putin is full of billionaires. Over the years, many of these Russian oligarchs came to own  enormous assets in the West…

Intrinsically, politicians, “elected” or not, believe that they are special, above all others, and can decide for millions, if not billions. Was there ever greater arrogance? That’s how it all starts, with psychologies owning the world. Trading on their careers is natural. Are we culprit? Yes, after all, we have let being elected to political office become a career. 

However these are crucial times: a sixth mass extinction has started and looks hard to stop. Maybe we should remove that intrinsic corruption of giving too much power to too small a group? With modern means of communication and debate, the time has come to change politics into something more direct without greedy intermediaries whom absolute power corrupts absolutely.

In 1994, a deal was made according to which the security of Ukraine was insured, for all times to come. In exchange, Ukraine surrendered its enormous nuclear weapons arsenal to Moscow. What should have been done at the time was to enforce nuclear weapons quasi-disarmement. Also the position of Russia as a permanent member of the United Nation Security Council, while the USSR had been dissolved, should have been questioned. Putin claims that Ukraine is Russia. But then why was 100% of the weaponry of the USSR and diplomatic prerogative given to Russia?

All these problems were easy to predict. Why they were left free to enfold is, in no small manner, presumably due to the deeply rooted belief in the US establishment, that war is always beneficial. Right. Against lesser and or decrepit adversaries… And through proxies… But this is now, and now is different.   

Patrice Ayme

Origins Of Putin’s Outrageous Lies And Why To Resist Them.

Putin claims that Moscow created Slavic civilization, thus it owns it. Putin is cogent and historically detailed about this, and no doubt sufficiently so to use it as an argument to justify his greatest wish: reverse what he called the greatest tragedy of the Twentieth Century. Yes, not the Holocaust, not World War One And Two, but… Putin adressing Russia as its elected president in 2005 said:

“First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century. As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory…. The epidemic of collapse has spilled over to Russia itself…”

So reconstituting the Russian empire is Putin’s true aim. Never mind that Russia, as it is, is the world’s largest empire, 70% larger than China, itself an occupier… Naturally enough, as Putin started his career in the KGB, the Soviet Gestapo, and rose to its pinnacle… the Russian empire is never large enough. However, polls indicate that young Russians increasingly do not feel that reconstituting the genocidal USSR or fascist imperial Russia in its full glory, is worth undertaking as a primary objective. After all, the Russian economy is getting poorer (over the last decade or so, in nominal GDP… not in PPP), and it heavily depends upon exporting fossil fuels to Western Europe (the part of natural resources in the Russian economy is between a third and two-thirds, depending upon the exact metric one uses…)

Thus what Putin feels is that it is now or never to bring Kiev back under Moscow’s claw. Moreover, he needs a war to simmer just so, to justify his tyranny…

The articulation of Putin’s posture is that Moscow owns Kiev, and he deduces this by looking at history… his way. Putin goes into a lot of details, but they obscure the lay of the logical land. 

Reality is the opposite: Ukraine is much older than Putin’s “Moscovia”, and thus should not be owned by it. Ukraine was also founded in a highly cosmopolitan way (whereas Russia was axed on conquering savages with the most savage means… Peter the great would agree with this statement). Crimea was always central to Ukraine. Vladimir conquered Crimea and converted to Christianity there (Tenth Century). What follows is just a cursory treatment of history. I will expound another time how a Moscow based control of Ukraine, supposed to last two years by a 17C treaty… turned into four centuries… 

Rus princess Anne of Kiev, daughter of Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Kiev and Prince of Novgorod, and his second wife Ingegerd Olofsdotter of Sweden, married the twice-widowed king Henry I of France (19 May 1051 CE). One idea was to gain Ukrainian support against the (non-Francia part of the) Roman empire, another was to marry outside of the Frankish aristocracy. Their son King Philip I, was born in 1052. The name ‘Philip’ was rare in Francia prior to that time, and was likely inspired by Saint Philip who converted Scythia, an area identified with Kyivan Rus’ in the Middle Ages (somewhat accurate until its conquest by Rus Viking, Rus meaning eastern Sweden…). After her husband’s death, Anne ruled France. She spoke half a dozen languages and looked down on France in cultural matters. 

Anna’s signature in Cyrillic on royal charters from the 1060s is the only known example of a Capetian queen’s signature on parchment and the only known (pre-13th century) signature of a member of the Riurykide dynasty. It is the oldest extant example of Old Ukrainian handwriting. 

Moscow was created centuries after Ukraine became a major European power. The timber fort na Moskvě “on the Moscow river” was inherited by Daniel, the youngest son of Alexander Nevsky, in the 1260s. At the time the least valuable of his father’s possessions. Daniel was still a child, and the fort was governed by tiuns (deputies), appointed by Daniel’s paternal uncle, Yaroslav of Tver.

By 1304, Yury of Moscow contested with Mikhail of Tver for the throne of the principality of Vladimir. Ivan I eventually defeated Tver to become the sole collector of taxes for the Mongol rulers, making Moscow the capital of Vladimir-Suzdal. By paying high tribute, Ivan won an important concession from the Khan of the Golden Horde.

The growth of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania began to threaten the arrangement, and the Khan strengthened Moscow to counterbalance Lithuania, allowing it to become one of the most powerful cities in Russia, However, by 1380-1480, Moscow fought the Mongols.

Kiev resisted the Mongols and was destroyed by them, razed to the ground (1240 CE; for throwing out the bodies of Mongol ambassadors). Kiev became a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania after the Battle at Blue Waters in 1362, when Algirdas, Grand Duke of Lithuania, beat a Golden Horde army. During the period between 1362 and 1471, the city was ruled by Lithuanian princes. Crimean Tatars attacked several times and in 1482 Kiev was destroyed again by Crimean Khan Meñli I Giray. 

Moscow grew initially from being an agent of the Mongols, adopting the ways of the invaders, and then, later, beating them at their own game… On one side, collaboration, then imitation, on the the other, the resistance of Kiev, to death, and subsequent revolts, starting a generation before Moscow… 

Putin plays with the ancient names of various jurisdictions to claim Ukraine never existed before “Moscovian Rus“, and came into being after Moscow… when in truth Ukraine is twice older than the Moscovian tyranny. The game of changing names can be played in all and any place in Europe.  

The truth about Moscow’s institutionalized spirit is that it loves militarized fascism. Why? Dictatorship was highly successful in making Moscow and its dependencies the planet’s largest land empire. Tyranny can be ruthless, which is best for colonization and replacing original natives by invaders. The price to be paid by this colonizing focus has been mental backwardness and looking at the world in a fascist way, through only a few ideas and emotions, enforced by a closed society, the exact opposite of what was supposed to be Athens’ civilizational model (Athens proclaimed itself an open society, 25 centuries ago, under the influence of Aspasia, the wife and philsopher pulling the strings of Pericles…). 

Open against closed societies, plus nukes: not a good mix. But we must resist, as the Moscow dictatorship and the twinged with evil bellicose mindset discarding humanities, which has been so profitable to the Russian empire, will keep asking for more, as they fail in most other ways. To stay open, enlightened societies have to fight their closed predatory neighbors, lest the dark side wins it all. This is more true than ever, now that spaceship Earth has become a big village.

Anne’s statue in Saint Vincent’s Monastery, in Senlis, near Paris, which she founded.

Patrice Ayme

US COVID Experts’ Expertise: World Death Record, Towering Personal Wealth

Granted, how COVID deaths are recorded, or estimated, varies. Granted, population with more older people have higher percentage of COVID deaths. Yet, the differences worldwide are striking… and real. India, after apocalyptic predictions, went completely the other way, admittedly with a younger population, and got out of the pandemic by the end of 2021. The USA, led by the noisy privileged Dr. Fauci [0], who interacted with the Wuhan Institute of Virology in the domain of modifying bat viruses, fared worst with COVID. No argument: the numbers speak for themselves:

The USA has the world wealthiest, and most incompetent epidemiological experts, objective numbers of per capita death show. It is easy to figure out a relationshionship between wealth, corruption and deliberate incompetency. What about a criminal inquiry?

Why did this happen? Not protecting the most vulnerable populations: see “Democratic” governor Cuomo in New York, refusing the ship Mercy offered by “Republican” president Trump, and, instead stuffing back COVID patients in old folks’ homes…. where they promptly got infected and died.

Another factor has been naive overdependency on lockdowns and the efficiency of masks in confined enclosures after a few minutes. The epidemological graphs are very clear: social distancing without masks worked, but, with masks, social distancing did not work. It’s paradoxical, but logical, as a micrometric mask can’t stop a nanometric virus.

General lockdowns have not been shown to work, and have many very adverse effects. In some countries (France), citizens were prevented from accessing the grand outdoors, national parks, empty beaches, etc. Clear fascism devoid of rationality of the sort even Twentietch Century fascists never dreamed of imposing onto their own populations [1]…

For the elite establishment, the advantages of this COVID disaster have been multiple, and not just from greater profits, by getting rid of expensive workers. A foremost advantage of COVID for the elite has been the disrespect of one’s own reasoning capability stupid mandates allegedly against COVID have provided with. When something creates a good feeling, people try their best to make that something come around. Imposing fascism always makes elites feel good. COVID has been excellent that way, for the elites.

Elites have always an interest in fascizing the population, hence always favor the Authority Principle. COVID has provided an occasion to do so, in the name of health, atruism.

The general population has been inculcated with the notion that obeying blindly to very stupid orders is highly moral. Resisting such a (stupid) Authority Principle was not just immoral, illegal, “right wing”, thus racist… But even that those who resist the Authority Principle are “terrorists”. The day after I and others pointed out that nobody had been indicted for “sedition” or “insurrection” in the USA, eleven persons were charged that way (as I had predicted they would be). Including a Naval Veteran, long retired with 100% disability, an elderly gentleman who walks with a cane…

Even Harvard historians are aghast that citizens protesting the government are now charged with “terrorism”. “I’m surprised but not shocked,” Noah Feldman, a Harvard legal historian, said about the sedition charges on Thursday. “It’s a hard charge to prove. And it has this distinctive history of being used by governments who overreached in prosecuting their citizens.”

Ah, if even Harvard is turning against the establishment, that is, itself, something is happening. Distinctive history of overreach? Is the USA going the way of Putin’s Russia? In Putin’s Reich basically all opponents have been charged with “sedition”.

Patrice Ayme

***

[0} Dr. Fauci’s household is worth more than 10.5 million dollars, in stock investments alone… and earned 1.7 million in 2020. His wife Christine Grady is the chief bio-ethicist at the National Institutes of Health (no nepotism, circulate…).

Dr. Fauci is the top-paid federal employee earning a base salary of $434,312 in 2020. Fauci is the Director of the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and current Chief Medical Advisor to the President. Fauci out-earned the U.S. president ($400,000); four-star generals in the military ($282,000); and roughly 4.3 million other federal employees. 

But it does not stop there. During the pandemic year of 2020, the Fauci household income, perks and benefits, and unrealized gains totaled $1,782,807 — including federal income and benefits of $868,812; outside royalties and travel perks totaling $119,626; and investment accounts increasing by $794,369.

However, critics say that Fauci was funding research that was actually creating pandemic pathogens in labs that, if leaked or if fell into the wrong hands, might create the very human pandemic they were trying to prevent.

Something like that happened in France, with two prion deaths. France immediately closed 9 labs, as the situation is studied carefully. Prions, which are infective, chain reaction proteins, create some neurological diseases similar to Alzheimer.

The case of the wealthy Fauci household is general: the reason US health care cost so much is that the medical and pharmaceutical establishment is made of wealthy individuals… Once, long ago, a doctor made more than six million dollars, from Medicare alone… It made a scandal at the time…

[1] French authorities claimed that it was a principle of equity to not let some citizens access the outdoors when others could not. Let you, the rabble, all be poor at the same time, in the same way…

The hypocrisy was colossal, as the established elite had to respect none of that. In the United Kingdom, while the government imposed French-like fascist lockdowns, booze and maskless parties rocked 10 Downing street, the seat of the UK government, one after the other, and ministers evaded restrictions. The UK Prime Minister, opportunisitic Brexiter Johnson, presented his apology to the plutocrat-in-chief, the Queen (sorry, your highness, to have shown our privileged hand to the rabble).

In the USA, the abundance of the private jet industry, with 1.2 million employees, was in no way affected by all the lockdown silliness imposed on the bleating plebs. Exclusive ski resorts blossomed.

Obsessed By Clean Air

Clean Air Is What We Need, Not Just Vaccines:

After censoring earlier observations of mine on masks, the NYT finally published this:

After the cholera epidemics of the Nineteenth Century, a conclusion imposed itself: cities needed clean water. After COVID, a conclusion is that we need clean air. We have the technology: High Efficiency Particle Air, HEPA filters can eliminate most of the viruses and bacteria from the air, using Van Der Waals forces. Masks cannot do that. HEPA filters should be mandatory everywhere.

Without HEPA, viruses build up in the air, and then circumvent masks’ fibers. So mask or no mask, in an enclosed room, after two hours, if one person exudes viruses, everybody catches said virus (N95 means 95% efficiency at 300 nanometers; but the virus is 100 nanometers, and 95% is not 99.97% anyway… The latest number is what HEPA filters achieve… On their first pass…), Not taking any of this in consideration explains the lamentable results of some countries with COVID. One can compare comparables.

The USA and its CDC, with their armies of well paid “experts”, have fared badly…. compared to some comparable countries. While the vaccine development has been remarkable, especially the mRNA vaccines, the mask mandates have been ineffective. That can be seen epidemiologically. Just today the CDC finally agreed that many masks worn in the US don’t work very well. Telling what peer reviewed articles said on the subject causes censorship in social media.

Living with pandemics cannot be avoided: too many people, too much travel. A good mitigation strategy is HEPA filters everywhere. They are cheap.

***

MEC

Mendham,NJ replied:

@Patrice Ayme You are obsessed with Hepa filters. That is one small part of the equation; not the most important. The most important factor with Covid is its biology. The way it behaves is erratic and in a way it has a mind of its own. This is why all the experts have been wrong now for two years, not only in this country but throughout the world. This disease has to be controlled as a prn basis and with support services until it peter out as it is doing now. The hysteria has to stop. This viral disease is not cholera which can be controlled and treated with appropriate antibiotics and environmental and social issues.

***

Well, literally, air filtration of viruses and bacteria is antibiotic… anti-bio: against life. Another comment on the preceding was authorized:

Joseph DiBello

Marlborough MA

Your points are valid, but Patrice is right about the masks and air filtration.

***

Peer reviewed articles have show that masks, as used in the USA can be five times worse than… no mask (the CDC is still in denial of that). As a result France, and other European governments, outlawed nearly all mask types, more than a year ago. Millions of masks were destroyed.  

At face value, the US expert establishment connected to the CDC is arguably the worst… in the world. Just look at the numbers.

MASK MASQUERADE KILLS

Fauci, in an explosion of hubris, said that “attacking him was attacking science”. No, it’s attacking corruption in science. NIH called “gain of function” by a slightly different name, and then proceeded to finance the Wuhan Insititute of Virology to do just that on many species of bat corona viruses… While knowing the lab was not respecting the level 4 (maximal) safety necessary to do this. Whether that caused the pandemic or not is not sure. What is sure, is that it was, per se, a criminal act.

We need clean air!

Patrice Ayme

Anti-Authority Ideologues Are Terrorists, Says “Justice” Department. Heil Leader!

The Justice Department is establishing a specialized unit focused on domestic terrorism: “We have seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus, as well as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen said to Congress. “Anti-authority ideologies”? All and any mental progress is born as an anti-authority ideology. 

This is a spectacular turn of events. Even Socrates was NOT charged with “extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideology”. Socrates could have been charged that way as he attacked the Athenian Constitution in an obsessive (and quite justified) manner. However he was tried for a much more specific reason: being the mastermind of a number of “youth” who injured, or killed, Athenian democracy. Hence the charge of “corrupting the youth” (everybody else, including said “youth” some of whom became dictators of Athens was amnestied;  only Socrates was charged; half of the population of Athens had died in the war, so considering so many of the closest to Socrates had been youthful principals in said war, resentment against Socrates was amply justified…)

But the Biden administration could have charged Socrates with “extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideology”. They should charge me too, I have written thousands of pages which could be interpreted as extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies… I have attacked nearly all governments, not just the Catholic Terroristic Roman government of 381 CE:

THEODOSIUS The GREAT’s Catholic FANATICISM COLLAPSED The ROMAN EMPIRE

More than 700 individuals were charged for the January 6 2021 riots. There is no specific charge for terrorism, but there is one for “sedition” and, or “insurrection”:

18 U.S. Code § 2383 – Rebellion or insurrection

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

Olsen was asked at the Senate whether someone was charged for sedition or insurrection in connection with January 6.  

“Has anyone been charged with the crime of insurrection following January 6?” Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) asked Olsen, to which the assistant attorney general replied he wasn’t aware of any such charge being made:

“I am not aware that anyone’s been charged with particular offense, even if it is an offense. I just am not aware of that. It would be inappropriate for me to speak about any particular investigation at this point.

“But, I am just not aware of anyone being charged with that.”

So there was no insurrection on January 6, because nobody was charged with insurrection… (The fascists in power are probably going to try to correct that mighty quick…). And for the inspiration, right from the Nazis:

***

The Leader Is Always Right (weekly of the Nazi Party, 22 February 1941)

With a “Justice” Department like that, who need terrorists?

Patrice Ayme

No Eternal Return Of The Same: Putin Is New

A basic, fundamental lesson from science is evolution, cosmic, biological, human, and civilizational. And it’s not just evolution, but also progress. So, in a sense, science validates progress. Progress of what? Complexity. A human brain is more complex than the brains of lesser species, those which cannot achieve as much. The genetics driving organisms are also more complex, even from chimpanzee to Homo.

The idea of evolution was already familiar to the Greeks. Philosophers such as Anaximander believed we evolved from fishes and Ancient Greece exported a lot of genetically improved animals, especially horses and cattle. Judeo-Christianism and Islamism captured the idea of evolution, as the Bible evolves towards the revelation, the apocalypse, final judgment, etc….  

Pythagoras said “after certain specified periods, the same events occur again… nothing was entirely new” Eudemus of Rhodes also references this Pythagorean doctrine in his commentary on Aristotle‘s Physics. In a fragment preserved by Simplicius, Eudemus writes:

One might raise the problem whether the same time recurs, as some say, or not. “The same” has many senses: the same in form seems to occur as do spring and winter and the other seasons and periods; similarly the same changes occur in form, for the sun performs its solstices and equinoxes and its other journeys. But if someone were to believe the Pythagoreans that numerically the same things recur, then I also will romance, holding my staff, while you sit there, and everything else will be the same, and it is plausible to say that the time will be the same.

In Stoic physics, the universe is periodically destroyed in an immense conflagration (ekpyrosis), and then experiences a rebirth (palingenesis). These cycles continue for eternity, repeating the same events in every cycle.

Why did the Stoics love the return of the same so much? Because it was saying there would be no progress, whatever We The People did. So they may as well endure fascists, plutocrats, oligarchs, all sorts of “Hellenistic” kings and queens, and other arrivists. In turn, autocrats, in particular plutocrat in chief Domitian, did not treat the Stoics as severely as other philosophical schools, and they maintained an existence in the triumphant empire, blossoming with Roman emperor Nerva and his successors. Emperor Marcus Aurelius would repeat Stoic teachings he had been taught, faithfully.

Pascal refurbished the idea on the more human level:”Tout a été dit, depuis qu’il y a des hommes et qui pensent” Funny but both some of the ideas of Pascal in computer science and math had been indeed already expressed in Ancient Greece and China, respectively. 

With “eternal recurrence”, one of his obsessions, Nietzsche invented nothing new… And the idea is wrong, whether on the cosmic, Nietschean level, or Pascal’s more basic human angle. This can be seen most clearly when one considers wars, real or potential. War is sometimes a return of the same, sometimes not.

French Air Force patrolling off Ukraine. No eternal return of the same. An image, taken from video released by the Russian Defence Ministry, shows two French warplanes Mirage 2000 and Rafale and a French refueling aircraft tracked by a Russian Su-27 fighter jet (left) in international air space over the Black Sea, December 9, 2021. Russian Defence Ministry/Handout via REUTERS. The Russians claimed they had prevented a penetration of Russian air space (the Mirage on the right has a reconnaissance pod, fully visible hanging below). The French jets were armed with radar and infrared missiles. The US conducted equivalent sorties at the same time… And were dangerously harrassed.

So now we have this self-declared pan-Slavic reuniter and imperator, KGB Vladimir Putin, who wants to put in Moscow’s orbit (Moscovia, as he calls it) all countries he decided are “Slavic”, all the way to Poland and the like. Putin explained to us that Poland and other Slavs, have been victims of Catholicism, and now, NATO… (Never mind that France and Poland have been allies for at least 5 centuries…)

The degree of delusion apparent in the master of the Kremlin has not been seen since before… Hitler. Hitler’s viewpoint was that he wanted to save the German minorities from the Slavs… So Putin shows Hitler in some sense was right: deluded Slavs accusing the West of everything do exist. Putin apparently wants to save Poland, he seems to say… Let alone Ukraine.

Let’s observe France was at war with Russia three times in the last 210 years (1812-1815; 1853-56; 1939-41)… The USA never was at war with Russia, but, contrarily to what Nietzsche and Stoics claimed, things change, and it could well happen. War with a nuclear super power should be new and different. 

Another difference? Differently from what happened in 1914 and 1939, France and her creation, the USA, are, this time, allied from the start.    

We evolve.

Even change evolves. 

War with nukes is not war with sticks.

Patrice Ayme.

“God”, No decidable Proposition, Ruins Effective Brainpower. Secular Penury And Dictatorship Are Intended Consequences From Frying The Logic!

Abstract: God is not just the great fascist in the sky, justifying fascism on the ground, and the evil-rule (plutocracy). God is also a self-contradictory notion, so it zaps logic itself. Once one believes in God, all is permitted… In particular to those who have, like God, all the power.

***

The advance of general wisdom has always profited from incorporating the most recent technical advances. In this essay we will use in particular a concept developed in mathematical logic a century ago, decidability, and apply it to an old concept, “God”.

Regions affected by the Christo-Islamist terror of the late Middle Ages stagnated economically, intellectually, and even militarily (for example the Ottomans outlawed printing, making their gigantic empire as stupid as it could be). Theocratic terror has everything to do with it… and it worked at two levels: breaking bones, hearts and minds, yes, but also breaking the logic, something that is more subtle.

Stagnation and paralysis was the aim of theological obsurantism, as it enabled outrageous establishmentarians to stay in power, enjoying sometimes hundreds of women, among other creatures.

***

The most drastic, and quasi original example, of deliberate civilizational stagnation, or even reverse, is provided by Roman emperor Theodosius I’s terror decrees of 381 CE. The empire started to collapse most seriously, with the invasion of Italy by Germans, 14 years later, so it is likely that there was a causal relationship. And a closer examination of history shows that, indeed, there was one.

Massive invasions occured 25 years later, in 406 CE. The city of Rome would fall in 410 CE, 29 years after the mad-with-God emperor’s lethal decrees against heretics… At the hands of the savages who helped Theodosius to stay in power in 394 CE. The population of Greco-Roman civilization would implode under the government of bishops (after 395 CE).

***

How does theocratic stagnation work?

It’s not just by inflicting terror. A purely logical effect is in play in generating mental paralysis, through an infernal loop. Worrying about God served in Judeo-Christian sauce, is a vicious circle. Worrying about God bites its own tail with its own venimous fangs, and doing nothing else, but being immersed in the fog of self contradicting, hubristic madness. Let me explain…

To know God, for sure, one would need to be God… For sure. Because to know for sure the end all, be all, one needs to be the end all, be all. 

But then one question would still remain: who created me, the end all, be all, for sure? Thus, even pretending to know all, thus pretending to be God, leads to even more uncertainty. How would God not be sure He/She is not in a stimulation of one sort or another?

Truly that God concept can be the road to self-devouring one’s mind.

It is therefore best to reduce one’s hubris, and thus to focus on things which can be determined to be certain, or not (decidable propositions in mathematical logic). Thus it is better to focus on matters which could possibly be sure, rather than things which can never be sure. 

Because, first of all, by pretending we can be sure of things we cannot be sure of, like this God thing, we learn to tolerate not just liars, but us, lying to ourselves. 

Secondly, of course, if one only focused upon what one is sure one can never be sure of, one may have no time for more pressing matters, and one may end up under dictatorship, or with bad laws, or without dignity, nor food in one’s stomach…

Thirdly, as I just described, “God” is a self-feeding contradiction in its intrinsic definition. Admiring “God” is thus admiring a self-feeding contradiction, and making self-contradiction the ultimate value. Thus next time a self-feeding contradiction of the human type, such as Saddam Hussein, comes around, behaving as “God” pretends to, he will not just being tolerate, as he is God-like. Saddam was into stiff contradictions: he considered that Iraq under him had “good laws”, namely Westernized laws… while at the same time, him and his family, and collaborators and subordinates, enjoying the fruits of dictatorship… Plus a few quasi-genocidal massacres, here or there….

God is also a self-contradiction on the trilemma of good, evil, and omnipotence… God cannot be those three things simulataneously. Christians resolved this by being the three of them simultaneously: it’s cool, “God” already does it. So The Catholic Inquisition sent innocents to be burned alive, after torturing them, because the Inquisition was Evil and Omnipotent, and that was Good. And also Good because it was Evil and Omnipotent. Hey, just like “Deus”.

So much for Christianism and its desertic spawn. What about Asia? No “God” there, but the functional equivalent. Indeed, obsessing with raving love for “God” is obsessing with raving love for the fascist in chief and its contradictions, and it prepares emotionally to do the same with other fascists in chief, and their contradictions, such as an emperor with the favors of heavens (like the Chinese emperor).

Cults for Asian emperors were therefore similar to Christianism, and show clearly that Christianism, or more exactly Catholicism from the First Council of Nicaea was implemented to be an evil-rule: oligarchies, all around the planet, have imposed the cult of metaphysical omnipotence, capable of doing anything, ruling through good and evil, beyond any contradictions… Ruling above seas of violent and raging contradictions, with the intrinsic sense of their higher worth… To enable oligarchies to do exactly the same, having divinized the behaviors. the ways of ‘God’ are evil and mysterious, even self-contradictory, to inure us to the evil, mysterious and self-contradictory ways plutocracies need to govern…

If a logical system contains a self-contradiction, it can imply any proposition…. Thus do anything. That is one of the more subtle ways how “God” enables plutocracies to do anything… Camus makes an allusion to that phenomenon in the Plague, when a priest declares that now he would believe no more, or then would believe anything. An approach to God using mathematical logic gives a new angle on that supremacy concept, and why self-contradiction is central to it.

Admitting “God” is admitting anything.

Including various “Holocausts”.

In sha’Allah.

Patrice Ayme

Insurrection Derangement Syndrome… Not An Insurrection

The only death caused by the January 6 demonstration was that of a combat veteran lady, a Trump supporter. She was unarmed, and, without warning, and without a warning shot, she was shot in the throat, by an armed guard, while she tried to go through a door with a window. Ashli Babbitt, 35, an Air Force veteran, died a slow death on the ground, drenched in flowing blood and bewildered.

Propagandists claim there were 5 deaths in what they call an “insurrection“, but that’s a true lie: the deaths happened among this huge crowd, but they were causally unrelated to the demonstration (an officer who was in the riot died that night of an unrelated natural cause, an autopsy showed)… And this was not an “insurrection” but rather a parody of an insurrection… in other terms, a vast joke. Fortunately most of the Capitol Police understood this. An insurrection requires a plot. The only plot found so far is that the chain of command from Speaker Pelosi decided to not use enough police to defend the US Capitol, an isolated gigantic building on a hill, up impressive stairs, deliberately so (see addendum). 

By way of comparison, rioters were never able to breach the French National Assembly or Senate, although they are much harder to defend inside Paris, and the riots have been much more violent there (one in the 1960s related to the Franco-Algerian civil war, killed more than 100). Why? Because enough police was used. The only time the Assembly and Senate fell was during a real insurrection, the Commune, in 1871. (A famous leader of the Commune, Louise Michel, was sent to New Caledonia later…)

By violent demonstrations standards, January 6 was a nothing burger. I have been in violent demonstrations, they are something else entirely. Flying molotov cocktails, fires, smothering smoke, police charges, beatings, tear gas, concussion grenades… Consider what just happened in Kazakhstan, with dozens dead, and shot to kill orders from the president… Even Kazakhstan is not yet an insurrection… Just very violent demonstrations by a legitimately angry population.

I was also, as a child in a country during an attempted coup (Senegal) and later lived in state-of-siege countries, or dictatorships (Iran, Peru, Bolivia). 

On January 6, 2021, A half naked guy with buffalo horn, carrying the US flag invaded an empty chamber in US Congress, followed by an armed police officer who asked him when he intended to leave (he got 41 months in prison, the most of any rioters). Viewing that as an insurrection, comparing it to Pearl Harbor or The Holocaust (as grandees of the “Democratic” Party just did, January 6, 2022, see below) is Insurrection Derangement Syndrome (ISD)

Gentlemen having an explanation and debate, as should be the case in the house of democracy. Notice that the police officer on the left is fully armed. The so-called “insurgents” in sight are rotting in jail in the last year. A federal judge sentenced Jacob Chansley, the Capitol rioter known as the “QAnon Shaman,” above with the horns, to 41 months in prison on Wednesday –
Prior to his sentencing, Chansley spoke at length about his time in solitary confinement and his respect for Jesus and Gandhi. He was not, he said, a violent criminal or an insurrectionist.
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth told Chansley he was moved by his statement of contrition, but that he was unable to justify a downward departure from the sentencing guidelines for the obstruction charge Chansley pleaded guilty to.
“I guess the basic problem I have, in considering a departure downward, is that, although you have evolved in your thinking in many ways, what you did here was horrific. Obstructing the government… is so serious that I cannot justify a downward departure,” Lamberth said. “You made yourself the center of the riot.”

Technically, the demonstrators slowed down the “certification” of the election, one of several ridiculous and obsolete mechanisms related to the US presidential election…

Patrice Ayme

***

“Certain dates echo throughout history,” US Vice President Harris said. “Including dates that instantly remind all who have lived them where they were and what they were doing when our democracy came under assault. Dates that occupy not only a place on our calendar but a place in our collective memory. Dec. 7, 1941, Sept. 11, 2001, and Jan. 6, 2021.“

Harris said that the rioters that day sought to attack “the institutions, the values, the ideals that generations of Americans have marched, picketed, and shed blood to establish and defend. On Jan. 6 we all saw what our nation would look like if the forces who seek to dismantle our democracy are successful: the lawlessness, the violence, the chaos…“

***

Biden: “The Bible tells us that we shall know the truth, and the truth shall make us free.  We shall know the truth.

Well, here is the God’s truth about January 6th, 2021:

Close your eyes.  Go back to that day.  What do you see? Rioters rampaging, waving for the first time inside this Capitol a Confederate flag that symbolized the cause to destroy America, to rip us apart.

Even during the Civil War, that never, ever happened.  But it happened here in 2021.

What else do you see?  A mob breaking windows, kicking in doors, breaching the Capitol.  American flags on poles being used as weapons, as spears…..” 

***

An “insurrection” it was not, but a security failure, certainly. And who is responsible? The Congress Speaker’s Office, who is the “top of command” (the US president is not).

Former Capitol Police chief Steven Sund has attested that before Jan. 6 he approached House Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving about obtaining the assistance of National Guard troops on the day the electoral votes were to be counted, but Mr. Irving said he was concerned about “optics.” Mr. Sund says that during the violence he again urgently asked for troops, but help was delayed because Mr. Irving said he “needed to run it up the chain of command.” Mr. Irving disputes this version of events. One obvious way to settle it is to examine documents, and the Capitol Police have produced theirs to the House Administration Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Capitol complex.

But the House sergeant-at-arms and chief administrative officer—both of whom report to Mrs. Pelosi—have steadfastly refused to produce anything to HAC. Likewise, the House general counsel has stonewalled requests. The speaker’s office controls Capitol security decisions—as evidenced by Mrs. Pelosi’s decrees on fencing or magnetometers or National Guard troops—and any authetic investigation would start by looking at her office’s briefings and involvement in Jan. 6 security—as the top of that “chain of command.” But the Jan 6 com. of the so-called “Democrats”… does not. Instead it produced hundreds of documents from the White House, showing no connection whatsoever with the Shaman and his horns… or any of his hirsute colleagues…

Strenuous Exercise Will Change Minds, And in Particular, Diets

Prehistoric behaviors, according to which our species evolved, should enlighten us… although this does not mean we should blindly follow them… far from it.

The master principle of humanity is progress, not duplicating the past. Humanity was made to exercise heavily, intensely, when it’s hot. Humans are the only animals who will deliberately engage in hunting under the tropical sun at noon… When all other animals are panting in the shade, eyeing the humans warrily (I have played this game myself in Africa, as a child, with lions… Not too many times…) Under the tropical noon, humans outrun dogs easily.

We are made for heavy exercise. By not exercising our exercise capability we do not reveal to ourselves, all what we can be.

The lowering of metabolic rate is considerable after heavy exercise… Lasting days, it is central to the charm of heavy physical activity, which entails very different neurohormonal regimes, thus enriching minds, with diversity of neural ecology.

The perspective of heavy exercise decreases how one is attracted to food. Consuming food burns oxygen. When I start to climb or mountain-run again, my mind puts a huge clamp down on hunger, keeping those future exertions in mind, even over a period of weeks. The mind knows very well that excess weight would then bring suffering, so excess food and calories doesn’t feel attractive anymore. 

How does the mind know this? Eating within a few hours of heavy metabolic exercise starves the body for oxygen: a distinct discomfort appears… And of course it is impossible to exercise hard with a full stomach wobbling about. In other words, exercise is not just at the origin of physiological effects, but also the source of a complete change of psychology because the organism is now living for other reasons, and under other constraints, and has to plan accordingly. 

This is no doubt why so many religions insist on food intake restrictions: if one lives for other reasons, diet needs to change, and institutes a positive feedback loop. What one is going to do with one’s body forces upon us not just a change of physiology, but also of psychology, and becomes a metaphysical journey, exercising both faith and religion.

Agreed, exercise can be dangerous: I nearly died dozens of times while exercising, some of those putative deaths being rather weird (hint: stay away from mountains to reduce death probability considerably, an advice which I of course do not follow…) But the danger itself is most neurohormonally revealing, the danger itself is the spice through dimensions we did not know existed: I have spent many a night perched on a cliff, clinging for dear life, freezing, shaking, in unending pain, desperate for dawn… But then it was certainly a dawn more beautiful than any dawn ever experienced before, revealing a planet I had never known before, and being able at last to see holds down into the abyss, was the greatest gift… A honeymoon with hope returning the possibility of life again.

Food is not then what one thinks of. Heavy exercise and great adventure concentrates the physiology on maximum efficiency, and that means not wasting energy by digesting food. Hence hunger vanishes considerably, as the body goes into using fatty acids [1]

Snow running, in my experience, was invented by yours truly, and was long highly controversial. It is arguably the best sport, and has become popular. However, last few times I made portion of the notorious Tahoe Rim Trail, or the PCT in winter… I met nobody…. It is, IMHO, a better sport than cross country skiing and ski skating… Not as fast on the descents, but easier when going up…

This was written on New Year’s Eve. I ate a (meager) Greek salad…. It’s often hilarious how philosophical I have become, de facto… Socrates, as depicted by his friends, was a monster of depravity and dissolution relatively speaking… Maybe, or maybe not, after all I drove my mighty 4 wheel drive biodiesel a mile high in a raging storm with 20 feet (six meters) of snow falling. The major freeway connecting half of California to the whatever lays east (like the East Coast) was closed. Some people spent 20 hours in their cars… But the expensive snow tires made in Germany held… And since then, everyday, I have been running on snow (crampons on)… Scaring the bourgeois…

Socrates was not busy destroying the planet, he was not that mighty. Now, pretty much everybody does, driving around, flying, eating out of plastic soy beans obtained by destroying most of Amazonia…

Tomorrow I should try cross-country skiing, of the epic type.

Epics is what we need, since Ulysses. An Iliad in miniature a day keeps the thinker astray… Away from the automated path.

I will have less than seven hours to do what the park service warns, takes expert skiers 4 to 5 hours… one way (I did it, long long ago, with better vertebrae). And with a bad, hurting knee, already operated upon, and possibly paralyzingly painful back… But, w-hell… What life for, but for passion?

In an effort like that, one is transported in another universe… Meta, plus oultre, for real…

The ultimate way to make (“fer”) light (“lux”) is by changing one’s neurohormonal life… Let Lucifer be with me… Wish me hell!

And Happy New Year 2022!

Patrice Ayme

[1] Even athletes who are lean and mean have enough fat stored in muscle fibers and fat cells to supply up to 100,000 calories—enough for over 100 hours of marathon running… in balmy weather… in high altitude winds lashed by freezing rain, much less… The transition between using carbohydrates, glycogen in the liver, etc. and fatty acid is itself a training. In my personal case, I do not eat very much in the last 12 hours before heavy endurance, and not at all in the last two hours. So I switch to fatty acid quickly, which makes my hunger disappear. 3,000 calories of exercise later, I am completely not hungry at all… OK, I am mean, but lean has long stop being the case…