Military-Industrial Metastasis

SIMULATING STIMULUS WITH MILITARY FRENZY:

The ways of plutocracy are mysterious to conventional wisdom. As I tried to explain, Hitler was supported by American plutocrats. So, as American soldiers fought the Nazis on the beaches, they fought against what American plutocracy had paid and instigated. Now we learn from Wikileaks that American taxpayers are financing the Pakistani who help the Taliban. Even, it is said, with anti-aircraft missiles. US tax dollars may be used as seed money for a protection racket associated with a narcotics-trafficking. And so on.

Obama’s main stimulus has turned out to be his Afghan war, a "war of his own choosing" as the Republican Party Chair pointed out.

Don’t laugh: it’s not funny, and great progress in robotics and how to kill, bribe, and maim people are been made. Even regenerative medicine profits from it, as American military hospitals have succeeded to regrow exploded soldiers’ muscles by using ECM (Extra Cellular Matrix). That was the first story on "60 Minutes" last night.

"60 Minutes" was a show which helped discredit the Vietnam War, by exposing the truth in the 1960s. Now the show finds more profitable to expose, rather than explode, the Plutocratic fantasy line. War is good, because it regenerates. See it on "60 Minutes". Besides, the USA is a poor victim from 9/11. Cry now, and rise the flag. As Obama’s soaring rhetoric has it: "We harness the skills and ingenuity of the most dynamic country on Earth to reach a better day."

Reaching a better day, necessitates apparently, all the skills and ingenuity of the most dynamic nation. For that most dynamic nation, better days are nothing obvious.

"We are in that region of the world because of 9/11" [July 26 2010] says Robert Gibbs, the modestly intelligent guy who talks in the stead of the president. The president has speech writers, speech givers, besides various minders. The US presidency is an organization which is very strong, a bit like a bacterial film: you don’t know what it’s made of, besides many organisms collaborating within the corruption and slime which make them strong.

The pathetically ignorant Gibbs obviously paid no mind to the fact that the USA has been the ally and sponsor of Pakistan for more than 50 years, nor to the organizing or sending by the USA of legions into Afghanistan headed by the Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) and, later, bin Laden, more than 30 years ago, with the best weapons and the worst doctrines about attacking soft targets (schools…).

Is it crass ignorance, or crass dishonesty, Mr. Gibbs? Or just plain greed and cowardice? Probably a mix. Nietzsche explained a lot by the Will To Power, and it is overwhelming in politicians.

Last night, encouraged by the regeneration of soldiers coming back mangled from Afghanistan, I filled up with more propaganda from Leslie Stahl of "60 minutes". She was making fun of "The Narrative", which is how she called what Muslim youth say about the USA. That was the second story on "60 Minutes", praising the war in Afghanistan, as the way to civilization. I felt ever better about the American way of life and death. I did not bother to listen to the third story, it was probably about "sports", or "celebrities" to ease down the preceding 40 minutes of Afghanistan war propaganda.

Ms Stahl pontificated about "how much we talk past each other". She demonstrated that by taking a completely incredulous tone, as she related that Muslim youth are so insanely uneducated that they believe that a CIA employee organized 9/11, so that the USA would attack Muslims in the Middle East. No, really? Stahl impressed, from her astounded, derisive tone, that only insane maniacs would believe such a thing. By using such a method, the Big Lie, as Hitler called it, the Nazis were made strong for a while, with the force of their empty minds. Too honest that Hitler; it gave a pretext for the French republic to attack him. He would have done better for himself by practicing more hypocrisy.

This Leslie Stahl piece was indeed as good as any of the best propaganda from the not so good Dr. Mr. Goebbels. One could tell from the exaggeration of her tone, the way her transitions were lagging, her lack of background emotion, that Ms. Stahl knew she was lying through her teeth. She was not talking from her heart, but from her memory, remembering carefully what her minders told her to say.

By the way someone from the New York Times admitted today that the NYT sometimes sits for years on information embarrassing to the government of the USA. Never mind that Jefferson said that it was more important to have a free press, than to have a government.

Stahl lies for money, and, according to the Plutocratic doctrine, all is fair in money and greed. Even somebody like her ought to know that bin Laden was, for about two decades, the CIA’s most important operator.

Whether bin Laden operated under order, or not, for 9/11, is irrelevant. Bin Laden was CIA, and was taught by the CIA how to give it good to the Soviets and Afghan socialists. That he then gave it good to Americans too is, on the face of it, first a problem for the CIA and those who gave orders to the CIA, or for those who revere them (in a way 9/11 is a natural extension of Ronald Reagan’s ways and means: just replace Afghanistan by the USA, and keep the same bin Laden). According to some in the French secret services, bin Laden met with high level CIA operatives, in between attacks against assets of the USA. A similar charge against the top ISI executive in Pakistan, meeting with Taliban before major Taliban attacks has just been made in documents revealed today by Wikileaks.

Those who live by bombing will die by bombing.

The secret "intelligence" apparatus of the USA is now so gigantic, it is dwarfing anything of that nature that existed before (with the possible exception of Stalin’s NKVD, but Stalin and the NKVD were fighting a war of annihilation with Hitler’s Germany, whereas right now nobody is credibly trying to annihilate the USA, meaning that the present apparatus is there for another purpose).

The Washington Post recently exposed the size of the secret services of the USA (nearly a million individuals with "Top Secret" clearances, a total budget unknown, but in excess of 75 billion dollars). How should we call it? The Geheime Staatspolizei, the Secret State Police? Just asking…

If one adds the budget of this Secret Police to the official defense budget, plus annex departments as "Energy" (in charge of nukes), one reaches about a trillion dollar. By comparison Bush’s total federal budget (even with Bush’s deficit spending!) was only 1.5 trillion dollar. This is not growth anymore, it’s metastasis. Metastasis of "defense", defending against common sense, because one cannot imagine anything else that would be as big to be defended against with such enthusiasm.

Which brings us to the latest revelations, the 92,000 secret Pentagon documents revealed by Wikileaks. Some reveal war crimes and deliberate misstatements about civilian deaths from black operations by Americans, inside Afghanistan. Seven Afghans children killed, plus a score of women: who cares? Certainly "Task Force 373", a mix of Delta Force and Navy Seals, does not have to worry. In 1944, prestigious SS officers having killed French civilians were ordered arrested by the West Front commander (Marshall Erwin Rommel). But in today’s USA, Afghan civilians are not even worth a lie: the information never reaches the public, and officials do not bother about it.

The 92,000 documents include detailed accusations that U.S. ally Pakistan is actively helping the Taliban. (Why not, with all the children killed by American rockets, as if they were nameless vermin?) But, of course, Pakistan was created in its present form to precisely support Muslim Fundamentalist insurrections, as it did for decades in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

Apologists for the present Afghan policy claim that there is no choice, but to cooperate with the corrupt Afghan Muslim Fundamentalist dictatorship of Karzai and the corrupt Pakistan Muslim Fundamentalist republic. But this is completely false. Those two regimes, differently from Iran, are client regimes: they survive because of Western support. They ought to be forced to change their constitution on a secular model. Iran used to be a client fascist regime of the USA, and so was its religious Fundamentalist opposition, demonstrating that religious fanaticism can backfire. And it will always backfire, but this lesson was not heeded in Afghanistan.

Why should one force Afghanistan and Pakistan to be officially secular states, as Indonesia is? Because it would force a philosophical choice on the Afghan government, police and army, thus engaging them on the more advanced civilizational side, having the courage to deny obscurantism. That would be the sane basis on which to base the anti-insurgency effort, because it would permit the correct, Western compatible, education of the youth. (As it will not happen, the next best choice is to pull out, and have the courage to admit that those who organized that war were idiots of the worst type.)

But of course winning the war is not what those who are behind the enormous Militaro-Industrial metastasis wants. Eternal war is what they want. Obama, no doubt, does not want to come to grief, so he will play along. Remember the still mysterious circumstances of JFK’s death.

Not all men are cowards. For example, those who sail or climb, for pleasure, are no cowards: they enjoy playing the game of life, risking all for their ideals, finding satisfaction by refining their mental mastery upon the elements. JFK was no coward, but it’s exact opposite: an authentic war hero (so was his late elder brother). Those who play table tennis and other mild interior sports are not about the place of man in nature and fate, but about ersatz of nature. Afghanistan is an ersatz of a war, a form of organized crime to stimulate a particular type of economy, and fascism.

We have seen that in the past. No need to go to the fiction of Orwell’s "1984". It happened for real.

Towards the end of the Roman empire, Roman emperors were actually paying the Huns, and then the Huns attacked the empire, repeatedly, but not too hard. Why? Because the threat of the Huns allowed the emperors to justify fascist structure of the empire (normal people were not aware that the Barbarians who attacked them were paid by those who commanded them). It went further than that: just as the USA used bin Laden and the Arabs to attack socialist Afghans, the Roman high command used the Huns to commit outright genocide (of the Burgonds).

The same game was played by the Romans with other hostile forces, even with the Arabs. But then, in the later case, propelled by a new religion, Islam, one day, the Arabs did not play the game, and they annihilated by surprise the Roman army, 160,000 strong, four times the entire Muslim force.

In the next few decades, the Muslims overwhelmed two-third of the Roman empire, and all the Persian empire. After crushing the Visigoths in Spain in a few years, they spilled into Francia, and met the (practically) secular Franks (721 CE). The Franks did not negotiate, they just fought back, using everything. The Muslim invaders were crushed, so they tried again (732 CE). And were crushed again. In a last spasm, they mustered all their forces and came back strong five years later, with even a fleet on the sea, spilling half way up central France, and over Italy.

But Charles The Hammer was ready, with new taxes, new heavy cavalry, and the Muslims were crushed again, and the (Umayyad) Arab Caliphate in Damascus fell, crushing forever bin Laden’s dream. The Arab empire had been the largest empire that ever was, until that time (five million square Roman/American miles). It had lasted just a century. How long for the American empire?

Of strong convictions strong victories and strong civilizations are made. Of wishy-washy they are not. But what else to expect from the bipartisan soul?

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RAILROAD TO HELL:

Dysfunctioning minds dysfunction not just at the highest civilizational level. They will dysfunction even in the silliest corners, and thus can their dysfunctioning be detected objectively.

An example with the Obama administration is the question of trains. It is not a difficult problem: it has been solved in many countries. But trust the American toddler for its "skills and ingenuity of the most dynamic country" in finding a hare-brain plan. Or more exactly, hare and turtle brain plan.

Apparently the scheme for high speed trains in the USA, as concocted by the brainy White House, is to run high speed trains on the same lines as the heavy, extremely slow freight trains. The idea is to invest in secondary garages where the freight trains will park as the fast trains zoom by. Now, granted that it is cheaper to do that rather than full blown Very High Speed lines.

In a country such as France, freight trains move at 160 kilometers per hour (100 mph), which makes possible passenger trains to run on the same lines, at the same speeds.

However, in France, and the rest of the world, dedicated Very High Speed lines are built for trains going around 320 kilometers per hour (the latest High Speed Lines are made for 400 km/h). Nobody tries to mix speeds, because it’s obviously inviting catastrophe, and the requirements for the lines are quite different, in many ways. All the more since, in the USA, freight trains can be sometimes seen, going at no more than 30 km/h (20 mph), from horizon to horizon.

As it turns out, freight trains are profitable in the USA. Once the Obama administration plan is enacted, that will stop to be the case, high speed trains will be slow speed, and, if they do not vibrate themselves to destruction, from the inadequate lines, they will collide with freight, and each other.

However, the USA is the country of freedom, freedom from logic that is, and freedom from the grand wide world too, because its government officials do not know that no other country in the world has chosen to run hyper slow freight with fast trains, and that, for very good reasons. And so it goes. This is the familiar pattern in the USA: ignorance of the rest of the world, doubled with exaggerated self confidence. (Many peoples, around the planet, have learned the hard way to not ignore others’ wisdom, and to not be over confident, especially when it’s based in nationalistic overconfidence.)

Freedom from logic, freedom from information, infeodation to plutocracy and the militaro-industrial-congressional conspiracy, such is the high speed way to a collision with reality. Metastasis, ultimately, eats the mind.

Patrice Ayme

MORALITY AS PHYSICS

 

MORALITY AND HEAVENS ARE ANIMATED BY THE SAME LAWS.

Morality Is Revealed To Be An Application Of The Principle Of Least Action.

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Main idea: Not only is biology is a type of Quantum nanotechnology. So is morality.

***

In an interesting albeit challenging essay, Peter Railton asks in the New York Times: "Moral Camouflage or Moral Monkeys? Is the great show we make of morality just a civilized cover for our selfish opportunism? [NYT electronic edition, July 18, 2010].

Railton, a salaried philosopher from an American university, makes an analogy with philosopher Bertrand Russel’s ironical verdict about the American university:“Remarkable. As near Oxford as monkeys can make.”

Having thus humbly confessed to an important insight, to keep in mind, professor Railton quotes Immanuel Kant on his amazement for morality: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe … the starry heavens above and the moral law within.”

Railton then points out that studies on primates and the influence of genes on behavior have brought a less heavenly aura on the moral law: "Today many who look at morality through a Darwinian lens can’t help but find a charming naïveté in Kant’s thought. “Yes, remarkable. As near morality as monkeys can make.”"

Science has basically already established that monkeys have evolved, and are made, from the same laws which give rise to the heavens. However, the laws of heavens are now known to be much more complicated than they were in Kant’s time. Laws of heavens include powerful and mysterious, all encompassing Quantum Mechanics, which sits prominently at the controls of the hearts of suns and the planets.

Indeed, does anything escape physics? What of the mind? I hold that: The laws of heavens, and the laws of morality, are, ultimately, of the same nature.

Why? For several reasons pertaining to what the Greek called "physis" (nature). Some of these reasons have to do with the deepest ideas in the foundations of physics, some with quantum physics, some with evolution theory (both biological evolution theory and spiritual evolution theory, both having to do with power).

The word and concept of "morality" comes from the "mores", in other words the traditional ways, the customs, the manners, those which perdure, in Latin. [Coined by philosopher Cicero, translating straight from the Greek; see note 1].

What is traditional is what has long worked, in other words, what is sustainable. Morality, by definition, is what survives, and thus what allows to survive. How did it work so long indeed? By managing power for the best. By surviving better than the alternatives. And survival means power, again. The virus that kills overpowered its host.

Now physics is all about energy. Modern physics as we know it, is a vast application of the Principle of Least Action [note 2]. Power is energy divided by time, in its physical definition. The laws of physics are the laws of biology, ultimately, thus making natural selection all about power, in a vast, but nevertheless, strict physical sense.

It was obvious all along that the laws of natural selection are all about power. The one being eaten transmit power to the eater (literally, in the form of stored energy known as fat, carbohydrates, i.e., fuel). The one being terminated surrenders its power to the terminator.

The same goes with ideas: ideas are not so much about beauty (as Paul Dirac had it). More precisely ideas are about power, and the beauty is in the power. The Dirac equation is beautiful, because, in a few symbols abstracting amazing spaces and concepts, it represents so much power (the behavior of electrons, the prediction of anti-matter).

Ideas are subject to natural selection, and so are all moral systems. The best survive, the worst get terminated, and it is this struggle which defines the meaning of "good", "better", "bad", and "worse".

Nazism was a set of ideas which got terminated after a mighty struggle of natural selection, because, well they were so weak, being so wrong. That struggle had been started by France and Britain, because they were offended by Nazi morality (or lack thereof, more exactly). France and Britain turned out to be super predators in the realm of ideas, who devoured Nazism, and reproduced mightily; all of Europe now being a vast republic along the lines of the revolution of 1789 and the principles of the Enlightenment.

Empathy and altruism allow the group to survive better, so they, too, find their root in power management.

Quantum Mechanics makes possible biological miracles such as photosynthesis and vision, using effects so subtle, they can be described, but not under-stood (nothing stands under). Quantum Mechanics is God-like, because it has many of the attributes of the legendary God: omnipresence, omnipotence, action at a distance, tunneling through matter, multiple reality, presence without existence etc. No wonder Quantum Mechanics can reach the moral law.

Morality, ultimately is a set of neurological structures which reproduce by concert and concertation. They are transmitted, as all ideas by speech, and example. At any given time, morality is a set of mental structures (abstracted digitally in books). Thus, morality is actually a physical phenomenon, just as real, but more complex and delicate, as the moon. Thus even more admirable. The moral law within is animated by the same laws as the starry heavens above.

***

Patrice Ayme

***

Dressing Islam For Western Exploitation

 

COLLABORATING WITH INFAMY TO GET OIL.

Abstract: As the French National Assembly passed at near unanimity a law against covering the face of women against their will, another pseudo intellectual, pseudo feminist, thought controller of the University of Chicago, goes off the deep end, with big words and hollow ideas, calling France “unworthy”.

Wildly misinterpreting history, actuality, European law, democracy, Islam, professor Nussbaum makes a fool of herself, defending mandatory face covering for women and girls.

But Nussbaum’s real aim was to remind common Americans that European democracy was bad… And thus, implicitly, that American plutocracy was more “liberal“, and is the superior model of civilization. When the truth is that the thirst of the USA’s “intelligence” agencies for oil is behind the Literalist Fundamentalist mess that a lot of countries with Muslim majorities have become. Nussbaum says that the burqa is good, but all she knows is that it helps to get oil.

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AMERICAN HOLIER-THAN-THOU:

Dr. Nussbaum, somebody paid and honored by the powers-that-be in the USA, is an American “philosopher” and professor of American style “ethics” at this temple of plutocracy, the University of Chicago. As a salaried thinker, paid for having the thoughts that please the higher ups, she wrote in the New York Times, in “The Stone” series, that: “The proposed bans of the Muslim burqa in Europe are unworthy of liberal democracies.” Ah, Europe, such an unworthy democracy… And what is a “Liberal” democracy? By contradistinction to what? “Illiberal” democracy? Plutocratic “democracy”?

I hold, instead, that it is racist to hold women in bondage, on the pretext that they are Muslim, and that wrapping all and any women below a tent is a form of cruel bondage. By making women stupid, hiding every parcel of their skin makes children, even sons, who are educated by women, also made less intelligent and autonomous than they would be otherwise. Thus bondage of women makes entire Muslim societies easier to exploit.

[Why should I not do like Glen Beck and, instead, attack the previous head of the “Black Panthers”, who ordered to kill the “blue eyed babies“? Because that very bad man, this Hitler, as Beck said correctly, is not writing major editorials in the New York Times, and is not a respected American intellectual, a master American thinker, as Nussbaum is.]

 

The niqab, or burqa, the integral “veil” is a tent put on women, leaving only some spaces or holes so that they can see where they are going. It is often forced onto women through various threats and coercions. People who are NOT familiar with Islam, such as the pontificating Doctor Nussbaum, believe that to put a tent upon women is a command of Islam. But it is not.

The Qur’an only admonishes the wives of the Prophet to dress modestly, which was probably a veiled attack against Aisha, beloved child bride, and widow of Muhammad, who contested the veracity of the Qur’an which had been unfaithfully invented (she said) 20 years after her husband death. In the end, she led an army against the Qur’an. She was very clear that the Qur’an was sexist, and Muhammad was not (she was married with him at 6, consumed at 9, but loved him tenderly… albeit with some very independent practices which would get her stoned right away by today’s fanatics).

 

The French national Assembly voted by 335 votes, against one, a measly one, a crushing unanimity, to outlaw the imposition of ambulatory tents on women.

More exactly the law made unlawful to hide one’s face without any good reason (150 Euros fine, if the contrevenant persists, after being told to remove her face mask). Much more severe penalties await those who force women to be integrally covered up.

Burqas have been used to kill hundreds of people throughout the Middle East, just in the last year, because terrorists can hide weapons below them; but of course Ms. Nussbaum, European critique beyond the call of reason, probably secretly applauds terrorist attacks in Europe…. Nussbaum advocates burqas in Paris, I don’t see her advocating them in Tel Aviv! Some people would call that blatant racism.

Only one French MP voted against the burqa ban, indeed (and more than 70% of the French population wants a ban). Most green, socialist and communist MPs abstained (but 20 joined the conservative majority, including one prominent socialist and one prominent communist). The text is now going to the French Senate. Then it will go to the president. Then the French Constitutional Court and various European institutions will have a look at it. Individual European citizens can always complain DIRECTLY to the French Council of State, or the European Supreme Court, if they don’t like it. Because so can French citizens directly complain, avenues which are not open to American citizens.

The USA has no Council of State, no Constitutional Court, and access to the Supreme Court is neither direct, nor guaranteed, (and it’s not really a constitutional court anyway).

So when Nussbaum talks grandly about “liberal democracy”, maybe she should analyze the lack of PLAIN democracy in the USA first. The lack of recourse of citizens. Anyway, what is a “liberal democracy”? An euphemism for “plutocracy”? In California the republican candidate for governor spent 91 million dollars of her own plutocratic money to hypnotize the people in believing in her worthiness. And this, more than four months before the election, already!

The proposed French law against the burqa imposes up to one year in jail and 30,000 Euros fine for anyone forcing a woman to hide her face, and double of both, if the imposition is on a minor.

 

What is it not to like, except if one is a hater of France, Muslim women and girls?

In the rest of this essay, I systematically demolish Nussbaum’s unworthy, hypocritical considerations. Her arguments are so ridiculously weak that they can easily skipped by rushed readers (they are in italics). I accuse her of collaborating with the plutocratic way to oil and war. To spice things up a bit, I bring higher perspectives, here and there.

***

PLAYING WITH FIRE: LITERALIST ISLAM AS FUNDAMENTAL USA POLICY.

This put matters Islamist in American perspective. Ever since the extensive meeting between USA president Roosevelt and King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia, the USA has made a pact with the evil of Literalist, Fundamentalist Islam. Literalist Islam was the successor of fanatical fundamentalist Christianism, which devastated the Roman empire, and made it a place of anti-intellectualism, a sorry episode known as the Dark Ages (an aftershock of which was the Crusades).

The American government computation was simple: send us your oil, and we will control your population with obscurantism (in this case Literalist, Fundamentalist Islam). There was an opening, because France and Britain, which had controlled the Middle East, had been devastated by the war against Hitler (and were immensely indebted to their belated rescuer of sorts, the USA, which had timed it just right).

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The plot thickens. Ibn Saud (center) meets with FDR (right) and American brass, for about a week on USS Quincy, after the Yalta Conference:

Roosevelt (right) Meets with King Ibn Saud, of Saudi Arabia, on board USS Quincy (CA-71) in the Great Bitter Lake, Egypt, on 14 February 1945. The King is speaking to the interpreter, Colonel William A. Eddy, USMC. Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, USN, the President’s Aide and Chief of Staff, is at left. Note ornate carpet on the ship’s deck, and life raft mounted on the side of the 5/38 twin gun mount in the background. Photograph from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives.

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France and Britain had been leery of Islam, which they had pretty much left to its own devices (a major mistake). (P/S 1).

France, which had taken a very strong, forceful secular stance, finally expropriating the Christian Church in 1905, left Islam alone. France had incorporated Judeo-Christianism in a “Concordat” (churches are the property of the state in France, which then takes care of them). But not Islam. France is actually only now incorporating Islam on an equal basis with Judeo-Christianism (so many municipalities, including Strasbourg, are building mosques, and provide help to do so. The mayor of Strasbourg protested that the proposed minaret was too short; just to relax everybody, and on purely aesthetic grounds, let me point out that I also support the tallest minarets).

The manipulation of Literalist, Fundamentalist Islam by the USA government resulted in many coups (Iran, 1953), intolerable Muslim Fundamentalist dictatorships (Pakistan, 1961), and wars.

 

In particular, the Afghanistan war started in the 1970s at the instigation of Pakistani intelligence, supported by the American CIA, and brought the Soviet intervention of 1979; in turn the Americans brought in bin Laden and his rich boys, propelled by Saudi money; from an Afghan nationalist perspective, Pakistan and the USA have been waging war inside the country for 40 years.

It ought to have become obvious to all that supporting Fundamentalist Literalist Islam backfired on 9/11. But the American public opinion was made to believe other things, such as the ludicrous assertion that American policy had nothing to do with it.

In this governmental processes of making people believe that what is, is not, and what is not, is, American intellectuals play a crucial, supporting role (European intellectuals instead know that they pretty much will amount to nothing, historically speaking, if they agree with their governments, and they are taken seriously by the European populations as a check and balance for governmental power: Nazism and Stalinism, if nothing else, showed that intellectuals supporting the Party line are at best corrupt idiots).

Europe, long in denial, is finally understanding that it has a Muslim problem. French president De Gaulle tried to cut France off its Muslim link. Although Algerians had overwhelmingly voted for the new French secular constitution, many metropolitan French were closet racists, in leftist, social, human rights disguise, so they wanted nothing to do with Algeria, and de Gaulle dumped Algeria.

Unsurprisingly, that did not work, because Islam still occupies the half of the Roman empire it conquered in a few years (640 CE to 710 CE). That means that Islam is geographically glued to Europe.

The problem with Islam is that it is a superstition that wants to rule. Everything. Under “God”. Serious Islam Fundamentalists divide the world in two pieces: THE “HOUSE OF SUBMISSION, AND THE HOUSE OF WAR”. And that is why Islam was the best excuse and organizing principle to conquer by the sword about half of the accessible world in a few years. Unsurprisingly, ever since, Islam, a war theology, has run out of juice (not to say Christianity, the parent of Islam, was not a war theology either!) The Golden Age of Islam was mostly because of a number of accidental factors… first of which being that islam ruled over a Judeo-Christian majority freed from Roman religious oppression… and was killed by Literalist Islam itself.

Many intellectuals, and not all of them American, have subscribed to a Mickey-Mouse view of Islam, perfectly coherent with the view of American conservatives that the American Constitution is an implementation of the Bible. Actually implementing the bible was Muhammad’s fundamental program and call. So, fundamentally, American neo-conservatives are strict followers of Muhammad. Somebody ought to tell them.

The USA is at a strange juncture. Many Muslims have realized that Literalist, Fundamentalist Islam was used against them, by the USA and allied plutocrats such as the Saudi family princes. Bin Laden was, for two decades, the CIA’s most prominent collaborator. But no more. Bin Laden’s way out of that manipulation has been to call it for what it is, out-literalize it, and out-fundamentalize it. So the USA finds itself in a situation Rome had known many times, when a mercenary turns against the imperial hand that made him. More deeply, the very strategy of encouraging Islam, long the USA’s plutocracy preferred weapon against European colonialists and Middle Eastern progressives, has now become a weapon against the USA.

My overall opinion is that manipulating superstition is conduct unbecoming a powerful secularist civilization. Islam ought to be treated strictly identically to Judeo-Christianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism. Secularism is the religion, superstitions are tolerated within bounds.

To claim that outlawing the imposition of the Burqa is against democracy is grotesquely sexist, and aims at keeping obscurantism strong, so that plutocracy can be strong too.

***

LONG LIVE ISLAM, LONG LIVE WAR:

On one hand, Obama comes around, and lauds Islam. On the other hand, he bombs the heck out of Muslims, with robots, and supports with billions of subsidies Israel’ s intemperate policies of building all sorts of giant walls (emotional, conceptual, and physical). OK, Obama did not invent the last policy, and he seems to genuinely disagree with Israel’s excesses. But he went full out into Afghanistan, and this, even Bush was not stupid enough to do.

This is where it starts to make a weird sort of sense. Bush held back going full blast into Afghanistan. It is hard to attribute sophisticated reasons to Bush, but the fact that Afghanistan has a Fundamentalist, Literalist interpretation of Islam as the core of its constitution, may have given him pause: he had already got what the USA wanted.

In any case, if NATO is going to have an army of more than 150,000 in Afghanistan, supposedly to protect the Islamist constitution, one has to love Islamists and the constitutions they come up with.

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DECONSTRUCTION OF NUSSBAUM’S UNWORTHY RAMBLE:

Nussbaum says in the New York Times online edition:

“a proposed ban on the Muslim burqa in all public places… may soon become national law in France and Belgium.  Even the headscarf often causes trouble.  In France, girls may not wear it in school.  In Germany (as in parts of Belgium and the Netherlands) some regions forbid public school teachers to wear it on the job, although nuns and priests are permitted to teach in full habit.  What does political philosophy have to say about these developments? “

 

Ms. Nussbaum, a paid “philosopher”, should learn that WISDOM STARTS BY NOT FEEDING PEOPLE LIES. Disinformation, especially when blatant, is a lie. In France girls cannot wear the scarf as a religious symbol in PUBLIC schools.

The law is not anti-Muslim, it outlaws large symbols of appurtenance to a tribal group, sect, or superstitious religion. The law bans all religious/tribal symbols bigger than a square centimeter or so. France has learned a few things from 18 centuries of religious wars.

There are private Muslim schools, where girls could be made into tents, if their administrators so wished. Nuns and priests, just as Muslim scholars, are free to teach in religious garb of their own choosing, as long as they are not naked, and as long as they are teaching in private religious schools (or for peculiar religious teachings, but then Muslim priests can be dressed as Muslims, and so can Sikh).

Ms. Nussbaum is apparently unaware of the notion of SECULAR state. Public schools are schools of the secular state, which is religion neutral, so the teachers of public schools cannot loudly advocate a particular superstitious religion. The religion of the secular state is secularism, that is what the secular state PREACHES.

Nussbaum asks: “All human beings are equal bearers of human dignity.  It is widely agreed that government must treat that dignity with equal respect. But what is it to treat people with equal respect in areas touching on religious belief and observance?”

What BS! Hitler was an equal bearer of human dignity? And common, small time serial killers too? Is a Nussbaum rapist an equal bearer of dignity? What of human sacrifices and anthropophagia, Nussbaum? I feel like devouring you alive right now, does that make me an equal bearer? Most known religions practiced human sacrifices. Are we treating religious cannibals with equal respect and observance?

Then Nussbaum refers with reverence to the founders and framers of the American Constitution. All good American neo-conservatives engage in this funny exercise. The notorious Glen Beck, Fox news master of time travel (back to the past), spends years on the concept. I will explain another time why it is such a terrible thing. The French may as well refer all the time about Robespierre. Except Robespierre’s insanities are in plain sight, easy to demolish.

What USA framers and founders teach, instead, is, often (not always), a high level hypocrisy. The fundamental method of the framers and founders was about saying the opposite of what one is truly doing. Their words were stolen from philosophers, but the aim was the opposite. This goes on, to this day, from Wall Street to Iraq and Afghanistan. True, the USA became a temple of freedom, inside its white population. But there was no means in Washington to make it different. Where Washington could make different was the massacre of the Indians. But, instead of preventing it, it accelerated it. This puts Lincoln’s dreadful courage in opposing slavery in an even more imposing contrast.

But let’s launch Dr. Nussbaum, and her anti-European, befuddling discourse:

“…the recent European cases all involve discriminatory laws…  Let’s focus on the burqa; arguments made there can be adapted to other cases.

Five arguments are commonly made in favor of proposed bans.  Let’s see whether they treat all citizens with equal respect.  First, it is argued that security requires people to show their faces when appearing in public places.  A second, closely related, argument says that the kind of transparency and reciprocity proper to relations between citizens is impeded by covering part of the face.

What is wrong with both of these arguments is that they are applied inconsistently.

It gets very cold in Chicago – as, indeed, in many parts of Europe.  Along the streets we walk, hats pulled down over ears and brows, scarves wound tightly around noses and mouths.  No problem of either transparency or security is thought to exist, nor are we forbidden to enter public buildings so insulated.  Moreover, many beloved and trusted professionals cover their faces all year round: surgeons, dentists, (American) football players, skiers and skaters. What inspires fear and mistrust in Europe, clearly, is not covering per se, but Muslim covering.”

No wonder Ms Nussbaum is paid such respect, and such compensation: it has got to be hard and painful to emit such absurdities with intellectual pretense. By the way, there are already laws in part of Europe, outlawing covering faces around violent demonstrations: French police can just grab people who wear clothing that hides them to check their identity. That anti-covering law was passed after violent demonstrations in Strasbourg (seat of the European Parliament, and of what was long the tallest monument in the world, the Strasbourg cathedral, object of a demolition project of Al Qaeda, which was stopped by Franco-German police). Some building were set on fire by professional thugs (many coming from other countries), hiding below hoods and masks.

Nussbaum; the intellectual mercenary, pursues her relentless descent in making fun of thinking: “A third argument, very prominent today, is that the burqa is a symbol of male domination … A Catalonian legislator recently called the burqa a “degrading prison.” … those who make that argument typically don’t know much about Islam and would have a hard time saying what symbolizes what in that religion.  But the more glaring flaw in the argument is that society is suffused with symbols of male supremacy … Sex magazines, nude photos, tight jeans — all of these products, arguably, treat women as objects, as do so many aspects of our media culture.  And what about the “degrading prison” of plastic surgery?…  Isn’t much of this done in order to conform to a male norm of female beauty that casts women as sex objects? Proponents of the burqa ban do not propose to ban all these objectifying practices.  Indeed, they often participate in them. And banning all such practices on a basis of equality would be an intolerable invasion of liberty. Once again, then, the opponents of the burqa are utterly inconsistent, betraying a fear of the different that is discriminatory and unworthy of a liberal democracy.  The way to deal with sexism, in this case as in all, is by persuasion and example, not by removing liberty.”

OK, guilty nearly all of us are, we must confess, of letting “sex” come around. Instead we ought to be old fashion prudes: they apparently knew nothing of sex, never had it, and wore baggy clothing. Notice how many weasel words Nussbaum uses: “typically”, “arguably”, etc. Anybody can use “arguably” about anything whatsoever. Arguably, arguably is the world’s top weasel word. Notice also that Nussbaum seems unaware that laws are all about removing liberties that existed, and are outlawed thereafter. This is how the concept of law works, Nussbaum: by forbidding what was allowed before, removing liberties. In particular sexism has shrunk, because sexist practices have been increasingly outlawed in the West.

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What’s beautiful about dreadful ignorance, is that it can be dressed under voluminous discourses:

Nussbaum tries to look informed and subtle: “When Turkey banned the veil long ago, there was a good reason in that specific context: because women who went unveiled were being subjected to harassment and violence.  The ban protected a space for the choice to be unveiled, and was legitimate so long as women did not have that choice.  We might think of this as a “substantial burden” justified (temporarily) by a “compelling state interest.”  But in today’s Europe women can dress more or less as they please; there is no reason for the burden to religious liberty that the ban involves.”

Nussbaum does not allow for the possibility that, locally, the (forced) burqa wearers would become so thick on the ground that even women passing by would be violated too. Nussbaum obviously has not lived in a Muslim majority community.

What Nussbaum also does not know is that the anti-burqa laws amount to light fines for the wearers of the disguises, but heavy punishment, and jail time, for those who force women to wear the veil.

Nussbaum, as a good weasel, addresses the point: “A fourth argument holds that women wear the burqa only because they are coerced.  This is a rather implausible argument to make across the board, and it is typically made by people who have no idea what the circumstances of this or that individual woman are.”

 

Well, Nussbaum, however implausible crimes and circumstances are, they happen, and the laws are there to dissuade them. There is plenty of evidence of women coerced to wear tents, all over the world, under Islamist pretense.

Nussbaum asserts that the burqa itself is not violence, in a sneaky way:“it seems at least plausible that observant Muslim families will turn out to have less [violence].

Suppose there were evidence that the burqa was strongly associated, statistically, with violence against women. Could government could legitimately ban it on those grounds?  The U. S. Supreme Court has held that nude dancing may be banned on account of its contingent association with crime, including crimes against women”…

Well, we did not expect anything else from the temple of prudery: nude dancing bad, burqa dancing good. The USA ought to allow only BURQA DANCING.

“Finally, says Nussbaum, I’ve heard the argument that the burqa is per se unhealthy, because it is hot and uncomfortable.  (Not surprisingly, this argument is made in Spain.)  This is perhaps the silliest of the arguments.  Clothing that covers the body can be comfortable or uncomfortable, depending on the fabric… It is surely far from clear that the amount of skin displayed in typical Spanish female dress would meet with a dermatologist’s approval.  But more pointedly, would the arguer really seek to ban all uncomfortable and possibly unhealthy female clothing?  Wouldn’t we have to begin with high heels, delicious as they are?  But no, high heels are associated with majority norms (and are a major Spanish export), so they draw no ire.

What about vitamin D, Nussbaum? Sun exposure can be good. It is surely very close to clear, to parody her devious rhetoric, that Nussbaum is grasping at straws. And Ms Nussbaum to resonate on her tin drum one more time:

All five arguments are discriminatory.  We don’t even need to reach the delicate issue of religiously grounded accommodation to see that they are utterly unacceptable in a society committed to equal liberty.  Equal respect for conscience requires us to reject them.”

What we should reject is intellectual prostitution. Differently from sexual prostitution, it’s really lethal. Hitler got a huge lift from too many German intellectuals supporting him and his policies.

***

Conclusion: PLUTOCRACY, RIGHT OR WRONG, EUROPE, ALWAYS WRONG: Why does Nussbaum, supposedly a feminist, makes such a fool of herself? Because American intellectuals get bonus points when they say anything against Europe. It is the World Cup of intellectual supremacy, and the plutocracy of the USA has a lot to lose if European ideas progress in the USA.

Now Europe consists in more than three dozen cultures, 500 million people, and has a long tradition of solving problems through brainwork (for better or worse, learning in both cases). Whereas the solution, in the USA, to solve problem, often consisted simply in “GO WEST, YOUNG MAN”. That has been both the advantage and the bane of the USA. It made for an easy life, and also a tradition of easy thinking.

Now, however, there is no West to go to, and free energy and land are on their way out. Actually, it seems that California, as west as one can go, is sinking in the ocean. Or at least an ocean of debt (as major cities go bankrupt, basic government functions are discontinued).

People such as Nussbaum talk about Islam, but never obviously never studied the Qur’an, a very short book (400 pages, about). That was the book Aisha went to war against. According to Islam Fundamentalists of the violent type, there are about 200 hundred very clear passages commanding extreme violence in the Qur’an. One can capture women in war (“those who you right hand possess”) and “do whatever you please with them”. Including enslaving them, and having sex with the girls (it’s completely explicit in the Qur’an). Anyway, I have put some of the violent quotes together, somewhere else on this site, no need to go read bin Laden himself (which I recommend doing).
So please consult the Qur’an itself as found in: https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/some-violence-in-holy-quran/

There is even worse violence in the Hadith (gossip about Muhammad). Let me say in passing that I was quasi born, and certainly raised, and educated in Muslim countries, and not just 4 years like Obama on the periphery of Islam, I know what I am talking about, and the quotes above are from best translations.

Apparently, Nussbaum has not read about unadulterated Islam for years. Here is an example: BERLIN, Sep 29, 2006 (IPS) – Amnesty International has issued an urgent appeal calling on its members to write letters to the Republic of Iran asking them not to stone seven women. The women have been sentenced to die by stoning for adultery. There are cases such as these all the time. In July 2010, a woman was sentenced for death by stoning, because she, allegedly, had sex with two men, well after her husband death from natural circumstances. That is adultery, as far as Islamist law is concerned. Oh, yes, because Islam, being everything, is also a judicial system.

That is why French Muslims and others are anxious to define an “Islam de France” : there are instructions, in the Qur’an to give precedence to local traditions, when the situation is not too clear. By the way, although a professor of divinity, Nussbaum, has not done her homework: strict Quranic scholarship makes it very clear that the burqa ought to be forbidden in France, because it is not the tradition there, and the Qur’an actually does not order it. But of course Nussbaum’s true aim is to call Europeans names. As usual, Islam is just a weapon of choice for America’s best.

Nussbaum uses her naivety as a weapon. It is impossible that she is that stupid. To serve her masters, those who use religious strife to reign, divide, steal, kill, she is ready to debase her mental faculties publicly.

When one hears Obama talks about Jesus, and God, and then one sees him throwing civilization out of the window in Afghanistan, in ways reminiscent of Terminator movies, superior European minds who learned lessons from history know how it relates: this sort of tricks, of talking peace while killing indiscriminately, was used by the imposer of Christianity, Constantine, 17 centuries ago (Hitler was one of the recent practitioners, of the exact same method, complete with loud and obnoxious calls to God and peace).

It does not come to the minds of the apologists of the burqa that most Muslims move to Europe, precisely to flee Literalist Islam. The laws white pontificator Nussbaum complains about are supported by Muslims in Europe (most of them: there are always extremists who live from their extremism).

Differently from the Ms. “Philosopher”-who-has-not-studied-enough-history, Europeans know very well that religions caused enormous miseries in Europe in the last 2 millennia.

The Romans had banned the old Celtic religion, because of its religious sacrifices. Too bad they did not ban Christianity in time, too. The ravages of Christianity in the Late Roman empire caused the Dark Ages. When the Franks dominated Europe, they did, because they operated a fundamentally secular civilization, tolerant to Christians, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, and Agnostics. The Church was forced to rebuild what it had destroyed, public education.

The author accuses Europeans of racism, which is not deprived of a hefty dose of irony, coming from someone who writes from such a racist country. In France, there are more than 6 million Muslims (and more, if one counts all those of part Muslim and, a fortiori, Jewish, ancestry). Several powerful French women politicians are (practicing, they claim!) Muslims, some are in the government, and they strongly support, and push for, laws to keep Literalist Islam in check, including laws against women-as-tents.

Practicing and preaching Literalist Islam used to be a capital crime in Egypt in 1,300 CE. This is actually the birth, not of Islam, but of fundamentalist Islam: the founder was condemned to perpetual detention, and died in jail. This is the Islam Nussbaum celebrates, and the Saudis supposedly practice, and the Islam advocated by Al Qaeda.

A valid objections could be that Great Britain, with less than a fourth of the number of Muslims that France has, is tolerant of the niqab/burqa. Well, we will see how long that last. There were terrible terrorist attacks from British born Muslim against other Brits, something France has not known. So the “Londonistan” policy, of not integrating Islam, seems to have come short, and the USA is showing the same symptoms; with a Muslim population not greater than France, scores of USA born Muslims were arrested for terrorism related to their interpretation of Islam, recently.

Ms Nussbaum became famous for “The Fragility of Goodness”, in which she argues that individuals strongly committed to justice are vulnerable to external factors that may deeply compromise or even negate their initial aims, an observation about as deep as her lipstick (should she wear lipstick, by the way? Does not she self degrade herself into a “sex object“, by doing so?). In other words: hey guys, we are all corrupt, so let’s splurge, now that we know we were good, but fragile. ‘I lost my goodness, me Nussbaum, and I am one more damsel in distress!’

We all know that Ms. Nussbaum will be the first to howl with the wolves to suspend the constitution of the USA once a Muslim terrorist has detonated a dirty nuclear bomb on Times Square. She seems less about principle, rather than about opportunity in the termite mound. Real philosophers are made of sturdier stuff, and do not worry about fragility of others’ minds. Otherwise they would not get any sleep. Termites are just food for thought.

***

Patrice Ayme

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P/S 1: France and Britain had been leery of Islam, which was plain ignored, and left to its own devices, in the 19C and 20 C. (There is a long tradition of this, because when the Franks reconquered the half of France Muslim invaders had occupied, the Muslims were left alone, and got discreetly reabsorbed in the Frankish state which viewed itself as secular… only the African, Berber, and Arab genes were left behind; this tolerance made France very different from what would happen in Spain five centuries later, when Jews and Muslims were thrown out… but, of course, Spaniards had good reasons to be extremely bitter, whereas the Franks destroyed the Muslims, fair, square, and hard, so an intolerable occupation did not happen too long).

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P/S 2: Nussbaum is obsessed by women as “sex objects”, as you can see:

Nussbaum in 2004. Notice the discretely feminine attire, and big seductive smile, forms of the “objectification” of woman that Nussbaum fustigates in her opinions; Nussbaum converted to Judaism as an adult, and has been loudly involved in that superstition. Embracing Dog is a must for serious people in the USA. Nussbaum is generally viewed as a major feminist and intellectual, not the minor insect I morphed her into for the “Veiled Threats” essay.

Nussbaum, though not a lawyer, is currently “Ernst Freund” Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, a chair that includes appointments in the Philosophy Department, the Law School, and the Divinity School. She also holds associate appointments in Classics and Political Science, is a member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and is a Board Member of the Human Rights Program. She previously taught at Harvard and Brown, where she held the rank of university professor. With these sort of arrogantlynaive propagandists, the American universities are crammed with.

Nussbaum is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science (elected 1988), the American Philosophical Society, and was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. She is a Founding President of the Human Development and Capability Association and a Past President of the American Philosophical Association. She has 33 honorary degrees from colleges and universities in North America, Europe, and Asia. In February 2009 she received the A.SK Social Science Award for contributions to “social system reform” from the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB). In September 2005 Nussbaum was listed among the world’s Top 100 intellectuals by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines. She was similarly listed by Foreign Policy in 2008. In spring 2009, she won the American Philosophical Society‘s Henry M. Phillips Prize in Jurisprudence. Anyway, she is the big enchilada, hence fair game.

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HEURISTIC SUBQUANTAL UNIVERSE

WAVE-PARTICLE DUALITY AS LINEARIZATION-SINGULARIZATION

Warning: A subquantal conceptual big bang is applied to the Big Bang itself, sparks fly…

***

Abstract: Conventional Big Bang Theory depends upon some unproven physics at the Quantum level. Although experiments, so far, show Quantum Mechanics to be 100% true, there is a good reason to believe that this will not perdure. The problem with Quantum Mechanics is that it violates Nothing Instantaneous at Distance ("NID"), an undeclared physics metaprinciple which has always triumphed, ever since the ape came down from the tree to preach man.

NID is not a physical law in the sense of the laws that allow to make computations, but it has always been found to be true… until today’s official formulation of conventional Quantum Mechanics, which blatantly violates it.

The author boldly sketches its own theory, which is driven by respect for NID. After rendering Quantum Mechanics obsolete, it is an easy task to dispose of one of the paradoxes of the present Big Bang Theory. We have nothing to fear, but fun itself. Not for those that the Philosophy of Quantum Theory frightens.

***

Physicist Tamara Davis, writing in Scientific American, July 2010, tries to solve a paradox of Big Bang theory by getting rid of the law of conservation of energy. Quite a feat, since conservation of energy is exactly the deepest foundation of physics. Whatever I am going to do next to perspectives in physics in the present essay, it will not be as ridiculous. Thus encouraged, I will go boldly where no mind has gone before.

Dr. Davis exposes the problem this way: "Almost all of our information about outer space comes in the form of light, and one of light’s key features is that it gets redshifted—its electromagnetic waves get stretched—as it travels from distant galaxies through our ever expanding universe, in accordance with Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. But the longer the wavelength, the lower the energy. Thus, inquisitive minds ask: When light is redshifted by the expansion of the universe, where does its energy go? Is it lost, in violation of the conservation principle?"

She then advocates that the cosmological redshift can be thought of as a photon making many tiny little Doppler shifts along its directory. According to her, Doppler shifts do not represent a true loss of photon energy, only a change of perspective (from one galaxy, to another receding galaxy).

Verily, in the (creationist) Big Bang Theory, physicists said: "Let There Be Light!" and so all was light in the beginning. Some of the light, in Big bang Theory (BBT) turned into matter, some kept on going, and we receive the later now as a diffuse 3 degree Kelvin radiation.

In more details, the paradox is this: say somewhat after the BB, some of the energy was light, E(L), and some was matter E(M). E(L) will be made of a given number of photons, say N, with average energy A. So E(L) = N A. Now, according to Planck’s inauguration of Quantum Mechanics, A = h V, where V is the average photon frequency. So E(L) = h N V. But, according to BBT, V goes down, as the universe expands. Nowadays V corresponds to very very cold light. But initially V was extremely, unimaginably incandescent gamma ray light. Thus E(L) has gone down from enormous to negligible! In other words, looking at BBT in the simplest fashion, a gross violation of energy conservation is in full evidence. Part of the problem is that in Einstein’s Relativity, spacetime has no physical reality (in contradistinction with the old ether theory, old ether being what electromagnetic waves were supposed to wave). Thus the energy lost by Big Bang light cannot be transferred to something else, since the only thing around is spacetime, and spacetime has no reality (not that simple, see P/S 4) .

Of these sorts of simple contradictions great scientific progress is made. Anybody could have pointed out to Aristotle that he had neglected air (or water) resistance. But one had to wait Buridan, 17 centuries later, to do so, discovering Newton’s First Law, more than three centuries before Newton was born… But I digress…

Dr. Tamara Davis escapes with a pirouette. She simply states that laws such as energy conservation does not apply to the universe as such. (Useless a pirouette it is, because a moment’s reflection show that energy conservation will also be violated for arbitrarily small subsections of the universe).

I have a simpler suggestion: to remake all of physics from scratch, while respecting the conservation of energy. Here is a sketch. First I do away with localized particle trajectory. So, when a particle goes from X to Y, according to me, it is not localized. A particle is not a particle until it has been localized. Proof: well, first we have no proof that they are localized, so why to suppose they are, as most physicists, even many Quantum physicists suppose? It’s not because, as monkeys, we found 20 million years ago that stones were localized when flying towards our opponents, that this is still true when the stone is a particle of light. Actually it is the opposite which is obvious.

The reasons to believe photons delocalize is the fact that photons (and all particles) take the entire geometry into account as they propagate: wherever they can go influences where they will end up. Propagating particles embrace the whole. They always end up in a particular place, but that place is computed by the implied order of the whole. This is the most basic idea in Optics, and Quantum Mechanics.

One way to partly say this is that light behaves as a wave. So light goes around a sphere from everywhere, goes through two slits, etc. The idea that light could be a wave came initially from Huyghens, but he did not have the wealth of examples that would be found in the next two centuries (Young’s slits and Poisson’s dot). This wave behavior is used in lenses.

So it was long anticipated that light would delocalize: a wave is intrinsically delocalized. So far, so good. Newton preferred to think of light as a particle (he was a great man, and wanted to be greater than Huyghens that way, so he had to contradict him!) It is easy to see why: the ancient Greeks had anticipated atoms, the smallest possible pieces. Newton just assumed there would be atoms of light. Experiences of Hertz, discovering the photoelectric effect, in combination with Planck’s atomization of light energy (one now says "quantization"), led Einstein to suggest the "heuristic viewpoint" that therein a proof that light was made of particles.

So wave or particle? The situation became more intriguing when photons (or, in general, particles) were fired in the apparatus (whatever it is), one photon (or particle) at a time. Photons (or particles) still behaved like waves.

The largest optical apparatuses (please excuse the Anglicized Latin grammar…) known are galactic clusters. They lens the light, using their formidable gravitation to do so. According to Einstein theory of gravitation, light follows geodesics of spacetime, and those are bent by mass. (Newton’s theory of light produces roughly the same gravitational lens effect, as Laplace, who predicted black holes, using Newton’s particle theory of light, would have pointed out.)

So far so good, but what does that mean? That means photons delocalize around galaxies themselves… since they interfere with themselves, around galaxies themselves. This, of course boggles the mind, so common minds do not like to consider the possibility. But there is no alternative.

Hence the atom of light, the photon, is, most of the time, quite far from being at a single point. Instead it can "localize" at points which are quasi infinitely large geometries. The astute mathematician will be reminded of Alain Connes’ "Non Commutative Geometry", where points can be spaces.

I say, "most of the time", because a cosmological photon is for billions of years out there… in its delocalized state. I am just observing this, as it is. Most physicists, including the honorable Tamara above, represent photons following trajectories, as if they were Newton’s particles. But they are not. even Einstein made that elementary conceptual mistake (he did not need to go into the subtleties of the EPR thought experiment to find delocalization!).

Usual Quantum Mechanics is an abstraction of what is observed in human sized laboratories. Although, recently, photon delocalization experiments were conducted over distances up to dozen of kilometers. The results respected scrupulously the QM predictions. However, I am persuaded that this will not be the case as the distances become astronomical. I have a reasoning for this that I borrowed from Newton: namely, nothing can be instantaneous and at a distance. Such was the objection of Newton to his own theory of gravitation (which was instantaneous, and at a distance. "Einstein’s" theory of gravitation uses Faraday’s field concept and the speed of light to address Newton’s worries).

That nothing can be instantaneous and at a distance ("NID") was already the core of the Einstein Podolski Rosen paradox ("EPR"). EPR pointed out that "elements of reality", according to QM, could be spread out arbitrarily wide, and that makes no sense (because they took it for granted that everybody believed in NID).

However, the Bell inequalities were checked by Aspect and others, showing that it is exactly what happens. So, now getting inspiration from Raymond Poincare’, I will paraphrase him faithfully: if something is exactly what always happens , then it is a law of nature. Poincare’ brandished this meta principle to justify his postulate that the speed of light would always be measured to be c (this idea is attributed to Einstein, who actually read it in a book of Poincare’; Poincare’, like Buridan, was French, so he could not possibly have had a deep idea, according to the Anglo-Saxon conspiracy which considers that French culture has to do with wine and cheese. Only).

So let’s be clear: experimentally, and from its very formulation, Quantum Mechanics violates NID, "No Instantaneous Distance".

Thus, if NID, "No Instantaneous Distance", is made into a metaprinciple, one has to deduce that Quantum Theory, as it is, is false. Or more exactly incomplete, the way Newton’s gravitation is incomplete.

In this view, to complete QT one has to do away with its instantaneous at a distance aspect, thus, one has to impose the existence of a SUBQUANTAL INTERACTION.

Some hypocrites will scream that I do not respect the metaprinciple of minimum logic ("Ockham’s razor"), that this is not worthy physical speculation anymore. But actually Big Bang Theory supposes an unobserved, and unobservable field, the inflaton. At least my subquantal field is observable, and I claim that a lot of the 3 degree Kelvin cosmological radiation is just such an observation (3K radiation actually sets detection level for detection of the subquantal field).

In truth, all and any Quantum process is all about widely spread elements of reality that QM claim instantaneously convert to the singular. This is the old "Collapse of the Wave Packet". I just say it proceeds at some speed, TAU (ten to the ten the speed of light at least). To simplify, I will also hypothesize that this the speed at which the linear quantum guiding wave also spreads. That wave is known as the Quantum Potential in David Bohm’s refurbished version of De Broglie’s guiding wave theory (ooopss, De Broglie was another Frenchman, he invented the full blown Quantum Theory in 1923; QM was attributed to others later, although de Broglie got the Nobel 6 years after writing his thesis).

The difference between me and Bohm is that I have no more particle, and the Quantum Potential spreads at TAU. The potential is actually a MATTER WAVE. De Broglie seems to have believed in the physics of matter waves all along (Schrodinger adopted the idea, but was subsequently ridiculed by over-smart types such as Von Neuman; Von Neuman claimed to have demonstrated that there was no Quantum mechanics but Quantum mechanics, but it is increasingly understood that this is not correct). De Broglie had tried a particle-less theory too, the "double solution" .

I have my own version of the "double solution". It exploits the instability of non linear waves. A stable non linear wave, such as a soliton, is a fine balance between linear dispersion and non linear singularization. I view elementary particles, including photons, as a dance between the two aspects: when there is linear propagation (at TAU), linear dispersion, what we hypothesize to be "particle" propagation, dominates. When the matter wave field becomes locally too strong, having interacted with a subquantal field, it singularizes itself, localizing itself in one point.

A number of thought experiments and real practical experiments with very low intensity lasers interfering, show that matter waves are real. The matter wave from one laser guides, through interference, the photon from the other laser.

OK, let’s back down from the conceptual edge, and go back to our cosmological photons. How does the guiding wave and its delocalization fit in all this? What does this theory of mine all mean? As a photon’s linear guiding matter wave approaches a galactic cluster at TAU, imagine the scene: the linearized, delocalized photon matter wave, ten million light years across, bearing down on a galactic cluster at ten billion times the speed of light. The delocalized photon’s matter wave has a high probability to encounter a (still hypothetical) graviton‘s matter wave, or other the matter wave of some other particle hanging around the cluster.

The sudden local non linearity in the photon’s guiding wave leads to a collapse of said delocalized linearized photon. Then the photon will suddenly singularize, namely appear and interact somewhere. However, over the cosmological distances the delocalized photon was spread about, NID says that some of the photon will be unable to singularize in that spot where the singularity has started. Thus a distant piece of the delocalized photon will get separated from the rest of the singularizing photon, and hang around as cosmological flotsam. The photon will have reddened. In the next cycle, the photon, now a bit weakened, will delocalize again, and repeat the process. If this is correct, and the mean free (delocalized) path of cosmological photons varies (according to whether they come around regions full of matter), photons flying more in extremely empty space will be more redshifted (which is contrary to common sense, and will compete with the fact that photons zigzagging in clusters will get redshifted just from said zigzagging; so the two effects will have to be carefully distinguished).

Some will say that my theory violates relativity in spirit, if not outright computations, etc. Sure. That Relativity’s equations have proven extremely precise, for example for GPS, does not say anything about whether it is still obviously valid at the scale of galactic clusters.

Anyway, there is much more to say, but not today.

***

Patrice Ayme

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P/S 1: So, if light ages, for (sub) Quantum reasons, is the Big Bang completely false? Well, I do not know. Galaxies very far away seem younger, and all Quasars are very far away (at least 800 million light years) showing that, even if there was no Big Bang, the universe has been, in any case, changing, if not aging.

A reason to be extremely suspicious about the Big Bang is that the prima facie evidence for it, the expansion speed of the universe, is truly unknown: supernovas studies have shown it to be (incredibly!) accelerating (to be confirmed!). Moreover, conventional Big bang Theory has to hypothesize inflation, an expansion at gigantic multiple of the speed of light, for the entire universe. Differently from me here, the reasoning is ad hoc, and not from first, time honored principles. My motivation, as Nietzsche would insist, comes from the highest principles, saving the principle of energy conservation and NID, whereas the motivation of Big Bangers is as low as it can get, because they had to invent a field to save their creationism.

P/S 2: The famous Dirac pontifically declared in his text book that photons interfered (ONLY!) with themselves. But that was before the invention of lasers, which allowed to demonstrate that this statement was not correct. The fact that matter waves are real, if 100% confirmed, will probably be viewed, in the future, as the greatest discovery of Twentieth Century science.

P/S 3: The sketch of theory above was presented to some of the heroes of physics (LdB & RF).

P/S 4: "Spacetime is no real substance", hard core relativists love to claim, sounding a bit like hard core Muslims about the moon. But this is not clear, even in conventional Relativity. Indeed, spacetime can wave. By shaking the source of a field, any field with a finite propagation speed, one can shake said field at a distance, and thus shake an object responsive to said field, at a distance, after a while. Thus a finite propagation field carries energy away, and Einstein gravitational field does not escape to that rule.

But Planck had discovered that electromagnetic energy was quantized, i.e., made of lumps, quanta, particles. The particles are called photons. By logical simplicity, one assumes the same for gravitational energy. Hence the prediction of gravitons, in analogy with photons. But now, the gravitons are supposed to be particles like any other boson. Do they make spacetime or not? Do photons make the electromagnetic fields, or are just its quantal manifestations? Thus the question of the spacetime as a real substance becomes the question of the reality of the electromagnetic field as a real substance.

Simple questions, deep answers still unknown: for more than 30 years, it was obvious that potentials (by contradistinction with fields) could have a direct effect, being on the right hand side of the Schrodinger equation (which came from de Broglie). But one had to wait for Bohm and his student Aharanov to notice that (and it was immediately verified experimentally). By then the American born Bohm had been banned from the good old USA (for practicing all too advanced philosophy, apparently a no-no for the US Congress and Princeton University, in spite of Einstein just wanting him as assistant)…

P/S 5: The theory above in particular, and Quantum Theory in general, have absolute bearing on what philosophers call ontology, the study of existence. Indeed, Bohm posthumously published last book was: “The Undivided Universe: An ontological interpretation of quantum theory” (1993).

P/S 6: Naturellement, the theory above applies to (expected to exist by the field-wave-particle principle) gravitons. So gravitons ought to age, hence weaken, as they get away from dense sources of matter, and far out, for the same reason as the photons above.

This may relate to "Dark Energy": if there is less gravitational force to block the expanding force, expansion will accelerate. Notice in passing that this subquantal field of mine, which is each propagating particle, is expanding tremendously, at TAU (>>>>> c). So we may have the reason for the expansion of the universe below our noses, or more exactly between our eyelashes, as we see light waves interfere there… Any Quantum propagation is an inflationary universe, reduced to its simplest case, with, de facto, gravity zero (otherwise an interaction with a graviton would bring de-coherence).

In the present morass of General Relativity, gravitons are supposed to not interact with themselves (which makes no sense: they would be the only such particles). Speaking of morass, I did not stoop to mention the Copenhagen Interpretation (where TAU is hypothesized to be infinite, among other radical simplifications), and the Many-Worlds Interpretation (obviously a schizoid absurdity).

***

Francophobia Ought To Be Un-American

 

WHY RABID FRANCOPHOBIA, ALTHOUGH UBIQUITOUS, IS AN UN-AMERICAN ACTIVITY.

We know the USA is not doing too well when francophobia is rising. Another chapter in the unfolding depression, most probably.

ANTI-FRENCH RACISM, THE GROSS EDITION:

I recently mentioned that Britain and France declared war to Hitler on September 3, 1939, and won on May 8, 1945. This attracted comments such as:

"Phukin phoney French fought phony war.

Much like the French soccer team.

Herein is my problem with you, Patrice. You just cannot reconcile the fact that France gets her ass kicked first by the Brits then the Krauts. Just as Hitler scapegoated the Jews for losing WW 1, with the "stab-in-the-back" propaganda, so have you come up with the lame/same type of apologia. Please do some growing up… Obama used to be a ray of hope, but now you disparage him mercilessly. It is sooo obvious that Obama’s Bus has left without you. Get over it. You have a much better life here than in France. You just have no phukin clue. I am sure you will say you prefer France, but no one will support you there, not even your own mother."

[June 23, 2010. The strange spelling is to avoid spam filters. More personal considerations were edited out. I do not disparage Obama, instead, constructively, I am debating him mercilessly.]

Just as banks do derivatives in another universe, the correspondent above is in a derivative universe too. In reality, France and Britain have been allies since 1815, even invading China and Russia together, as good allies do, and have enjoyed the "Entente Cordiale" for more than a century. It is this Entente that broke fascism, not the belated, ambiguous activities of the USA. It is obvious in World War One. And so it is in World War Two.

By the time the USA started to shoot at Hitler, Hitler had already lost the war in England (Battle of England), North Africa (Afrika Korps had failed to seize the Suez Canal and get Iraqi oil), Russia (Hitler’s army had suffered huge losses at Moscow and Stalingrad)… and over Germany (British bombing raids were destroying German cities, and the Nazis were incapable of stopping them!)

Far from being enemies, France and Britain were beyond friendship, beyond dying for each other. In 1940, Churchill, De Gaulle, the British parliament and the French PM decided the unification of France and Britain. Unfortunately a coup during the apocalyptic Battle of France, the most deadly battle of the Western front in the entire war, prevented its implementation, at the last minute. Informed French contemporaries all regret that the unification did not come to be then (nowadays, as many Americans do not know, and even Paul Krugman recently, French, German and Brits are all citizens of the same Union).

The unification of France and Britain would have allowed France not to cease fire, while giving the entire French population the protected status of (British) citizens. Otherwise, as the French government had been physically destroyed by the Nazis, the Nazis could have claimed that all French resisting them were terrorists, since they had no state to back them up, and kill them like pests (that was done to many French soldiers and officers during the Battle of France, because they had resisted too much; the same happened to a few US soldiers during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944). If all French had been British, killing the French like pests would have been a clear and definitive war crime under the Geneva Conventions.

Even the New York Times allows its editorialists to feed racist hatred against the French. Roger Cohen wrote there an editorial claiming that "Just when you thought France could sink no further, it discovers improbable new depths to plumb thanks to … this imploding team where no middle ground binds the Muslim boys from the suburban projects and the clean-cut, middle-class French lad — Yoann Gourcuff of good Breton lineage?….It’s individualism rampant…It’s the distance between the tenacious French imaginary of the secular state integrating every immigrant and the facts of increasingly divided identity.

Removing Muslim veils won’t make France whole…Abidal is not alone in being a Muslim convert. Nicolas Anelka… also adopted Islam, as did Franck Ribéry on meeting his wife Wahiba (of North African descent). Romance in the projects happens with those who are there. France has become a land of Fatima Duponts without acknowledging it…something is working in America that’s dysfunctional in France. I know where I’d rather be an immigrant…Meanwhile, not wanting to look as rich as a French footballer, the president has cancelled the traditional Bastille Day garden party at the Elysée palace. It cost over $900,000 last year. Looks like a false economy to me. France should at least go down in style."

[The French team went on strike because Anelka, who Mr. Cohen condemns as a Muslim convert, was fired. Here is the paradox for American neo-conservatives. American neo-conservatives always celebrate the mediocre Ayn Rand for writing the "Fountainhead", a book where American millionaires go on strike, and the USA stop functioning. Now, of course, American millionaires never went on strike, and never will. But, in another French first, the entire world could admire the world’s first strike by multi millionaires, the soccer stars of the French football team. You would have thought that American neo-conservatives would have been on their knees, making incantations to their idols. Instead, they found in that multi millionaire strike another reason to vilipend France, showing that France is just a safe way to express their otherwise undirected racial hatred.]

Mr. Cohen, a practicing Jew (according to his published editorials) apparently resent the fact that some French convert to Islam, and that France is turning into Fatima Duponts without acknowledging it.

I know one of these converts, a good friend. His wife, born in Morocco as a Muslim, has been a close friend of mine for decades. She is a very pretty, blue eyed PhD biologist, turned manager. Her husband converted to Islam, because Islam forbids Muslim women to get married to non Muslims, under the penalty of death (in theory). Death being inconvenient, and wanting to see their family in Morocco, without the threat of such an inconvenience, he converted. The French being deeply secular, they don’t mind wearing a label they don’t care about.

Indeed they are both secular in the best French tradition, and do nothing Islamist (differently from me, who drinks no alcohol whatsoever). These pseudo conversions are a general phenomenon, hundreds of thousands of French have done it. They just mean that family peace is the true religion of France. Speaking of integration, polls show that even those French who are practicing Muslims celebrate Christmas, etc.

According to Cohen, the French soccer/football team loss proved that France was a bad, divided, racist society, whereas the American victory proved the USA was great in all ways, a racially harmonious society. Cohen forgot to mention the Watts riots (deadly and with nothing equivalent in France in the last 100 years). Cohen forgot that, in the last 30 years or so, only two French passport holders were accused of Muslim terrorism. One was killed by French police, the other is in American prison (he was implicated in 9/11).

Just last week six American Muslims were condemned for pro-"Muslim" terrorism (to life). The total Muslim origin population in France is even bigger than the American one (something which seems to upset Cohen). So one can compare. Many American Muslims hate the USA to the point of mass murdering Americans. Nothing of the sort seems on the horizon in France. All the recent anger of French Muslim in France was about the defeat of the Algerian football team (made mostly of dual citizenship French star players), resulting in the immolation of 15 of their neighbors’ cars by excited teenagers. The French repression apparatus tends to give a Gallic shrug to this sort of excitement. Much worse happens in the USA, where guns are used liberally, killing more than 30,000 Americans a year, and the total population in prison is more than 30 times greater than in France.

Even Obama has amplified from the presidential pulpit the concept of "anti-Americanism". But, all too much "anti-Americanism" is just how condemning plutocratism is called. For example in the mind of the first correspondent above, I am clearly "anti-American" (I removed the abusive parts where he mentioned this, to avoid too much inflammation).

It is true that, for example, I condemn Henry Ford for the early and gigantic help he gave to Hitler. We may have enjoyed Herr Hitler, just because of Mr. Ford. Among other generosities, Ford put Hitler on a yearly $50,000 salary, a gigantic sum under the hyper-inflation of the 1920s. Hitler had a private army with which he tried to seize power in Germany in 1923, and, considering the exsanguinous state of the Weimar republic at the time, only Americans could have paid for it. And that was just the beginning of American plutocracy’s interference in the rise of Nazi Germany.

Ford wrote a book, the “International Jew”, that the Nazis printed and distributed for free, by 1923, in their luxurious headquarters in Munich (no doubt paid by American plutocrats). So I am anti-Ford. Does that make me "anti-American"?

The notion of "Anti-American" activity is a curious one. Hyper nationalism in the USA is not just the First Amendment, the right of free speech, but apparently an imposed duty. The US congress had, until 1975, HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee). Now it still has the United States Oath of Allegiance (officially referred to as the "Oath of Allegiance," 8 C.F.R. Part 337 (2008)). It is an oath that must be taken by all immigrants who wish to become United States citizens.

Part of the short current oath is as follows:

I hereby declare, on oath, that I … will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same…so help me God.

This is curious, because it admits and expects, under oath, that the USA has “domestic enemies”. It also violates the separation of church and state since people are supposed to be helped by Dog. Not everybody ought to swear they believe in Dog. It contradicts pretty explicit text from the Founders, and is obviously anti-secularist. But never mind.

So why all the excitement against France? Well, France is the parallel republic, the progenitor, the historical source of the roots of American civilization… Wherever, whenever the USA does something, there is always the French alternative manner, now amplified by the entire European union, which has become a big France. The horror.

Of course the reciprocal is true, but, differently from the USA, this is well admitted in France, and, contemplating US alternatives there is not viewed as an Un-French, or anti-French Activity. The same is true all around Europe. Saying that such and such is much better in the USA than in Europe, is never viewed as a reason to terminate friendships in the EU, but so it is with the reciprocal in the USA. The smell of HUAC and the Oath of Allegiance is still in the air, like sulfur around a volcanic crater. No doubt why the USA has been going down the wrong road for 30 years.

Civilizations die when they are wrong, big time. The best way to not get wrong, big time, is to try to be right, honestly, and by answering others’ critiques, in depth.

By the way, truth be told, I have been driving Ford vehicles for more than 16 years… Intelligence rests on the ability to make distinctions. Henry Ford may have created Hitler, but his company can still make good cars, built by honest workers. And, truth be told, some more, not all of Henry Ford’s ideas were wrong. Some were excellent, like the one of paying his workers enough, so that they could buy his cars (an idea which eludes the genius of greed in Wall Street, version 2010). But very correct ideas here, does not mean no lethal ideas, there. Philosophically, it does not pay to be personal, it pays to target precise thoughts for destruction. (And others, for construction).

Intelligence, distinctions, prognostications: of these survival, and morality, are made. And what is deeply un-American is to behave as if it were not so.

Patrice Ayme

They greed, therefore they shrink

 

GREED IS ONLY A SECONDARY EMOTIONAL SUBSET, BUILDING SHALLOW BRAINS.

A bloody 10-year dispute in the Ugandan jungle ended in mid-2009 with the victors seizing the territory the vanquished used to hold. The vanquished were submitted to the final solution, exterminated to the last.

Primatologists at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, have observed the Ngogo chimpanzee troop in Uganda’s Kibale National Park for over a decade. Between 1999 and 2009, they witnessed 18 lethal attacks led by Ngogo males on another troop of chimps. They also found evidence of another three lethal attacks.

With more than 150 individuals, the Ngogo is larger than other groups. Attacks are made when a commando has more individuals than the enemy they meet.

In mid-2009, the Ngogo chimps had seized part of the home range of their neighbors, increasing the size of their territory by 6.4 square kilometres, or 22 per cent. Where only adult males in commandos had previously visited this area, now the scientists saw them "going in there with females and children and acting and shouting like they would if they were in the middle of their territory". The Ngogo chimps were probably drawn by food: black mulberry trees were fruiting in the area.

Thus chimpanzees kill their rivals to acquire land.

In other words, the evolutionary origins of some aspects of belligerent as well as cooperative behavior in humans, go deeper than chimpanzees themselves. It’s not surprising, it’s logical. More territory may have to do with greed, or with survival (excusable). And there is a complementary principle: to kill others, chimpanzees need to cooperate. Love is needed to kill, as the book "WAR" of Sebastian Junger, on the war in Afghanistan, makes plenty clear. In Afghanistan where the western chimpanzees try to grab territory from the locals, straightforward a task for the average chimp, as far as evolutionary morals are concerned.

Humans are more than chimpanzees, in part because they have more passions. They can use those passions to develop skills that allow them to go beyond physical territory to live satisfactory lives. Instead the obsession with profit, central to the reorganization by neo-conservatives in the USA in the last few decades, is the return to greed only, the return to the chimp. That there is some love in the mix proves nothing, since love is suspect, being necessary for killing.

Where do the plutocrats and their obsequious servants find the passion? Well, they don’t, they run out of juice quickly. And that enrages them even more. They enjoy rage: that’s all they have, in the way of passion. That may be one of the reason they like war so much: it brings some excitement to their otherwise dull lives. Indeed, those who run on greed run on a reduced emotional set. Emotionally, they are not fully human, thus neither are they neurologically. It is not just a question of a rapacious philosophy, but of a mutilated mentality, an amputated neurology.

Counter-measures that the greedy often uses, such as Hitler hanging around with little children, or watching westerns religiously, as he also did, after having had tea with the ladies every day, are not enough to turn greed around. To be fully human, one has to be emphatic for real (not just make belief empathy, such as Bill Clinton apparently seemed wont to).

Fox News was crowing that Americans give ten times more for "charity" than the French (07/01/10). Supposing it is true (and it most certainly is not), one has to understand that American style charity are mostly businesses that do not pay taxes: look at the salaries of their executives, and see who profits.

An example is "Playpump", a "charity" with Clinton, Bush, Case, and countless US worthies, propelled by US taxpayer money. That has turned into a disaster and child exploitation, according to "Envoyé Spécial ", a French inquiry show. "Playpump" replaced valid hand pumps with useless runabouts, that break down, and adults cannot use (without getting debilitating tendonitis). As usual, some filled up their pockets, no doubt.

Plutocracy also uses "foundations": the foundation law was passed, the same day as the income tax was passed.

When the heartless cross the desert, where do the walls come from? Where do the profits come from? In the derivative universe, what came of reality? People may say that they don’t do derivatives. But their banks do, and it is mostly what the biggest banks do, and where all the money goes, when it’s not going to war. At least $600 trillions of it, in the USA alone. Financiers try to obfuscate this observation by counting only net positions (around 25 trillion dollars). But that is similar to the difference between revenue and profit. The size of a company is pretty much about its total revenue. And this is the principle of the Gross Domestic Product computation: add all transactions.

We want to manage (nomy) the house (eco) because we have heart. More exactly, we will manage the house well, if, and only if, our heart is good. And only because it is good. So it is not finance which is the most important, but the heart. A house is a place one shares with others. It is important to feel that relationships with others should be good. The way to achieve that is not by spending more on the military than the rest of the world combined.

Searching for power, namely being driven by greed goes against that. Finance is just the hydraulics of power. To know where and how power ought to be exerted, one needs a big heart.

Economy without heart is like chicken without head: it has no future, it does not know what to do. Is it better to wage wars overseas, or have jobs at home? An economy without a heart does not know.

So all what the Obama administration knew is that its people paid, at one point or another, by Goldman Sachs (Summers, and many inside the administration) wanted the financial system, and by this they meant, their friends, re-established the way they ever were. They have been.

This is all and only what is happening to the economy of the USA now: it has saved those who caused the financial disaster, re-establish their previous positions of power, and it does not know what to do next. The top 25 hedge funds managers made more than 25.3 billion dollars last year. When in doubt, make the rich richer, it’s good to know the Calf is ever more Golden, for those who debase themselves, and have nothing else to look up to.

As the worst oil spill started, the government of the USA respected BP as if it were the Golden Calf. Other countries would have established martial law as far as BP were concerned. Indeed, some European countries have a law saying that a private oil company has 24 hours to get things under control, before the government takes control, in case of an oil spill.

Cynics will observe that the government of the USA has no control over the plutocrats, because it is made of plutocrats and their "friends", and admirers. And that may have been a factor in taking 75 days to accept international help with the oil spill; the American hyperpower not only does not see itself as needing others, but has a problem admitting it’s powerless ( a strong detonation next to the well would have closed it, but the US Navy was not consulted that I know of). If the American people realized that governments overseas were ready to address BP properly, but that the government of the USA was not, it would look bad, so better to prevent the aliens to come and help, all together.

As McLuhan put it, "The Medium Is The Message", and this is certainly true with the Internet, in the case of many of its users. Ever increasing use of mental jumping around there is making people increasingly shallow as Nicholas Carr argues in his new book "The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains". A preferred shallow technique is hyperlinks which link to useless, suspect, or bad sources, so what looks well documented may well be trash.

The main problem, though is that people cannot keep their attention either long, or deep. The discrepancy between the administration of Obama (crammed with lobbyists from Goldman Sachs), and Obama’s promise not to use lobbyists, maybe another consequence of all this shallow thinking. It probably will be demonstrated physiologically with the shortness of neuronal chains, someday. Maybe the experience could be run now, putting rats on the Internet…

13,000 years ago, on the Indonesian island of Flores, a completely different species of hominin, the Hobbits, in no way our ancestors, having being separated from our lineage for at least two million years, were exterminated by homo Sapiens. That is one of the thing Homo sapiens does best: apply the final solution to others. Now he is the only one left standing.

 

Only the careful cultivation of more passions than greed will allow Sapiens to survive. When Voltaire spoke of cultivating the garden, he meant the garden of passions. Gardening a real garden helps. One must cultivate many passions in one’s garden.

***

Patrice Ayme

***

Technical detail: "Hominin" is not a misspelling for hominid; it reflects a change in the knowledge of human evolution.

Paleoanthropologists generally followed the taxonomic system followed by the 18th century scientist Carl Linnaeus: the family of Hominoids included the subfamily of Hominids (humans and their ancestors) and Anthropoids (chimps, gorillas, and orangutans).

However, molecular studies show that humans, chimps and gorillas are closer to one another than to orangutans. So, Hominoids split into two subfamilies: Ponginae (orangutans) and Homininae (humans and their ancestors, and chimps and gorillas). A further breakdown of the Homininae subfamily Panini (chimps), and Gorillini (gorillas). The rest are the Hominini (humans, their ancestors, and fellow travellers, including the Flores Hobbits).