Quantum Will?

 

Abstract: Philosophers, when studying any subject possibly anchored in the real world, and, in particular, consciousness and free will, cannot ignore physics. Why? Because, with Quantum theory, physics has taken a very deep, very different and, one could say, nearly metaphysical turn. And biology took it too. It’s a Quantum world.

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IGNORANCE DOES NOT MAKE WISE:

Philosophers have been known to speak about free will, while ignoring the Quantum. However, to worry about free will without worrying about the Quantum is obsolete. Why? Because free will is supported by neurobiology, a type of nanotechnology.

It was known for a very long time that Quantum effects were central to nanotechnology and that biology was a form of nanotechnology. Schrodinger suggested in his book “What Is Life?” that  information should be stored in an “aperiodic crystal”. He also remarked that the Quantum ought to be central in biology. Now we have direct experimental evidence that biology is Quantum.

And not only that, but biology is going to reveal itself to be much more Quantum than anything. Why? Because biology is weird, so is the Quantum, and the weirdness of the latter boosts the former, as I will show. The weirdness of consciousness and the weirdness of Quantum physics have too many aspects in common not to be one and the same. Considering what is now known about vision and chlorophyll, one can feel fairly certain that the Quantum is the enabler of biology.

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THE QUANTUM IS EVERYWHERE:

Most serious people knew little about Quantum Physics up to the 1990s, besides the fact it did not have to do with “classical physics”, and it was unfathomable. However, it came to light that quantum computers, should they exist, would be very powerful. Efforts to make them revealed an entire menagerie of powerful unknowns, at the basis of physics, thus shattering the arrogance of high energy physicists (the guys who discovered the theory of everything on a string or membrane somewhere). Serious people also thought that classical physics was plenty enough to explain biology. Many still do.

That was philosophically silly: biology is physics, and physics is Quantum. Biology has to do with molecules and atoms, and so does Quantum physics. Nanotechnology, is, by definition, involved with Quantum effects. That’s drastically simple an argument: I breathe, therefore there is air. I swim, therefore, there is water. I think, therefore there is physics. And physics, we have discovered, is mostly not about cannon balls (as Newtonian physics is), but about the Quantum. Inter-molecular forces are Quantum effects.

Sneering that there is such a thing as classical physics, is irrelevant. In the real world, there is no classical physics. We don’t even know where gravity comes from (Einstein’s theory is basically a tautology on steroids; it is very precise in geostationary orbit, but, overall, explains very little; it should be called the Riemann-Einstein theory, because Riemann had the basic idea in the 1860s; that’s old).

Gravity probably relates to the Quantum. Or so it is thought. Why? Because the Quantum is everywhere else. The obverse theory has even been suggested: that Quantum decoherence would come from gravity.

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MOST CLASSICAL PHYSICS IS QUANTUM DEEP:

In a sense the story of the Quantum started in Greco-Roman civilization, when the idea of atoms was suggested.

The idea was that matter was made of indivisible particles. Atomic theory got mostly proven when Brownian motion was shown to be, in combination with heat, to be an indirect effect. The atomic world, as imagined by the Greeks, was a tiny replication of the apparent world: as two horses were separated, two atoms were separated.

But reality turned out to be much more subtle and complicated. Namely, smaller is different. In particular, it turns out that, as things get smaller, they get intrinsically overlapping. And how do we get overlaps? Well, through waves. What’s more overlapping than a wave?

Quantum Physics was discovered progressively. For centuries people had no idea that it was what they were doing. The explanatory power of waves surfaced in the seventeenth century, with the wave theory of light of the Dutch Huygens, and, involuntarily, Newton (although he tried to explain optical rings that he discovered with his particle theory of light, it was a blatant wave effect). Around 1800 CE, an English medical doctor, Young, discovered light interference. The wave theory of light was soon confirmed by Poisson (Poisson predicted that a dot of light would appear behind a lighted ball, just as sea waves gain height at a distance behind a reef). Maxwell found that electro-magnetic waves were going at the same speed as light, so ought to be the same.

The mystery thickened when it was found that said waves materialized as energy packets whose energy depended upon their frequency (Hertz, Planck, Einstein). De Broglie then postulated that any body was associated with a matter wave, whose wavelength depended upon the momentum of said body. That gave the entirety of Quantum Physics: uncertainty momentum-position, uncertainty energy-time, “Schrodinger” equation, etc. Dirac a bit later assumed the electron was a relativistic wave, id est satisfied the simplest wave equation whose square was the relativistic: E^2-p^2 c^2 = m^2 c^2, and got spinors and antimatter out of this hypothesis.

The nature of the waves is unexplained in the plenitude we are tempted to attribute to them. All we know is that they are complex valued and the norm of their square is the probability the particle will be found. Continuity considerations force waves to penetrate materials, thus we get the TUNNEL EFFECT: the ability of particles to materialize across energy barriers, which was viewed as impossible, prior.

Also, after an interaction, particles, in their wave form, are in an entangled state, and so they stay until one element of the entanglement is made to interact again. Meanwhile the system can explore all at once, all the domain that the entangled wave can reach. This is exactly he effect that biology exploits in the case of chlorophyll.
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THE QUANTUM IS ALL OVER BIOLOGY:

Chlorophyll molecules do use macroscopic entanglement. Groups of them get together into an excited state, and wave, touching all the opportunities at once, until they find the best solution, and transmit the energy, namely electrons, far away.

Biology uses electrons all over. So it’s just a matter of time before Quantum is found all over electronic conduction, all over biology. It is now understood that room temperature Quantum effects organize the world (Something similar one uses in spintronics, giving the ability, at room temperature to enter macroscopic states that send energy without any losses, far away. Another way human engineers hope to use Quantum entanglement to do many classically impossible things).

This turns many pieces of received wisdom (which all too many of the naïve admitted without proof), on their heads. So here is what we know now: Quantum Physics can be overwhelming, a dominant effect, even in its weirdest manifestations, even at room temperature. Biology evolved to harness Quantum Physics’ full power. Biology could not do without Quantum (photosynthesis is the bedrock of the pyramid of life).

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MINDS AS QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENTS:

Quantum entanglement is what happens during Quantum processes. This is not what physicists would usually say, so let me explain. There are basically two types of Quantum processes.

1) those happening particle to particle. (That is what high energy physics and its Feynman diagrams worry about in the simpler case where delocalization matters less.)

2) Quantum processes where the particle interact directly with the background geometry: diffraction, the two slit experiment, and the tunnel effect are examples. These effects historically came first.

In both sorts of processes, a delocalized Quantum wave is the fundament. Quantum delocalization has a lot of the characteristic traditionally assigned to consciousness. It tries to get everywhere, it acts as one, it’s in its own space, it acts on matter, but it’s not matter, etc. What’s not to like, for the spiritually inclined?

The least one can do when trying to explain something maximally complicated (in this case consciousness) is to use the maximally complex conceptual instruments one has. One does not want to do like the Greeks, after Archimedes, who tried to elaborate only what they understood best, ignoring the rest (the would-be successors of Archimedes ignored non-Euclidean geometry, the irrationals, the heliocentric theory, the zero and infinitesimal calculus, all of which had been suggested before Archimedes’ death).

Ignoring what is too complicated for comfort has long been the history of modern physics, as aspects of high energy physics were pushed, while the fundamentals of Quantum physics were ignored (they are ignored less now that the Quantum computer resists understanding, while biology exhibits so far irreproducible aspects of quantum computing insolently).

So macroscopic entanglements have to become part of the explanatory scheme for consciousness: if chlorophyll does it, so should the mind (one may view this theme as evoked in the movie “Avatar”). One may readily wonder if such excited entanglements do not occur in the simplest animals.

Quantum computers manipulate fundamental bits of Quantum information called qubits, which are entangled states. the whole difficulty of Quantum engineering is that if qubits get manipulated too much, they lose their coherence, their entangled nature. In this sense: the QUANTUM IS PRETTY META-PHYSICAL.

Some of the all too philosophically inclined will reply that Free Will is first a metaphysical problem, not something physics can answer. But, of course, and therein the difficulty of Quantum physics, Quantum processes tend to be, in practice, metaphysical, because when physics intrude, they elude.

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FASCIST METAPHYSICS VERSUS RATIONAL METAPHYSICS:

What is metaphysics? In general it comes in two types. 1) superstitious metaphysics, which rests on the hypothesis that part of the world is the domain of god, and not that of minds we can understand. This is the position explicitly stated by Allah in the Qur’an to fend off vulgar people asking too many questions about his relationship with his apparent collaborator Satan (!). We may as well believe in little green men stoking the fires in the heart of the sun, and chubby little men bearing gifts in their reindeer pulled flying chariots.

In truth that appreciation for this sort of metaphysics is an instrument of domination. It impresses on the commons that there are questions without answer, too hard to inquire. Like why is it that some have everything, and others, nothing. In all fairness… Obama will tell you that, “in all fairness”, Larry Summers made a “heck of a job”, and the fact you don’t get it proves you are beyond help.

2) rationally grounded metaphysics:

It is simply what is beyond physis, nature, physis was the word for the natural world in Greek (in contradistinction to the world of the Gods). Why do we need such a notion, how do we know it’s necessary?

Hilbert suggested a number of problems in 1900 about proving the consistency of mathematics. A generation later, Gödel showed that any non trivial logic cannot prove its own consistency. In other words (and this is my own formulation) there are sentences in mathematics which can proven only in the context of metamathematics.

Since any language can be encoded in mathematics (that was discovered 20 years before Gödel), this means that any language will contain statements which can only be proven in a metalanguage. Substitute “physis” (that is, what we know about the real world) for the language, and one gets the necessity for metaphysics. In a way, there is nothing metaphysical about metaphysics, it’s very logical, very natural.

Thus whenever we hold a discourse, however precise and restricted, it is within a metalanguage (commonly English, or any other human language, since they are all equivalent).

In other words, there is what we are sure of, or are pretty sure that we could be sure of, and that is physis. Then there is the rest, and that is meta-physis. Metaphysics is very important: this how babies learn; from the weaving of the context, a lot of it so diffuse as to be metaphysical, to the particulars of languages and significations (body, sign, and verbal languages).

So what could be metaphysical free will? Well any will, which look free from the law of the natural world. For proving its existence, we would need to know all of physics first. Which we do not. Neither the physical law, nor, a fortiori, the initial conditions are known.

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Conclusion; QUANTUM FREEDOM:

Consciousness certainly involves Quantum entanglements: if it did not, a new law would have to be pulled out of a hat, namely that consciousness is outside of physics. Quantum Mechanics has elements of intrinsic uncertainty, and those can feed some appearances of human freedom. An example is coming from computer chips, which are presently enormously gross structures relative to the atomic detailling of life. Thorium atoms can decay, and the energetic alpha particles they emit can play havoc with one of the tiny transistors in a chip, making the computer crash. There is little doubt that the finest structures in a neuron are much more sensitive. So the occasional neuron will fire because of a cosmic or quantum event.

Thus the very notion of freedom of the will comes into question. In the present state of Quantum theory, Quantum processes are somewhat predictable in the following sense. The probability waves are constrained by the background geometry. But, given the geometry, the precise occurrence of events is not predictable, and that means that the Quantum behaves as if, once taken the constraints in consideration, it were completely free, free even of examination.

Another reason for philosophy to integrate Quantum Physics is that Quantum theory is stuffed with new models that society in general, and philosophy in particular, could profitably use.

The most astounding thing is not that the universe is understandable, but that some of us find the will to understand it.

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Patrice Ayme

Aphorisms End October 2010

 

REASONING IS NOT RANTING

The fashionable word "rant" is ubiquitous, to qualify essays. The idea is not to take oneself too seriously, in self deprecating Anglo-Saxon fashion. But it is abused. Subtly, confusing a discourse, any discourse, with a rant, allows most people to say anything whatsoever, because, supposedly, everybody is ranting. Ranters get rent from ranting, and intellectuals get despised as ranters.

Intellectuals don’t generally rant. Intellectuals generally reason. And reasoning is not ranting.

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TRADE DOES NOT BRING PEACE, BUT PLUTOCRACY BRINGS WAR:

Montesquieu in "L’Esprit de Lois", in 1758, celebrated trade ("commerce"). Wherever there is commerce, the ways are sweet ("les moeurs sont douces"), and, wherever the ways are sweet, there is trade. However, by the end of the 19C, it was considered as obvious, in England, that German travelling salesmen were bringing England down, and should Germany disappear, England would be much richer.

We know what happened next.

A prime motivator of the German fascist aggression in August 1914 against France and Russia (and Belgium, Luxembourg, etc.) was the certainty that the Prussian generals had, that the terms of economic expansion were unfavorable to their economic advantage.

The fact that Russia was democratizing while developing economy at an extremely high rate, from French investment, in the world context of the French world empire (let alone the empire of its "cordial ally", Great Britain) let the fasco-plutocratic structure inside Germany and Austro-Hungary facing its own demise at the hands of its own parliaments.

So the "Prussian Staff" generals (encouraged by the government of USA president Wilson) decided that, the earlier a war against Russia and France, the better. As the assassinated Archiduke, the Kaiser’s closest friend, was a very strong, albeit grim, partisan of peace, his disappearance spelled opportunity.

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WHEN BASIC MATH REFLECTS BASIC NEUROLOGY:

The question of being relates, in the most skeletal fashion, to the foundations of mathematics. That, in turn has consisted in trying to find out what the basic concepts are. For example, sets. However, category theory concentrates instead on relations.

The basic law of category theory is associativity: f(gh) = (fg) h. This, of course, has a direct neuronal interpretation: the interconnection between neurons, and how electrical impulse goes along associatively.

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From the Oxford web site:

 Archive reveals public enthusiasm for Anglo-Saxons

considering the Anglo-Saxons invaded Britannia in a war which lasted generations, and the British army fled to Celtico-Roman Armorica, thereafter named "Bretagne" (from Britannia)… This is a bit of a stretch.

Charlemagne finished the Anglo-Saxons in a 30 year war (coagulating them finally with Christianity). The Northern Germans had stopped Rome, with a heavy defeat under emperor Augustus, when three elite legions, their auxiliary troops, and fellow travelers  were annihilated  in an ugly three day battle in the drenching rain, between a swamp and a forest, made possible by betrayal. In his testament, Augustus recommended to his successors to leave the unconquered parts of Germany alone (a strategic mistake, as Julius Caesar knew).

The Franks, themselves Germano-Celts, spent three centuries conquering the entirety of Germany, and then more.

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ANAL PHILOSOPHY:

Jimmy_sanfrancisco wrote:

English speaking philosophy employs the resources of modern mathematical logic (particularly the predicate calculus, but others as well: intentional logic, modal logic, etc.) when doing philosophical thinking, and Continental philosophy does not. Another important difference is this: many English speaking philosophers don’t believe in the traditional demarcation of philosophy from science: philosophy IS science looking at itself; otherwise put, philosophy IS nature looking at itself.

Ergo, playing Socrates, I have deduced that nature being philosophy, is also science, thus demonstrating that everything is absolutely all.
An aside: most research mathematicians know nothing about modal logic, as a theory. But they are expert practitioners of it, for their daily bread. I would assume that so is anybody who seriously thinks.
Finally: analyein "unloose, release, set free," from ana "up, throughout" + lysis "a loosening," from lyein "to unfast". Everybody seriously thinking is analytical.

I will propose that "Analytic philosophy", also known as the "linguistic turn", is just a trick to shun most of philosophy, thus making it compatible with the USA imperialist machine known as "American exceptionalism" (aka "Wall Street").

Linguistic “philosophy” turned philosophers into delicious mussels, clinging to the base rock of imagined certainty, to be tasted at leisure by the plutocrats.
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IMPERIUM FRANCORUM: STILL ORDERING AROUND:

One of my readers makes fun of me. After I said something positive about the Franks "Dearmother" lets go the usual derision of all too many Americans relative to anything reminding them of France. Said she: "The French did everything good, didn’t they?"

Well, everybody knows about the Roman empire. But the empire of the Franks, Francia, has lasted longer, named, and spawned what is commonly known as "Europe". The later word, under the present meaning was invented by the Franks, indeed. So was the place: 90% of the European Union is the Imperium Francorum (all but Scandinavia and Ireland, keeping in mind that the reconquest of Iberia from the Muslim hordes). " Certainly the Imperium Francorum and its descendant regimes (including the USA) have proven more important to civilization than Rome itself.

The Franks demonstrated that the Greco-Roman empire was a deviation from civilization, similar, but worse, than the American enslaving south, and for similar reasons. The Franks demonstrated that the Greco-Romans could be overcome, and that is why they claimed to descend from Troy.

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DID THE GOOD SAVAGE THEORY, INDUCE SAVAGERY?

The myth of the good savage was believed in the France of the Ancient Regime. However Captain Cook then got stabbed in the back, and was eaten. The Comte de la Perouse, the other great explorer of the Pacific of the time, was then savagely attacked in Samoa (among other places). La Perouse stopped believing in the “Good Savage”. But the later event was unknown, and the former not properly meditated when the French Revolution came around…

By 1793, the French Revolution has turned very bloody. Of course, a coalition of all the old regimes in Europe had attacked the French republic. Nevertheless one may wonder if the myth of the good savage did not influence the populations: if the savage was so good, would not being savage make someone good? A new crime to attribute to Rousseau, the disparager of civilization…

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EVOLUTION IS DIABOLICAL, THUS GOD:

How does evolution induce progress? Though diversity, and then competition between the diverse forms, to select forms with superlative survival. Thus the interest of sex, and thus the interest of… racism. Interestingly, as archaic Homo Sapiens (H. Rhodesiensis and, or H. Heidelbergensis) split into Homo Neanderthalis and the other one(s), specific genes were evolved by the superior (as far as living in Arctic climate) Neanderthal form, to be then re-injected into the "main" Homo Sapiens Sapiens line.

Thus the engine of evolution is conflict, to determine who, and what is superior. Superiority being defined by annihilation, or infeodation.

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IDEAS ARE IDEAS, AND "MEME" WAS A BAD IDEA:

Amusing development. Here is Richard Dawkins, around October 26, 2010: " My original purpose in introducing the concept of memes really was not to produce a theory of culture, but rather to say that Darwinism doesn’t have to be tied to genes. It can work wherever you have a self-replicating code. We should actively be looking around for other examples of self-replicating codes which are “doing the Darwinian thing.” The important thing is not to get too hung up on genes when you’re doing your evolutionary biology."

That reproduction is geometrical, not just about DNA, I have harped on for a long time, happy to see Dawkins insisting on it now.

All along I held that using the concept of "meme", at least in culture, was completely idiotic. Because "meme" tried to replace an existing concept, the IDEA. If we called the exact same things by different names, just for the heck of it, mass could become "krutch". The only thing to be gained would be confusion, and it has a name: slang. Or rather slang is too much a compliment to pay for this sort of confusion.

Now Dawkins has changed his story. In his new usage, though, meme comes across another existing concept, REPLICATOR. It is useless to duplicate replicator with meme. It is true that biology reproduces (sort of), and that DNA based genes and their 1990s genetics are only part of the story. Epigenetics also reproduces, and so do various geometrical structures (including little factories inside bacteria). But there is no need to create a new slang for it: we are confused enough, already.

Anyway, it is nice to win the war of memes…

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DARWIN DID NOT RECOGNIZE EVOLUTION FIRST:

Another war to win is the silly Anglo-Saxon identification of evolution theory with Anglo-Saxons in general, and Darwin in particular. Maupertuis invented the idea of natural selection through comparative advantage (and published it in books circa 1748; but of course these books are in French, the original English which the presently devolved Anglo-Saxon does not read). Lamarck invented nearly everything in evolution later attributed to Darwin, even doing to mollusks what Darwin imitated with finches.

Now of course, being fully penetrated of the grandeur of the Anglo-Saxon, then allows to justify the invasion of Iraq and its puppet, Anglo-Saxon friendly regime. Or hide below the carpet the considerable Anglo-Saxon support for Hitler, emanating from the same. Of these little plots, a civilization is not made, though…

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IT MATTERS WHO DISCOVERS WHAT AND HOW:

Another point; by not having the correct sequence of who invented what, one does not get the logic behind it. It’s no coincidence that Maupertuis also invented the PRINCIPLE OF LEAST ACTION. Who said that was less important than Newtonian mechanics? By the way Newton’s First Law was found by Buridan, 250 years earlier, and why this got forgotten has a very important bearing on the notion of civilization, and how to preserve it (the Catholic church came to hate the hyper famous Buridan, a century after he died).

The exact history of sciences is tightly related to the valuation of the notions which give rise to the science.

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GLORIOUS PUPPETS:

Some Harvard smoke and mirrors historian comes up with the Harvard-serving theory that Obama is this rare breed, a "philosopher-king“. Good to learn that there are kings, and a fortiori philosophers, in the USA.

The historian who had organized a conference on the subject of Obama’s mind, sniffed that: “There seemed to be skepticism regarding whether Obama’s intellectual background actually translated into policies that the mostly left-leaning audience could get behind,” the historian, Mr. Hartman said "Several audience members, myself included, probably view Obama the president as a centrist like Clinton rather than a progressive intellectual as painted by Kloppenberg.”

Clinton was not a centrist. He was a Goldman Sachs puppet (he nominated Rubin CEO of Goldman as Sec of Treasury), Reagan loving (he nominated Rubin’s pet and Reagan adviser Summers as Sec of Treasury), and Clinton sold the future for an illusory prosperity. When he went into Bosnia, it’s because the French and the British had been there militarily for a very long time, and the French were shooting back heavy guns at the Serbs. Better to control them?

Clinton actually sold futures for the future, literally. Now Clinton is immensely rich, as his friends the worldwide dictators and plutocrats made sure he would get rewarded, for encouraging his successors (the Obambis to come). Clinton has carried a bag of rice for Haiti, to show his heart is pure, true. But the heart is not pure, the prison should be obscure, but so it is as the leopard has spots, hiding itself with light and shadow..

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PEOPLE VERSUS THE BIN LADEN WITH HELL:

Osama bin Laden had a new message. This time it was addressed not to the French government, but to the French "PEOPLE". "If it is your right to force free women to not wear veils, it is our right to cut off the heads of invaders." Progress: bin Laden implicitly recognizes the "equation" (the word he himself uses). On one side the French People, on the other, the regal "we" of Al Qaeda, a would-be theocracy.

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LEARNED NOTHING; YES WE CAN’T:

Obama comes on John Stewart’s Comedy Central show. Trying to imitate O’Reilly’s “The Factor”, Obama uses countless times the concepts of “folks” and “frustration”. There are never problems; those are being solved, but the “folks are frustrated”.

Stewart reminds Obama that he had said during the campaign new ideas needed new people, and then he brought in Larry Summers, and it looked like the one Larry Summers Stewart knew from the past (when the republic was sold to the plutocrats, under Clinton; and in exchange those who sold it became very rich and influential). For the one time in the interview, Obama is forceful. Says he decisively:"In fairness…Larry made a heck of a job!"

Fairness? Summers is the plutocratic servant who destroyed the separation of bank and speculation. He should not just have no job, he should be in jail. Instead the incompetent, unknowing Obama offered him a job, and the job, it turned out, was to fork trillions (yes trillions, whatever the propaganda is saying) of dollars to those who had created the crisis. Obama claims the financial crisis cost just 1% of GDP (which is not true, but he uses the occasion to imprint that notion; whether he believes in it is not clear).

Then as the audience of Jon Stewart’s show gasps, laughs incredulously, and grumbles its disapproval about "In fairness…Larry made a heck of a job!", Obama starts to chuckle uncomprehendingly. Stewart tells him:”You don’t want to use that phrase, DUDE!”

One can see Obama’s eyes spin. What did he get himself into? Are the folks resisting all the lies? Then Obama pirouettes and backpedals with acrobatic coolness, his comedian skills in full view. He flashes his giant seductor’s smile says:”I am sorry!” He adds hurriedly:"pun intended!" Sure. You can see him swimming desperately for the proper countenance that a man who would have been, after all, joking, would have had.

All of Obama’s ethical sense, displayed in fifteen seconds, in his sense of “pun”: say what they want to hear, whoever they are, whatever it is, it’s all a joke anyway. Thus the cockroach runs unerringly, waving its antennas. Jon Stewart may be the most powerful man in the USA, but it’s all too clear what he thinks. Obama is a better comedian: it is a rare moment when his guard is down (as long as one plays in the sand box delimited by his doctored data, which I do not).

Some will say: all politicians lie. No, not necessarily. Themistocles did not lie. It’s rather modern politicians, ever since Adolf Hitler promoted his "Big Lie" technique, who have been into lying. The most amazing part was that Obama thought that the audience would not object to Larry Summers, the number one architect of modern plutocracy. He probably thinks only who he calls with spite the "Ivory Tower Left" would know about the derivative universe which shipped all the jobs to China.

As the interview goes on, Obama declares that the "special interests" have the right to express themselves in a democracy. So they will always be there. No kidding. Plutocracy forever. A billionaire in California spends 150 million dollars of her own money (yes, 150, millions), trying to buy her election as governor. It’s expensive to lie on TV to that extent. Cool.

Obama calls that democracy, no doubt. But it’s venality, corruption, and unlawful in most countries. As it should be. Officially the USA is now 22th country in corruption, sinking fast, but that does not count what Americans view as legal. Four or five years ago, the USA used to be number one, the less corrupted country, but of course it was a self evaluation, because as I said what is legal there and nowhere else, does not count. So we are talking about an upper bound with that 22th rank. The arm of USA corruption is long: watch Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize, for waging war, but American war, no doubt a higher calling.

By the way, the democratic politicians are getting even more money from the “special interests” than the republicans…

Two-thirds of Iraqis killed were civilians: no inquiry. Could Obama get another Peace Prize next year? For pacifying the idea of justice?

A memo with the secret deal between health care plutocrats and the White House in writing, with the four main points, in black and white, has come to light. That included the engagement, by the White House,  of not expanding Medicare Part B.

The deal basically shows that Obamacare was rigged by the plutocrats, for their own benefit (as the progressives suspected, but the fools were arrogant enough to put things in writing).

(There are more than 14,000 officially registered paid lobbyists in Washington, for 535 lawmakers. That’s 30 lobbyist for each lawmaker. Just in Washington. "Special interests" is a euphemism for big money. It seems clear that Obama, just as the Supreme Court of the USA, confuses plutocracy and democracy, the greed and the soul… although they are not compatible.)

Jon Stewart presses Obama for having run as a reformer, and turned to superficial papering over, whilst the corruption festers below. Then Obama, apparently as always, anxious to please and seduce, recognizes that his slogan should have been :"Yes, we can, BUT…".

He emphasizes the “BUT”, and leaves it at that for a moment: “BUT…” Yes, we can, BUT…I am not kidding, that is what he said. Case closed. Yes, we can’t? Move on.

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Patrice Ayme

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In full fairness, ultimately Obama added, finally, on his second try:”It will not happen overnight.” Certainly. What happened overnight was that nothing was done which is clearly attributable to the Obama administration (most programs were started under Bush, and those were, understandably favorable to the plutocracy).

Krugman, or Crudeman?

 

HIGH DEBT = HIGH PLUTOCRACY.

Abstract: President Obama has been getting atrocious economic and financial advice, all across the spectrum, from Summers to Krugman.

This abominable advice reinforced the plutocracy, with tax cuts, and a giant spigot of money creation directed at giant banks and their demons. While the banks are getting nearly all the money, the rest of the economy has been weltering. The government is obsessed with throwing money at bank holding companies to save its friends, while accusing everybody else.

The main architect of this quiet coup, Summers, and his demoncrats and democrats, is supposedly on his way out (see Note1). That may be just a ruse to escape the sword of justice and positive change.

Another Reagan adviser posing as a democrat, and a progressive, Paul Krugman, has been more in evidence recently, as some of his advice has obviously gained traction.

Krugman’s advice: accusing China, with GUSTO (while sparing the American plutocracy of much blame), and augmenting government spending, BLINDLY. It does not matter if said spending is on foolish things: just spend. Keynes, the Jesus Christ of Krugman’s religion, said so, so it ought to be right. A detail: said augmented spending goes through… the friendly giant banks. Friendly to them oligarchs (see Rahm Emanuel’s 17 millions from one bank).

After accusing China, whatever China does, Krugman has also targeted European austerity programs, from Ireland to Lithuania, blaming them for the difficulties of the USA.

Krugman’s latest attacks are against the British government austerity program (some of which was started by Labor before the election in Spring, so there is real tripartisan support for it).

China and Europe are trying hard, in many ways, to change their economies and societies for the best, though, whilst the USA is just forking more money to its greedy plutocrats, calling that dismal masquerade "recovery and reinvestment" (a lot of these huge transfers of money go through hermetic notions such as "Quantitative Easing”, or buying toxic garbage from the banks, as if it were worth anything: it’s done through the banks… the private banks).

Let me repeat slowly. The advice of Krugman is dressed in leftist garb, but it is nothing of the sort. It’s like getting currency advice from Soros: dangerous at any speed.

The policies Krugman promotes, such as Quantitative Easing 2 (flushing the biggest banks with money), and xenophobia, are deeply pro-plutocratic (unsurprisingly Soros advises QE2 too).

This essay will rectify some of Krugman’s massive disinformation. Whether he is fully conscious of it, or not, is irrelevant: Krugman gives bad advice to the government of the USA. The USA needs to engage in Colbertism, as Europe and China are doing, and the defense department of the USA does.

Sending more money on the ravenous world manipulating financiers, as Krugman suggests to do even more of, in practice, amounts to feeding more poison to the victim, throwing more gasoline on the fire, breeding more black mambas inside the house, while screaming that more insanity will bring strength. And lying about other countries, from China to Great Britain, does not help. It’s internationalism at its worst.

***

***

DEBASING CHINA:

According to Krugman, China is bad, Europe is bad, whilst the hard working USA is good, as it tries single handedly to pull the entire world economy out of the slump it itself created. But the USA’s goodness is not quite enough to master the foreign devils. So sad. This is apparently Krugman’s latest New Trade Theory: USA sinks, because big bad aliens did it.

Nothing to do with reaganomics, Obama’s admiration for Reagan, Clinton’s dismal selling of democracy and the future to plutocracy, and Krugman’s work for Reagan, hand in hand with Summers. This is all the past, we don’t need to ruminate it. Krugman would rather talk about…1937. (Not to tell us about American plutocracy supporting Hitler, while undermining democracy, as what was going on then, but to talk about FDR overenthusiastic support of… interest rates!)

One has to know that Krugman is viewed as one of the authors of “New Trade Theory”, NTT, a sophistry which basically boiled down to claiming that trade is good, no matter what. NTT did not work for the common folk, thus apparently Paul Krugman is now down to trading insults with reality, in the apparent hope that this will distract enough simple common folks. Thus New Trade Theory has revealed its true nature: adding insult to injury.

New Trade Theory faltered by ignoring the enormous leverage American plutocracy would get by going global, while no legal strings were attached, and conspiring with local dictators (the later a good source of Bill Clinton’s prodigious income). Plutocracy could drive at any speed, carry whatever cargo it wanted, including the most precious good: people’s employment.

The result is the unfolding economic and social disaster in the USA (and a lot of the world). Krugman may be trying to change his spots to cleanse his soul. And Krugman liberally attacks all foreigners, all over, most of the time, thus diverting attention to the root cause of the problem, already clear with his old boss, Reagan.

Last week Krugman was furious because China had lifted its short term interest rates up to 2.5%. That should lift the Chinese currency, which is one of the obsession of Krugman. So Krugman gets what he wanted, but that makes him even angrier (because, as expected, it changes nothing).

Meanwhile the dollar of the USA is returning a colossal .18% on short term maturities (Fed Funds rate). Yes that is about zero percent. Yes, that is about 13 times LESS than the return on the Chinese currency! In other words the USA is trying to lower the dollar as much as possible (Obama said he wanted to double USA exports in the next five years. But he forgot the slight detail that the USA is becoming a banana republic. I cannot believe he will find so many bananas to sell, even if they come super cheap, not everybody wants to splurge and become obese on American bananas).

So Krugman accuses China to debase its currency, but the USA is debasing the US dollar thirteen times more (this, what I just uttered, is a parody of what plutocratic economists call a model, full of sophisticated mathematics, the sort of things Krugman claims he does. but it’s little more than smoke and mirrors, and silly graphs which mean nothing, except that plutocracy is hiding behind them).

In truth China has something like four giant infrastructure projects running concurrently, in education, trains, biology, clean energy, etc. China builds universities, and China builds Airbuses (yes, from the company headquartered in Toulouse). Just the Chinese High Speed Rail infrastructure project amounts to 500 billion dollars or so (it uses basic European HSR technology).

China has even offered to finance and build the High Speed Rail in California. That is because all the American money goes to American plutocrats, and none is left for mundane activities. As Stiglitz pointed out a few days ago:

“The US Federal Reserve may make funds available to banks at close to zero interest rates, but if the banks make those funds available to small and medium-sized enterprises at all, it is at a much higher rate.”

The banks keep the money, making risk free profits, feeding their bonuses, and their power.

And don’t worry: Silicon Valley plutocrats use private planes, and do not want to see 250 mph trains in their backyards, for many reasons, so it will not happen, for a long time (except if American sheep wake up and turn into combative Europeans, which is unlikely, because they have been brainwashed into believe that it is cool to be as cool and politically minded as barnacles).

***

WRONG IS WRONG:

Krugman, Stiglitz, and also myself, would be viewed, by many as critics from the left. As the last British election unfolded, I was more in support of Mr. Brown, who had long aggravated me, but changed his spots, once he became Prime Minister. However, I hold that the truth is the truth. It is not because one overall disapproves of the general drift of the new PM, Cameron, that one should then support invented data inimical to Cameron. But that is what Krugman has been doing.

When the sheep invents data to support its cause, it invites the wolf to do the same, and the wolf will do it better, with more drastic consequences for the sheep. 

In a remarkably misleading editorial, Krugman says the following (see full quotes in the notes):

1) "Fiscal austerity is the fad of 2010. That fad is fading, but the damage is done." (False: successful Europeans nations, such as Sweden and Germany, have been at austerity for arguably 20 years. Let alone France in the 1930s…)

2) Krugman asserts that austerity does not rest on careful analysis (False: not only it rests on careful analysis, all the way from the High Middle Ages, but austerity rests on careful experience: Europe is made of more than 30 nations, and some went austere, and came out ahead, while the profligate ones are down in the dumps.)

3) Krugman claims that austerity has been justified by the hope of gaining confidence. (False: Europeans and Chinese don’t give primacy to market and business confidence, due to the fact that there, in China and Europe, the state rules, rather than the plutocracy. In the EU around half of the economy is state.)

4) Krugman claims that "The sensible thing, then, is to devise a plan for putting the nation’s fiscal house in order, while waiting until a solid economic recovery is under way before wielding the ax. But trendy fashion, almost by definition, isn’t sensible — and the British government seems determined to ignore the lessons of history."

(False: the sensible thing to do is to do what has worked several times in Europe, let alone China: re-establish fiscal, economic and social order, FIRST. Don’t wait for plutocracy to toll for thee. There is no evidence that the other way around ever worked.)

-So what history is Krugman alluding to? Just the relevant, but specious case of the 1937 USA, when FDR squeezed "liquidity" (that is, money creation by private banks, in financial jargon) too early, reverting a nascent recovery of the PRIVATE economy.- This a special case, irrelevant to the present Europe and China. And, of course, irrelevant to the present USA where short term interest rates have long been put at zero by the government (and other rates have been made very low, by same government, to HUGE opportunity cost for the rest of society)-

5) Krugman compare incomparables by claiming that "Both the new British budget announced on Wednesday and the rhetoric that accompanied the announcement might have come straight from the desk of Andrew Mellon, the Treasury secretary who told President Herbert Hoover to fight the Depression by liquidating the farmers, liquidating the workers, and driving down wages." Krugman confuses here the private sector in the USA in 1931, with the public sector in Great Britain in 2011. So many words, so many ideas, so many concepts, so many years! It can all go zoom zoom in one’s head!

6) Krugman then observes that Great Britain’s debt is below "historical average". He disingenuously forgets to say that historically average debt, contracted in World War One was what the boom of the 1920s was engineered to fix (causing Great depression II). And that historically average debt, furthered by World War Two, and the USA financially perfidious behavior, ruined Great Britain durably thereafter. As a good American patriot, Krugman wants Great Britain to be historically indebted, so it can keep on being the USA’s poodle. Fortunately the present British government has no docile canine temperament, and has figured out American perfidy.

7) Sanctimoniously, Krugman gives the usual preaching about learning from history. But the preceding shows that as he threatens Great Britain with Japan’s fate, he forgets that Japan has a total state debt above 200% of GDP, nearly double that of Greece (itself much larger than Britain’s). Among dozens of other important facts he conveniently forgets to mention as true.

Paul Krugman forgets to say that, overall, the British government spending will keep on augmenting. UK government spending is planned to be UP by 6% in nominal terms by 2014. (Down 3% in real terms with inflation taken into account.) So much for the gloom and doom. Oh, wait…

Why so many spectacular cuts while spending increases? Because the payment of the interest on the British government debt is exploding, and the government has to budget it. It is pretty telling that Krugman does not mention the rotting elephant in the bathroom: what a jolly sight, what a happy surprise!

The problem of exploding interest is not exclusive to Great Britain. In France the entire national income tax is used to pay for the interest on the national debt. French national debt is still augmenting as more debt is piled up to pay for retirees, some retiring at 54 (as in the railways, as if we were still in the age of steam and coal). 10% of the French retirement is paid through more national debt.

***

KRUGMAN IS RIGHT (OF THE PLUTOCRATS), EXCEPT FOR ALL THE FACTS:

I reacted to Krugman’s "British Fashion Victims" with the following reply that the honorable Krugman and his New York Times had the kindness to publish:

In truth, Europe knows what it is doing, and Krugman, with all due respect, does not know enough about what he is talking about, to be cogent, as we will presently demonstrate by deconstructing most of his remarkably erroneous essay.

An example: Prime Minister Cameron program will reduce government employees by 490,000 (much of them through attrition, as employees retire with their expensive pensions). Krugman says that’s terrible, and it will depress the British economy.

However, Great Britain has six million civil servants in 2010. Proportionally to the population, it is as if the USA had 30 million civil servants (the UK has a bit more than 60.5 million citizens, the USA a bit more than 310 millions).

But how many civil servants do the USA have? Krugman forgot to point that number out. The USA has 18 millions employed in government, three times as much as in Great Britain. Three times as much, for five times as big a population. Thus, to have the same relative number of civil servants as the USA, PM Cameron would need to fire more than two million British civil servants.

Thus the situation is much different from what Krugman depicts it to be. Different times, different countries, different situations.

Krugman compares Prime Minister Cameron in 2011 to Hoover in 1931. In truth, by letting banks close, Hoover was destroying the private economy. Cameron and his government are cutting what they view as government fat. Education and defense are basically untouched. Nationalized health care is left completely untouched (as promised in the campaign).

Cameron’s and Clegg’s idea is to increase high technology plus innovation. Tories and Liberals are singing the praises of Airbus (a major employer in the UK, as it builds there Airbus’ wings). This is very far from what the Americans expected, as it behooves them that Britain would be anti-European, that is, against itself. The British government wants to make economies by sharing aircraft carriers with France. What is there not to like in this no non sense approach to the real European economy?

Indeed, the analysis in Britain is that the UK has fallen behind France and Germany in high technology industry (after centuries of leading, or being equal), and that this is the root of Great Britain’s doom, should it be not fixed immediately. The aim is to do whatever it takes to catch up in industrial high technology. This is a major insight of Tories and Liberals. It is of course a major rapprochement with the main line of France, first, and Germany, second.

This line of progress was the line of the Franks: instead of enslaving men, let technology do the work… And let’s keep the government small. After five hard centuries of using that method to pull out of the Dark Ages imposed by the Christian obscurantism and fascist theocracy, by the year 1000 CE, the Franks (basically the present Eurozone) had achieved the world’s highest GDP per head.

So it is not surprising that Europe is going back to the tried and true. All of Europe is reigning in state spending. Even Norway (which is more than twice richer, per head, than the USA). Even Sweden, the temple of social democracy, richer per capita than France, or Germany.

Even in Germany, the world number one exporter (even beating sneaky China, most of the time).

In France, more than 10% of the present retirement spending is paid by further borrowing by the state. This is unsustainable, thus unacceptable. Most of the French population (more than 60%) believe that it is unacceptable (while, paradoxically a majority supports the strikers according to the sacred French principle that loud protests are the only religion worth having… as long as it does not interfere with the All Saints vacation).

And the stingy Europeans are right. Those who have borrowed money are owned by those who lent it to them. The last time there was really major borrowing in Europe, it came to be called serfdom. This is indeed what happened in the High Middle Ages.

The debt had to be piled up, then, because the Imperium Francorum was invaded from all directions. First Charles Martel nationalized the church, to pay for the army. But that was not enough.

The terrible Muslim invasions were very expensive to fight as the attacking fascists had harnessed the resources of more than half, and the richest half, of the Roman empire to feed and equip their jihadist armies.

Thus, although the Franks had outlawed slavery, overspending, caused in great part by the necessity of rising the greatest armies since the heydays of imperial Rome, and the cost of reconstruction once the ravaging Muslim armies had been pushed out, brought them right back down into a system where the average person was indebted… And being indebted means being indebted to the rich.

The first European Prime Minister who came to understand that government spending had to be cut down was the Swedish PM, and he was a Social-Democrat. Social democrats had put in place the all controlling Swedish nanny state. That Swedish PM, as progressive a liberal as they come, embarked on a savage austerity program who made him very hated.

At the time, the Swedish economy was collapsing, so there was no choice. The PM started very crafty changes, replacing a lot of costly central state functions by cheaper local citizen initiatives, for example in health care ( midwives and other non MD medical personnel were allowed to make a lot of medical procedures, and lots of health care is conducted on the phone, making Sweden the best health care system, even ahead of the 2% of GDP costlier French health care, which is more gold plated).

Now, but for oil rich Norway, Sweden is doing better economically and socially than all other European countries. And Sweden is in the EU, and it has no oil. The Swedes are proselytizing, and the rest of the 26 EU countries are inspired by it.

In general, Scandinavia has long cracked down on the imperial state. Scandinavian politicians pay for all their private expenses, and do not fly business on flights less than 3.5 hours. One is far from the Imperial Roman state based in Washington, with a First Man ("Princeps") and a "First Lady" who make Nero and Caligula look like misers, relatively speaking.

***

IMPERIAL USA, DOWN THE PLUTOCRATIC ROAD: I SELL, THEREFORE I RULE:

Why does this all mean? Trying to boost the economy through throwing money at the people was done during the worst centuries of Rome. It led to success only in the sense that the fascist imperial degeneracy kept on going.

Of course, some will say that those days are back. Imperial Rome was at its most grotesque when the Praetorian Guard put the imperial throne for auction. Yesterday, Barack Obama came to the San Francisco Bay Area. Plutocrats paid $30,400 per person to come to events where the president was acting up. Two months old plutocratic babies paid their $30,400. Then, to have your photograph taken with the president, it would cost you another $6,500.

Yes, $30,400 is more than half the average family income in the USA. And yes, Barack Obama visited several plutocratic homes. Meanwhile the Praetorian Guard is building bases as if it were going to stay a century in Afghanistan. Never mind what Obama says, he will do as the plutocrats say. As long as they pay. A Silicon Valley plutocrat spent more than 100 million dollars of her money to be elected governor.

***

LEVERAGING STATE SPENDING FOR THE TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT OF THE ECONOMY:

I am as progressive as they come. I am for central state spending in health, education, etc. I believe in Colbertism, the invention, earlier, by King Henri IV, of the high technology, legislated advancing economy to provide every family with a hen in the pot, at least once a week, as he put it.

However, this government investing in a valuable future works better when the spending is similar to what is done with money creation through private banks (the fractional reserve money creation system). The state brings in 10%, of the money, the privates do the rest. So the privates leverage on public money. For example in Europe, 250 mph, High Speed Rail is financed and built by private companies, leveraging governmental input. The USA used to do this, for example when railroads were built in the USA in the 19C. But for that government has to have available money to spend. This is highly relevant: 1.2 million construction workers are idle, and they could be put to work on conventional railroads, making them faster, safer, more efficient. But of course that cannot happen as long as the money goes to the corruptocrats and other plutocrats.

To borrow for current spending is unacceptable, in a family, but even more in a country: a family can die, and escape debt that way, but not a country…without great mayhem. Actually this is exactly how debt leads to war.

Cautious spending, investment spending, is the way to go. Unfortunately, Obama’s spending, deluded by Reagan advisers, and their plutocratic masters, has been neither. What British PM Cameron is doing is risky, but it may well work. What has been done under Obama, so far, cannot work.

***

Patrice Ayme

***

Note 1: STIMULATING PLUTOCRACY, NOT JOBS: First there was Larry Summers, who used to be a Reagan economic adviser, at the inception of the plan to put the plutocracy in power much more than it already was ("trickle-down economics"). Summers advised to write as many big checks to the banks as needed, to save their owners and managers.

TARP was put in evidence, but was only a small part of the (on-going) support to the giant banks and their giant owners. A grandly called "stimulus" was also put in evidence. But it was nothing of the sort. More than half of it was made of tax cuts (yes, a la Reagan!), and most of the rest compensated for the states’ financial collapse. A tiny proportion went to creating jobs (mostly of the menial, non multiplying type, such as improving trails in the middle of national lands).

This meant that money creation was mostly directed at Wall Street. Money was created, to serve Wall Street, not industry. In 2 years Obama stimulated jobs for 50 billion dollars (the trails above, and a few potholes), while Wall Street, in bonuses alone, distributed to itself 300 billion dollars. The source of the money is the same: taxpayers. To create these 300 billion dollars of bonuses, about four trillion dollars were spent.

How? Through Quantitative Easing. Basically the government lent short at zero interest to the giant banks, which were then allowed to reinvest with the government on so called longer maturities, at much higher interest. Many other tricks were used, such as having nationalized companies (FHA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) buy at outrageous prices worthless mish mash of over-valued mortgages. said nationalized companies are broke.

The other of ex-twenty something Reagan adviser, Summers’ alter ego, at least in the Reagan White House, was Paul Krugman. He seems to be listened to recently (considering the USA’s aggressive dollar devaluation, and all azimuths attacks against other countries).

***

Note 2: HOW THE QUR’AN CREATED MIDDLE AGE SERFDOM: One way the Franks beat the Muslim armies, aside from sheer intelligence, was with very heavy cavalry, and its giant armored horses. The cost was tremendous, but a cavalry charge by European knights would go through Muslim horse like a hot knife into butter. More generally a highly specialized military aristocracy, training itself from early childhood was created (under Charles Martel). But it put all of Western Europe in debt. On the positive side, the savages from the north (Vikings), from the east (various types of Huns), and the south (Muslims), were thereafter domesticated, once their armies had been defeated and chased out (which took more than 12 centuries in the case of Europe itself, and various Muslim theocracies).

Note 3: American ignorance is an astounding marvel: The other day, Fox News’ Neal Cavuto, one of Fox’s stars, who thinks he is a business genius, was interviewing a BRITISH European Member of Parliament in Strasbourg, France (the Euro parliament sits in Strasbourg, part time).

As he interviewed the British European MP, Cavuto idiotically insisted, again and again, that "Great Britain had to be happy not being part of that club". Meaning that Great Britain had to be happy not being in the European UNION. First, the EU is not a club, but an Union.

Secondly Cavuto was interviewing a British Euro MP, knowing very well that the gentleman was British, and a Euro MP, but apparently, Cavuto was congenitally incapable of drawing the conclusion that this meant that Great Britain was part of the European Union.

This is the degree of ignorance of Americans about Europe, in full evidence. And it’s not just Fox’s Cavuto: Krugman and Stiglitz, and smart, for American economists, are both deeply ignorant of European politics, history and economics, to the point that the advice they give about Europe reminds of the advice of Huns about Ukraine.

(Stiglitz, as Krugman has long been anti-European; in the last few days, Stiglitz wrote an essay in the Financial Times along the lines I have long held, of doing what one could call an investment stimulus… by opposition to a current account debt pile up, advocated before. So some are learning… Hopefully such knowledge can reach Obama…) 
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When Religion Makes People Crazy

 

One of my readers, Mark, suggests that: "Maybe you should focus on whether religion makes people go bad, or whether already bad people use religion in a bad way?"

Religion is often causative of bad behavior, as Critias said, 24 centuries ago, and for the reason he said (see the preceding essay). But there is more. Sharp distinctions exist among religions: some are innocuous, and indispensable, some are black mambas, and ought to be disposed of, as such. Or admired from a distance, as such.

I define religion as an inescapable background to the human discourse. Religion is the context that allows the logical, and emotional discourse. So the basic idea of religion, is neither good or bad. Not anymore than the brain is good or bad. Having a brain implies having a religion: this is already true of the most basic logical systems (starting with first order logic).

Clearly, though, if the context, the religion, is full of viciousness, anger, resentment, it will make people bad. Contexts can clearly make people bad; see traditions of vendetta and blood feuds (which constitute a sort of meta religion, as horrendous blood feuds traditions in Albania, in "Islam", were nearly identical to those in Greece, in "Orthodox Christianity", or in Catholic Italy, next door).

Then I distinguish superstitious religions from the rest. Pretty much the rest means secularism (most forms of Buddhism having also superstitious elements). In secularism, only real facts from the real world, as determined by the science of the age ("Secula"), are admitted to build the metaphysical universe. (No, no contradiction; for example, physics and mathematics cannot function without their meta-elements.)

In a religion dominated by superstition, overarching metaphysical elements are introduced which "above-stand" (= super-stare). "Superstition" has come to have a pejorative meaning, an invention of the Christian-In-Chief, the self described "13th Apostle", emperor Constantine Himself. Constantine defined those following other religions than the one he had chosen personally, as "superstitiosus". That was meant to be an insult.

According to emperor Constantine, the other religions had elements which stood above the real world, thus they were unreal. But of course the same can be said about Christianity, with its woman who stuck to her story (Mary), its Holy Spirit which is also the Logos, the son, and the Father, while being one, and that God who claims to suffer for you, and you better believe it, or Jesus will throw you in the fire forever, being all about love and jealousy as He is, with His sword, His threats, and his countless "miracles". The Abrahamic religion, with its ethical admiration for a God who orders the death of the young male child is a particularly incoherent superstition (killing the young male child, most love, was an old fancy of the superstitions of the area).

Superstition is intrinsically friendly to madness, and gives a justification to irrationality, because it venerates so called "miracles", which are known not to be of this world; they stand above it (the Pope just determined that so called "miracles" happened with six new people, so he called them "saints").

An aggravating factor is that those miracles, those inventions known to be false, are supposed to be the most important "facts" of the universe. Thus the Big Lie is venerated (in Hitler’s approach to the universe, the Big Lie is a master concept, and rightly so for those who venerate holocausts).

Moreover people who are used to be officially mad about something innocuous, may well turned just as mad about something much less innocuous (such as Jesus’ obsession with setting people aflame).

There is no doubt that the shrieks of Jesus to burn people forever and ever were, and are, bad. Not only civilization nearly collapsed, but they caused the deaths of dozens of millions. There is no doubt Jesus’ cold rage led to the burning of philosophers and common citizens, as soon as the Fourth Century. There is no doubt that Jesus’ pyromaniacal ranting enabled the Dark Ages, as the fascist Roman emperors found in Jesus’ teachings the moral excuse to burn alive their enemies, and the knowledge that had made them possible.

And there is no doubt that the pyromaniacal violence, and obsession of the Qur’an with burning alive the enemies of God originated with the incendiary homicidal bleating from the "Agnus Dei".

Ali, originator of Shiah, wanted to burn his enemies alive, and did so (before being assassinated). If the teachings of Jesus had been as non violent as those of Buddha, I doubt Ali would have had such ideas, or, having them, would have been taken seriously, that he could put them in force.

So bad, violent superstitions create bad people, or make bad people worse. Another example of hyper violent superstition is Nazism, a racial superstition, which created millions of bad people, who, surely, had Hitler been Gandhi, would not have been as bad.

Hitler was conscious of this, and deplored that Christianity was not as war-like as Islam. Although Islam and European Middle Age Christianity both derived from the pyromaniac Jesus, their genesis and evolutions were very different.

Christianity, or more exactly ‘Orthodox Catholicism" was imposed by fascist power, from the top. Islam was an insurrection led by an analphabetic, but very smart reject. Soon Islam was captured by top generals, who wrote the Qur’an, accentuating Jesus’ pyromania, turning Islam into the world’s greatest war machine, which annihilated Persia, and devoured a few years more than half of the Roman empire. In Occident, it was the opposite; the Franks took control of the Roman empire, and that meant taking control of the bishops who controlled the Imperium Romanum, Pars Occidentalis.

Middle Age Christianity, a milder form, was created when the Franks defanged the old Roman Catholicism, which had caused the Dark Ages, and converted it to a civilization helping form. This was done, after several false starts, when the Franks took control of the "Occidental Roman empire", and domesticated it, starting around 480 CE, a process Saladin did ephemerally to Islam in the 13C (but now greatly forgotten).

Still another example of the viciousness of some superstitions: the Aztec religion, which promoted anthropophagia, to an extend so great that it revolted its neighbors (who were themselves prone to serve human flesh for dinner). This is how Cortez was able to rise an 80,000 men army to boost his own 2,000 Castillans. The Aztec superstition, clearly, had made a group of men prone to eat men to an extend insufferable to other men eating men.

Definitively religion can make men bad, and then, even worse. Nazism was a religion. There were plans to turn Nazism into a full blown religion. It was already clearly a cult.

Nazism was a hybrid of Catholicism (Hitler’s initial religion, and strong support), its strong anti-Judaism, and Germanic tribalism a la Herder, and a mish-mash of selection of the fittest, racial pride, lower class resentment, with militarism and plutocracy pulling the conceptual strings. The result was definitively a powerful , albeit insane, religion, which was on a collision course with French secularism. Nazism was rudely interrupted by France, and her empire, Britain, the Commonwealth, and their subsequent involuntary allies (USSR, USA).

Suicidal charges by engineers is how the Nazis broke the French lines at Sedan in May 1940. Those fanatics believed they were the superior race, and that metaphysics made their sacrifice easy to bear. On the positive side, after that, those peculiar fanatics were dead, never to be seen again, and were soon joined by another 50,000 prime elite dedicated Nazis who died in May-June of 1940 during the Battle of France. They were sorely missed by Hitler, in the following years, as Nazism, a racist superstition, having run out of the fanatics who made its early victories possible, bit the dust.

As they campaigned (in appearance) successfully in Russia, the intensity of Nazi losses came to be nearly as great as in France, 18 months earlier. Finally, Nazism ran out of Nazis, just as the Syrian and Arab Baghdad-based Caliphate collapsed after its armies got annihilated in France during three successive invasions (721 CE-741 CE). Some religions are best at war, but not necessarily best at surviving.

Being better for the age of war does not mean better, for the age of mind. Having a better mind does a superior civilization make. Survival of the fittest does not apply to species of animals, but also to civilizations, and the religions they rest on.

Patrice Ayme

Crush Infamy!

 

OUTLAWING BAD RELIGIONS = CIVILIZATIONAL PROGRESS.

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Abstract:  Secularism is the master religion of civilization. Superstitions can be tolerated, by civilization, as long as they are obedient and house trained. Anything else is not just immoral, it invites disaster.

***

WHEN FRANS DE WAAL HIMSELF GETS CONFUSED:

In an otherwise naturally excellent essay, the esteemed ethologist, Frans De Waal, one of the planet’s breakthrough scientists, deplores the ferocity with which some have recently attacked established religion. Make no mistake: I approve of Frans De Waal. But on this particular subject, he is far removed from his usually iconoclastic self, and his blind embrace of political correctness is erroneous.

Here is an extensive quote of Frans De Waal with the link http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/morals-without-god/. It exhibits several typical mistakes.

“Over the past few years, we have gotten used to a strident atheism arguing that God is not great (Christopher Hitchens) or a delusion (Richard Dawkins). The new atheists call themselves “brights,” thus hinting that believers are not so bright. They urge trust in science, and want to root ethics in a naturalistic worldview.

While I do consider religious institutions and their representatives — popes, bishops, mega-preachers, ayatollahs, and rabbis — fair game for criticism, what good could come from insulting individuals who find value in religion? And more pertinently, what alternative does science have to offer? Science is not in the business of spelling out the meaning of life and even less in telling us how to live our lives. We, scientists, are good at finding out why things are the way they are, or how things work, and I do believe that biology can help us understand what kind of animals we are and why our morality looks the way it does. But to go from there to offering moral guidance seems a stretch.

Even the staunchest atheist growing up in Western society cannot avoid having absorbed the basic tenets of Christian morality. Our societies are steeped in it: everything we have accomplished over the centuries, even science, developed either hand in hand with or in opposition to religion, but never separately. It is impossible to know what morality would look like without religion. It would require a visit to a human culture that is not now and never was religious. That such cultures do not exist should give us pause.”

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DID CHRISTIANITY INVENT ANYTHING GOOD?

The first mistake De Waal makes is to assume that Western European based morality originated purely through Christianity. Most of the Western European morality is vastly anterior to Christianity. Specifically Christian additions are hard to identify. What is taken for Christian adjunctions is generally nothing of the sort. What is specifically Christian is called the DARK AGES.

The famous "welfare state" that American "neoconservatives" (aka neofascists) love to denigrate, sounds all too Christian. However, the "welfare state" is actually a ROMAN invention, anterior to the deployment of Christianity by a degenerated version of the imperial Roman state. It is anterior by a full three centuries. If anything, Christianity is a Roman invention. Indeed the first Christian known to have existed, Saul, a Jew with Roman citizenship, aka "Saint Paul", was a Roman prosecutor. Condemned to death by the Jewish theocracy, he was whisked away to Rome by the imperial authorities, and it is not known what happened of him. Besides writing about Jesus, who he found in his head, he said, his other passions were a hatred for philosophy, and delighting in book burning.

The outlawing of slavery was not a Christian idea, either. It was an anti-Christian gesture: bishops, and their families were the greatest slave owners. It is the FRANKS, following Frankish tradition, which imposed it. "Frank" means free. The Germans had no slaves (and elected their occasional kings), and were no friends to Roman style fascism.

So Christianity embraced non Christian goodness. Why? Because the Merovingian and Carolingian empires forced Christian potentates to do so. Nothing very "Christian" about any of this. the Carolingian forced by law the Christian establishments, all of them, to teach secularism. That was after having nationalized the entire Christian Church (to rise considerable resources for a giant anti-Islam army, the largest since the heydays of Rome).

Even the cross was widely used, before the Christians consented to use it. This too the Christians carbon copied!

The Celtic cross, a pre-Christian symbol which was later amalgamated with the Christian crucifix. For many centuries, the Christians refused to use the cross, as it was a "Pagan" symbol, said the notorious "Church Fathers". The same holds with the Swastika, a very old, Bronze Age cross, which was known from Norway to India, even before Homer’s Greeks. On the right above: sacred cross from Knossos, 36 centuries old (22 centuries before the Christians adopted the cross for their religion!)

***

WANT JESUS? DON’T FORGET TO BRING ENOUGH WATER!

So what is specifically "Christian"? The Apocalypse, and eternal fire. That, the Christians promoted heavily, and it was definitively a regression form the Roman republican morality. OK, the Celts attached a great importance to fire before, as they used to burn, alive, a lot of prisoners together in various containers. (It was definitively a bad idea to burn alive Roman officers.)

Maybe the inventors of the "Evangels" got their obsession with fire from the Celts indeed (so it is a testimony to cultural trade that the idea percolated all the way to Medina and Mecca!). Here is a piece of the so called "New Testament", as a typical example. From Thessalonians 1:7-10 (New American Standard Bible):

7 and to give relief to you who are afflicted, when the Lord Jesus will be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in FLAMING FIRE,

8 TAKING VENGEANCE on those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus.

9 These will pay the penalty of ETERNAL DESTRUCTION, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power,

10 when He comes to be glorified in His saints on that day, and to be marveled at among all who have believed–for our testimony to you was believed.

The obsession of Jesus with fire is all over: See Matthew 25:41:

41 "Then Jesus will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, INTO THE ETERNAL FIRE which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.”

Jesus, is loud and clear in his desire to burn in "vengeance" those who "know" him not. Don’t ever expect forgiveness from that maniac! Forget all too human forgiveness, Jesus is all about eternal punishment. That is the thing he can do that no human can.

Christian criminal irrational, superstition based insanity caused directly the Dark Ages, by burning all those who did not "know" Jesus, burning all the libraries, all the books, and even destroying public works. Laws themselves were destroyed, by refusing to apply them, since they had been given by man, not jealous god and his maniacal son. Such as the laws against highway bandits, while plutocrats refused to pay any taxes, and sheltered behind their walls, manned by private armies.

***

IL FAUT ECRASER L’INFAME!

… As Voltaire put it. "One must crush infamy!". By "infamy", Voltaire meant Christianity, and Islam.

The ferocity of the attacks against VICIOUS SUPERSTITIONS is justified. A small example is the Afghanistan war. Besides enormous treasure and more than 600 NATO soldiers killed there in 2010, alone, this war, started in the 1970s by Washington’s White House (which often seems to be correctly painted the way a mental asylum should be), deliberately used religion, or more exactly superstition, as a ploy.

Voltaire did not insist on how that infamy arose. As Critias, a plutocratic philosopher, associated to Socrates, uncle of Plato, one of the "Thirty Tyrants" (and one of the most violent), asserted: "religion was a deliberate imposture devised by some cunning man for political ends."^[C]

Note that this was written more than 24 centuries ago. That most educated people in the USA behave as if they did not understand this, while their country has soldiers in nearly all countries, and thousands of thermonuclear weapons, while whining louder and louder about China, ought to be worrisome. Question: are the plutocrats of the USA cunning enough?

***

RELIGION IS A LOGICAL NECESSITY, BUT SUPERSTITION IS NOT:

Religion, from re-ligare, to tie people together again, is not, in general, bad. Religion plays, for the ensemble of society, the sort of "META" arena that any discourse needs. Such meta background are found all over logic, mathematics, or mathematical logic. Even category theory (invented by Aristotle, and now a backbone of contemporary mathematics) has it.

Thus the Romans of the Respublica, as pragmatic and practical a people as there ever was, made a quasi religion of the law:"Dura Lex, Sed Lex". ("Law Hard, But Law".) However above and beyond the cult of the Lex, they had an entire religion and ancestors’ cult. The increasing prominence of the law made the Romans invent SECULARISM. It comes from the concept of "age".

Secularism is a religion. Secularism means: to live in one’s own age. As Rome became a world empire, Romans tolerated all religions equally… With the exception of those allowing human sacrifices, which were outlawed, and disappeared from history. Some of these annihilated religions were enormously powerful, before Rome DESTROYED them.

If practitioners of a religion violated the secular law, though, they would be punished. Under Tiberius, after an enormous sexual scandal involving the top priests of Isis, the Egyptian religion, the perpetrators were made to savor their last days on the cross. However, Caligula legitimized the religion, which then became enormous popular, with temples everywhere and there is evidence some emperors were initiates (Commodus, Caracalla). Thus SECULARISM ACTED IN ROME AS A META RELIGION.

Secularism was very strong in the late 19 C in the USA, or in France. France went further, and nationalized the Churches (Catholic, Protestant, Jewish… but unfortunately, not Islam, a oversight only now being rectified). The USA has been backsliding into superstition ever since 1954, when God was pushed onto the People.

***

SECULARISM WINS BATTLES:

There were more Celts than Romans, and the Celtic world extended from Ireland to Anatolia in "Asia", where the Celts refused to obey Alexander, arguing that the only fear they knew was that "the sky would fall onto their heads". Alexander moved on to tackle the Persians, easier preys. The Celtic world included Northern Italy: Gallia Transalpina.

However, human progress is a strong notion, and by allying themselves to it, by rejecting the more primitive, violent Celtic religion, the Romans were able to replace the Celtic civilization by the more advanced Greco-Roman civilization. There was an educational component to the equation too, as the Celts refused general education, reserving it to their elite.

This Celtic episode, and the equivalent one with the Punic civilization, have an enormous bearing to the difficulties the West is encountering presently with Islam (and, in particular, in Afghanistan). But, of course, to see the connection, one would need to know more than basketball… Thus the present policy there neglects the leverage which superseding Islam would provide with, which proves that either the USA are really stupid, or that they have another agenda.

***

SECULARISM WILL CRUSH SUPERSTITION ALWAYS:

Superstition is about unjustifications from the past, secularism is about the present, in general more clever. When the Muslim armies fought the Franks in Francia (721 CE to 740 CE, and then again in the 10C), they were confronted to superior determination and superior technology (contrarily to legend: the Franks had evolved better steel and giant percheron, tank like horses covered with heavy armor in the 8C, Grecian Fire in the 10C).

The Franks, when they opposed Islam, opposed it by calling themselves "Europeans". After all, the Franks had united (most of) Europe. The notion was secularist. The Franks were very clever. As they repelled the Muslim invasion, they did not fight a war about superstition, superstition against superstition, Christian against Christian, Islam against Islam, Abraham against Abraham, as Obama is doing in Islam (his Karzai based Islam against the Taliban based Islam).

The Franks fought superstition, from the secularist point of view, as they had for 4 centuries. They fought, as secularists against superstitious hysterics. The Franks viewed the Muslims as out-of control Christians. Reasonably opposing Christianity had made the Franks their fortune, by rescuing humankind from Jesus’ incendiary rage. When confronting Islam, the Franks invented nationalism. European nationalism.

***

ARE THOSE WHO RESPECT NAZISM, NAZI COLLABORATORS? THAT IS THE QUESTION.

Secularism is to live in one’s own age. Rather than the times of desert primitives who lived from banditry, crime, and various horrors, and could neither write nor read.

What we faced with the Abrahamic, or Aztec religions are religions made to justify, encourage, and force lethal violence, through the teaching of blood thirsty gods.

The god of Abraham asks him to kill his son, just because he says so, thus placing fascist command, and absolute obedience, above the most basic, most fundamental love. I think there is a problem both with the texts that admire this as the ultimate of goodness (Bible, Qur’an) and those who happily goose step behind those texts. At least they could look grim (as Iranian Shiites do).

Goose-stepping behind a god who apparently likes to test his followers by asking them to kill their innocent children, is a moral horror that all free primates would do anything to avoid.

Thus, those religions are made to create deadly homicidal robots out of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. What is there, that is not our duty, to hate? Especially now that they could arm themselves with nuclear bombs.

Hating infamy, hating those who put fascism above love, every day that the sun makes, is not just a moral choice anymore, as it was in the time of Voltaire (in a case Voltaire addressed, Jewish children were burned in Portugal at the time, just because they were Jewish). Now, it is a question of survival. And it is why Pakistan a Muslim Fundamentalist state, a state whose official superstition adulates a pedocidal god (like the god of Carthagenese, who loved to kill male children less than 5 years old) has to be removed access to thermonuclear weapons (it has at least 100, maybe 200, on the ground it needs them to fight India, a secularist democracy, a past time that could well end up with one or two billion dead).

A last point: it is fashionable among American semi primitive a la Glenn Beck to rant for ages against what they call “progress”.

But civilization, for ecological reasons, has never been sustainable without adaptation, also known as progress. This progress can only come from secularism, adapting to the age.

Thus secularism is also where imperial anti-republican Rome failed, because imperial, plutocratic Rome was increasingly conservative and fascist. The plutocrats at the top blocked progress in so many mental areas that even better technology became its enemy. As it has been of Wahhabists,  and for the same reasons. And as it seems to be increasingly the case now in the USA, with its resistance to electric trains, nuclear plants, modern health care, and education, modern democracy, modern unit systems, modern housing, efficient economy, etc.

Those who do not learn from history, maybe incinerated by it pretty soon. It is no coincidence that this is exactly what Jesus wanted.

Patrice Ayme

Aphorisms. Mid-October 2010

FASCISM: PRIMATES’ SAVIOR:

When the going gets real tough, the people bundle together as many weak rods, around the ax of their common fear and anger. It’s called fascism, it’s one of the oldest instincts of primates, and those who caused it are often more to blame that those who react thus.

***

WHEN MARIE-ANTOINETTE GETS LOST:

The king of France, constitutional monarch on a constitution he had himself signed on, decided to flee and join the enemies of France, those old European, aristocratic regimes he had himself combated for so many years. Unbeknownst to him, his wife, the queen Marie-Antoinette, had been sending secret messages in invisible ink about the displacements of the French armies, to those very enemies. The monarchs decided to flee France and join the enemy. However the queen got lost on her way to the carrosse, in the few blocks outside of their Tuileries palace, and wasted an hour and a half. This is ultimately why the royal rats got caught at Varennes, before they could leave the ship they had themselves tried to sink.

This is all the more surprising, because Louis XVI was a strongly reformist king. However, the principal effort of his reign was to fight England, and make her rich American colony independent. This ruined France. And Louis did not control what his wife was doing, coming from what she truly wanted; always more. So it was with Michelle-Antoinette, lost in Iberia. I mean Marie-Antoinette, lost in Paris.

***

THE "INVISIBLE HAND", GENERALIZED:

An underlying assumption of American style economics, and of the society it organized, is that competition makes the world go around (although the economics Nobel prize was occasionally given not for that, such as in 2010, the competition compatible awards drown the others).

However, a casual acquaintance with non pathological human society, shows that human beings have many other motivations, besides competition. When competition ruins these other motivations, a pathological society results. Overall, one can say that over-competition ruins the USA.

The best proof of this is that secret organizations can now secretly, albeit officially and legally, contribute to politics (so decided the USA Supreme Court, 2010). Obama darkly claimed that even invisible foreign hands have been contributing. That would be ironical, since black ops, in Congress, or while fighting “terrorism”, have been the hallmark of the Obama presidency.

***

FEAR CAN BE PROFITABLE:

Iran is a paper tiger. Real tigers, the Caspian tigers, are now extinct in Iran. Iran has not attacked any other country for centuries. Its parliamentary democracy was demolished by the CIA instrumentalizing the Shiites, in 1953. The fear was that British Petroleum could not extract all the profits from its exploitation of Iranian oil.

Talking too much about non-existent Iranian nuclear bombs is part of a maneuver of diversion. The problem is not urgent, and can be solved (by reprocessing plutonium out of Iran as Russia is doing for the soon to function Iranian reactor).

Pakistan may have up to 200 thermonuclear warheads. That’s no paper tiger, and more of a divided personality than any other country in the world. Why does not Obama and company worry more about it? Because they want to be ‘surprised’, once again?

Who would profit from a thermonuclear warhead exploded over the West, somewhere? Those who profit from fascism. Plutocracy.

Who would profit from a thermonuclear war between India and Pakistan. Well, fascism again, and those who have the world’s best military, as nuclear war spreads around the planet, and the "Novus Ordo Seclorum", the vaunted establishment by the USA of a "new Order for the Ages", gets established for good.

The road to hell can also be paved with bad intentions, if there are not enough good intentions to walk around.

***

TRUTH IS SOCIAL, EVEN THE MENTAL IS SOCIAL:

All what humans know, and aspire to is social. That is what it means, to be a social animal. And one’s social position validates, to the world, one’s knowledge, and aspirations. This is true, even in science, or poetry.

Among other consequences, social notions validate truth itself. Although, for the grandest and most revolutionary thoughts, the validation will be posthumous, because it goes through social positioning, and that takes time. In other words, if you hang around the wrong crowd, or no crowd big and influential enough, it does not matter how right you are. You, and your truth, will be ignored.

Being an animal means just that, nothing more. Thus humanity entangles the sublime with the oldest instincts.

***

COLLAPSE: YESTERDAY’S ABYSS IS TODAY’S MODERATION.

The USA two party system is, officially, one party removed from obvious dictatorship. Why should it be an institution?

All European democracies have at least three parties (as in the UK), and sometimes much more. The two existing parties in the USA are two aspects of the same plutocratic party. Obama has been governing like what passes for a moderate republican nowadays, somewhere right of Nixon. So it is during collapse: yesterday’s abyss is today’s moderation.

***

INFINITY IS QUANTUM.

Gowers asks: does infinity exist? [He is a Fields Medal math professor in Cambridge University, so the question ought to be taken seriously.] Such is the last line of his “Clay lecture” on infinity. [Clay is an institute that distributes rewards, and prizes in mathematics.]

That is an existential question, and I claim its solution is neurological. It is a particularly simple case of the question of BEING (The one question Heidegger claimed to approach, his way, pooping words along, with the obstinacy of a Greek speaking cow.) Being, of course, has to do with Quantum physics, and that is understood just enough to know that it is outside of the picture we have of this world, in the sense we have understood, and imagined, the world so far.

Can one give a hint? Well, both infinity, and the Quantum, are about tunneling. Tunneling to a new meaning in the case of infinity, tunneling through the impossible, in the case the Quantum. The Quantum makes the impossible probable. It makes the impossible real.

Infinity is obviously impossible for neurology to model. One would think. But neurology, like the Quantum, can think out of the box. Neurology, by going meta, can name infinity, with a neuron of equivalent, which brings it into being.

So, yes, infinity does exist. The brain made it so, as it does with the rest.

Some may sneer that I failed to tie in infinity and the Quantum, strictly speaking. Instead I used a theory of “meta” which could be depicted by traditional neurology.  True. However, it is now known that biology uses Quantum physics just as much as it does molecular biology, so any neurology is Quantum. Because neurology has a mechanism to create infinity as a physical object, that means, so does the Quantum.

Anyway the smaller the object, the more dominated by Quantum physics it is, and what is smaller than a concept? Even if it is infinity?

***

SOMEWHERE RIGHT OF REASON:

Obama is going around, talking well, as usual, when he campaigns. According to him, all the good things of the last two years will come to an end, should the republicans come to power. What? No more bank bonuses? No more no inquiry on the most giant financial conspiracy that ever was?

Meanwhile a federal judge has found that the "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" 17 year old decree about homosexuality, violated the right to free speech ("First Amendment to the USA constitution). That is rigorously not surprising. Nor is Obama’s government reaction: they let it be known they will appeal. By contrast, in a similar situation, the gubernator of California, the republican Schwarzenegger, and Jerry Brown, attorney general of California, refused to appeal. Who is this Obama?

Is Obama trying to please the (officially) homophobic generals? No, Obama comes on MTV, and he claims he is just trying to be "orderly"? "Orderly"?Or, in other words, preserving the established order all over. Or trying to create red herrings all over? Then Obama, in the same MTV show drowned the fish in the water, observing people are "children of God" born with a certain "make-up", a revolutionary discourse in the USA, no doubt.

***

USA CAPITALISM: 45 TRILLION DOLLARS OF PRIVATE PROPERTY GONE?

Obama, obsessed by the continuation of the established order, has, so far, declined to engage in any criminal pursuit in the greatest financial stick-up in the history of civilization. Hey, he is right, according to him: just like with homosexuals speaking, this could not possibly be "orderly".

So the horror keeps on gathering momentum: 144 billion dollars of Wall Street bonuses announced, a bit more than in 2009, thanks to the average citizen of the USA, courtesy of Mr. Obama, anxious, as he is, to preserve the established order of Wall Street bonuses several times bigger than the "jobs" part of his so called "stimulus".

The USA elections are still more than three weeks away, and, officially, the financial sector spent already more than 200 million dollars. Let alone all the secretive spending.

Meanwhile, because banks in the USA sold and chopped property rights in the last 30 years, before making them into smoothies, as they were keeping the rents for themselves, up to 45 TRILLION dollars of private property are potentially not private at all, but of property unknown. Such is the drawback of so called "securitization". Tragedy is turning to comedy. United States of Attrition? Is capitalism without property an imaginable concept?

***

Patrice Ayme

Stimulating Out Of Encroaching Nothingness

TIME TO STIMULATE FOR REAL, AND GET READY FOR THE WORST

Abstract: I am presently reading "Obama’s Wars", the troubling description of the Obama’s White House by Bob Woodward, of Watergate’s fame (Woodward forced Nixon’s resignation).. As Woodward puts it on the book’s jacket:"…Verbatim quotes from secret debates and White House strategy sessions… reveal a government in conflict, often consumed with nasty infighting and fundamental disputes."

I assert that the cracked fundaments go all across the USA, including through Obama’s mind. How can one simultaneously venerate Reagan’s world view, and generate a change one can believe in?

It is as if the captain of the Titanic longed to move back to the past, when his boat is already half under water, and celebrated how good it used to feel, including scrapping along the iceberg. Well celebrating scrapping along the ice, is false, pointless, and a dissipation of motivation: Reagan’s spirit helped hit the iceberg, it was a disaster to scrape along, wake up! No wonder it’s getting nasty out there.

The on-going economic disaster wrecking the West has been caused by the plutocratic model, stealthily launched by Nixon as he funded the private HMO system, using tax dollars. The idea was to replace the primary motive of making a good job in health care, by the primary motive of making a good buck. It was a change of motivation. The economy, and then the society was forced to follow.

Things got really crazy under Reagan, a culturally deficient puppet, animated by brain envy. However, Reagan is widely, and wildly admired by his supporters for… having reformed, or more exactly destroyed, the USSR, which is indicative of their mentally exalted state.

So here comes Obama, having called Reagan "transformative". Obama is a "bipartisan", which may mean that he is Reagan, half of the time. In any case, as half Reagan, Obama’s stimulus followed the advice of Reagan’s ex-adviser, Lawrence Summers. The stimulus was made into something to persevere with the status quo ante. The part for jobs, the infrastructure stimulus, was purely symbolic: 25 billion dollars, per year. Over two years.

To soothe those who elected him, Obama claimed, using smoke, mirrors, and reading what Mondale called "IDIOT BOARDS" that the stimulus was 765 billion dollars or so.

Politically that allowed the neoconservatives to claim that an enormous stimulus was used, and did not help the economy to create jobs. And that entrapped Obama.

Obama compounded the situation with his health care "reform". In truth it was not a reform, but, once again, more of the same. As usual, the USA is unique. It uses a health care system based on employment, which makes no sense.

Obama could have started to change away from that, by pushing "MEDICARE FOR ALL". But he did not. Instead he spread obscurely new costs incurring to businesses over the next several years, as Obamacare deploys. Unsurprisingly, businesses hold close to their wallet, not knowing what’s next.

But let’s not forget Obama is bipartisan; next year, with his republican congress, Obama will see the parts of his "historic health care bill" not friendly to the health care plutocracy go to the birds. One does not know if he was clever enough to anticipate this, as he spent forever negotiating in the backroom with the rich boys.

Obama, and the USA, need to be ready for the worst, and not just in economy. After 65 years of an alliance with Muslim Fundamentalists, and equipping them with hundreds of thermonuclear weapons (!), this means that nuclear war is close at hand. The institutions of the West, and its democracies, need to be ready. And that starts with the minds, and intellectual curiosity, what Ronald Reagan could neither muster, nor appreciate.

***

***

REAGAN, OR STUPIDITY UNCHAINED:

The USA is in a strange time warp. It is, along with two or three dictatorships, the country which has not ratified the rights of children. It is the only country in the world which still uses the confusing unit system of the Roman empire. Both points, and countless similar ones, are overlooked by average Americans, and their intelligentsia. However they are symptoms of civilizational senility: even when an advantage is obvious, and everybody else does it, the USA cannot come on board. Even the advantage of infrastructure seems to have escaped the USA. All the infrastructure seems to be about the military, and its bases all around the world.

All over the world, most of the serious infrastructure was the result of government programs, and so it has been, for millennia. In the USA, the banking system, the canal system, railroads, dams, the freeway system, and access to water were allowed only under government fiat, by giving the appropriate "eminent domain".

The railroad network was a public-private partnership, with the government massively investing, and legislating, in a way that private industry could never have replaced.

Nowadays, somewhat similar programs are used with private security firms, as the imperial machine of the USA attempts to take a greater control of the Middle East. For example the withdrawal of combat troops planned by Bush and implemented by Obama uses 7,000 taxpayers paid private mercenaries protecting the state Department operations in Iraq alone. At least that is what the government of the USA reveals. The truth may well be worse.

In the 1980s, American politics got tuned on its head by Reagan. The reason to talk about Reagan is that Obama called Reagan "transformative", a qualificative he did not use for any other president of the USA.

Reagan, an uneducated actor was all too happy with himself for starting the destruction of the California University system, at the time the best in the world (in relative quality and quantity).

Once elected governor, Mr. Reagan set the educational and intellectual tone for his administration, and the USA, for the next three decades, by:

a. calling for ending free tuition for California college and university students,

b. demanding a 20% across-the-board cuts in higher education funding,[1]

c. repeatedly slashing construction funds for state campuses

d. engineering the firing of Clark Kerr, the popular President of the University of California, and

e. declaring that the state "should not subsidize intellectual curiosity."[2]

Nowadays UNSUSTAINABLE tuitions are imposed to students in the public university system, and very few Californians can access the University of California and the State University of California. Let alone that those admitted are guaranteed financial ruin as their future income could never pay for the incurred debts.

The universities turn in great part from foreign students who come to study, and go back where they come from, enlightened and wiser. So the USA has, on top of everything else, an increasing wisdom and knowledge deficit… Once again, having greatly originated during Reagan’s reign.

Since the USA, as the rest of the West, will only be able to come out of its deep crisis through more, higher level education and research, Reagan’s vengeance against education, and the intellect, condemns the USA to increasing mediocrity, and an increased economic and social crisis.

Reagan also more than tripled the national debt of the USA incurred in the first two centuries of that country.

Reagan later developed Alzheimer. Confronted to his unconstitutional conspiracy with Iran’s theocracy, he claimed that "he could not recall". It is now known that Alzheimer develops years, even decades before it becomes obvious. Thus the question: was the USA set up on its present course by a mentally deficient patient?

***

REAGAN TRANSFORMED THE USA INTO A PUMPKIN:

Sorry, I hope Obama is not going to start crying. Reagan was a would be cow-boy, confronting a time when the USA was running out of gas from the lift it had got from the "American Century" after World War Two. Tricks work, but not forever.

Nowadays, there are more European corporations in the top 50 than American corporations (differently from, say, 1960, when there were none). European corporations work according to a strongly attenuated plutocratic model (for example, German corporations have union representatives on the boards, by law; French corporate executives, as all Europeans executives, are paid a small fraction of their American colleagues, and are a small fraction of their physical size, too).

Reagan made the mistake French economy and finance minister Colbert had warned against as self obviously deeply erroneous, three centuries before. Colbert had started his career as inspector general of the armies, so he was fully aware of the military threats, especially after France successfully concluded 150 years of quasi continuous war with the Spanish and Habsburg empires (a war that saved England, and gave birth to the Netherlands, besides breaking the Catholic Inquisition’s attempt at world domination).

Reagan was used to free money in the sport commenting and movies industry (he got a huge ranch for co-acting with a young chimpanzee). He really had no idea how the world worked. Predecessors such as Carter, Nixon, LBJ, Kennedy, Eisenhower, let alone the Roosevelts, or even Hoover, had varied, but firm and deep experiences of the world. All of Reagan’s experience, as a governor, was in DECONSTRUCTION.

Reagan was indeed "transformative", as Obama called him while professing his admiration. He transformed the political-economic system of the USA from construction, to destruction. A pause from his able successor, George Bush, who had condemned Reagan’s economics as "Voodoo economics", was not enough to stop the slide.

***

WHEN WAR IN AFGHANISTAN WAS STILL PROFITABLE:

Except Reagan knew, from the movies, that the military was important to project the power of the USA. So he spent a lot militarily. And pursued the usual plots with the Salafists, the Muslim Fundamentalists: he engaged the war in Afghanistan into high gear, by giving to the Salafists advanced weapons, reorganizing their armies, and sending over a Wahhabist expeditionary corps headed by Osama bin Laden. In Iran, Reagan renewed secretly the alliance with the Salafists headed by Ayatollah Khomeiny.

You want to see Obama’s stimulus? Look at AFGHANISTAN. That is where Obama is stimulating, at the rate of several billion dollars, a WEEK. Even G. W. Bush saw the trap, and was not that dumb as to fall into it. I am reading "Obama’s wars" thoroughly, in the hope of finding what he thought he set himself up to accomplish there. Besides taking himself for Alexander the Great. But Alexander conquered Afghanistan in his twenties.

However, extending the war in Afghanistan is in the big Reagan tradition: expand the empire militarily. Do whatever; feed bin Laden, train him, make him meaner, more efficient. That’s what Reagan did. Meanwhile give Khomeiny, secretly, the weapons and replacement parts to fight Hussein (while supporting the latter’s war). That’s what Reagan did.

When Reagan started to dismantle the deep structures of the USA, the USA was at the peak of its powers. But Reagan’s actions made the USA, literally, crazy. Reagan had closed mental hospitals in California and then he reduced the Federal mental health budget. In the end, mental patients ended in the streets, and represent a danger to this day.

Reagan effectively opposed additional funding for basic education. This led to painful increases in local taxes and the deterioration of California’s public schools. That, in turn led to a stratospheric increase in property taxes, and, this, in turn, to a blocking of these by proposition 13, which in turn became a way for (plutocratically owned) corporations to pay neglectable taxes (by arranging transfers without sales, which homeowners cannot do).

Mr. Reagan’s actions had political appeal to his core voters constituency. These so called "conservatives" ought to have been called the terminators. Their dream was the plutocratic USA towards which they have been marching ever since, with the determination of mastodons ambling into bitumen swamps…

***

OBAMA STIMULUS: ONLY 25 BILLION DOLLARS IN 2009:

Only infrastructure spending creates real jobs that private industry can leverage in massive economic activity.

France has arguably the world’s best infrastructure, and the recession was much less there than, say, Germany, or the USA. However the French state spent 50 billion dollars on infrastructure projects in 2009 alone. Some was for repairing cathedrals, but some was for engineering work on high speed train lines. France had by far the shallowest recession of the big industrial developed countries. Oh, yes, in case you asked, the People Republic of China embarked on a four dimensional astronomically massive stimulus, and China’s growth barely slowed down for a moment from its double digit clip.

Some of Obama’s stimulus was the AMT exemption, which happens every year, since ever. That was about 10% of Obama’s so called stimulus, and was nothing of the sort, since it would have happened anyway, as it always does. About 50% of Obama’s stimulus was to compensate for the collapse in state spending (many states are forbidden, by law, to run deficit). So it was a stimulus in the sense that CPR is a stimulus.

And so on. In other words, the Obama administration lied. The real stimulus, the money spent to create jobs, was only 50 billions, what Obama spends in 5 months in Afghanistan. Moreover it was spread over 2 years. So, basically, in a country with a terrible and collapsing infrastructure, Obama spent, per year, about 10% of what the French right wing conservative president spent.

The overall imperial military budget of the USA is about a TRILLION dollar. As much as the Federal budget a few years ago. The USA is losing its mind.

***

ROOSEVELT WAS TRICKY, BUT THE WORLD MOVED ON:

What is the idea behind spending so much on military adventures? Reagan’s admirers misread history by believing that they brought the USSR down. In truth, it is the self contradictions of the "communist" dictatorships which brought them down. But the psychological affect on the neoconservatives is that they believe that Reagan running up the deficit to serve the hyper rich and the military industrial complex had a spectacularly positive effect.

The plot engineered by Roosevelt in 1945, was beautifully simple and efficient: the USA would ally itself with the Salafists throughout North Africa, Arabia, the Middle east and South Asia. In exchange for oil and empire. It was an alliance of obsolete Islamist with Washington against European secularism. It worked like a charm: the USA got oil and empire (neofascists love to claim that it is not so because, they point out disingenuously that the oil goes mostly to Europe. But oil is fungible, and Europeans are forced to buy it through American owned companies).

Something that worked well for 65 years is hard to quit. So the USA perseveres diabolically with that crafty (albeit immoral) path pioneered by president Roosevelt.

The reason why Roosevelt’s cheap and dirty trick is not working anymore is that it profited the USA, and the USA alone…plus a smattering of its agents. More and more leaders and people understand this. Ex-American mercenaries, such as bin Laden or the Pakistani ISI, Saddam Hussein, or Iran’s Shiites, not only understand this, and the role they played, but they see that the USA is running out of military, economic and imperial overstretch, and they watch the wind turn. And as it turns, they turn. Against the USA. So the price of empire is increasing, it seems, exponentially.

Such giant spending to lose a war is a sign, and a reason, to lose everything. Actually Obama alludes to precisely that in the book "Obama’s war".

Now Obama is proposing to double his infrastructure spending, by spending a further 50 billion dollar on it. It is also too little, too late, as I said many times in the past. With more than 1.2 million construction workers unemployed or sub-employed, it is a no brainer that it should be done.

***

MASSIVE BANKSTERS’ STIMULUS, COURTESY USA GOVERNMENT:

All this is peanuts. 50 billion dollars over 2 years is nothing in a 15,000 billion dollar economy.

Obama saved the banksters using taxpayers’ money, and the health of the entire American economy, spending nearly 4 TRILLION dollars doing so. Then the banksters turned around, and stimulated themselves with 150 billion dollars in BONUSES, just for the year 2009. Where is the screaming about that?

***

EVEN SUPER SMART PEOPLE FALL FOR PLUTOCRACY:

Even some very intelligent people understand nothing of this. I was reading in the blog of Terence Tao, a world famous young mathematician who got the Fields Medal four years ago. Many people view Tao as the world’s most intelligent person. However Tao haughty naivety declared that:

"A dramatic contrast between worst-case scenario costs and actual costs: the infamous Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) from 2008-2010, popularly viewed as a $700 billion bailout to banks, begins winding down this week (with no further outlays permitted), and is now projected to actually have a net cost about $50 billion; when compared against the stabilisation effect it had on the national and world economy, it may in fact end up being one of the most cost-effective of such programs ever…. in the best case scenario, TARP even turns a modest profit.

For comparison, the Savings and Loans bailouts in the late 1980s had a net cost to the US government of about $124 billion (or about $200 billion on today’s dollars). … Even if the program does end up not actually costing taxpayers a penny, it is still likely to be remembered, however inaccurately, as a massive handout to the banks."

When one sees someone as smart as Mr. Tao falls straight into the mammoth trap of the grossest propaganda set up by the financial plutocracy, with colossal credulity, one can only feel sorry for Obama. It has got to be pretty lonely at the White House.

I replied this, in the hope of educating Mr. Tao (an icy silence forever followed):

The claimed slight cost of the bank management rescue is sheer propaganda. Like all good lies, it can be claimed to be the truth, in the sense that the funds labeled TARP are indeed evolving as described.

However, the real cost so far, in the USA alone is more like 4 trillion dollars (says the government TARP general inspector, Neil Barofsky ). But, for example, when the government lends to banks short, at close to zero percent, and then allows the banks to borrow long, at around 4%, thus making arbitrarily large profits, that is not viewed as TARP. But it is direct cost to society nevertheless.

There are several other similar programs supporting banks at enormous cost, which involve the central bank ("Fed") buying assets from banks at outrageous prices, and do not come under the TARP label.

This on-going enormous support undermines the economy of the USA, by directing funds which would be otherwise available for more constructive pursuits. For example the real stimulus program of the USA in 2009 and 2010 was only 50 billion dollars, roughly a third of the bonuses paid by banks, thanks to the aforesaid support programs, in 2009, alone.

Although the payment systems of the banks ought to have been saved, and nationalized, the bank holding companies ought to have been dismantled, and their management, prosecuted. Nationalization would have had several benefits, similar to those of the 1990s Scandinavian banking crisis, and would have allowed to restart lending.

Another point that is not just a detail: we are in Great Depression III. Just look at the median real income. In the USA, it has gone down now for thirty years (and we are just warming up). The short and brutal Great Depression II, in the 1930s, did not affect that measure to the same extent.

Plutocracy is nasty, and it is crafty. Or at least crafty enough for even intelligent people to be misled by it.

***

ENOUGH WITH CHILDISH GAMES:

The governor of New Jersey decided to stop the construction of a needed tunnel to Manhattan. After Krugman wrote an appropriate article, yesterday, he rescinded that decision. That is how well some of these clowns take their decisions: as if it were not an obviously stupid decision, and Mr. Chris Christie had not considered the most basic facts, before Krugman pointed them out to him. But we are still waiting for Obama spending money to accelerate the train from Washington to Boston. True, he and his family fly around above the peons.

In Europe, Russia, China, massive High Speed Rail networks are built. They are fast, secure, ultra efficient, and produce very little pollution and CO2. Moreover, they can run on nuclear and, or, renewable energy. An important point as the price of fossil fuels will skyrocket in the proximal future. Existing, already commercially deployed technology would allow to cross the USA in 10 hours, on steel wheels (BTW, maglev is a useless gimmick, technological pointless, dangerous, and commercially impossible; it cannot compete with steel wheels).

So the USA could do this. High Speed Lines are immensely expensive and high tech. The cost of the short line from Marseilles to Nice is evaluated around 23 billion Euros (30 billion dollars). The work is launched, to be completed in a decade, and involves engineering to study exactly the trajectory through mountains, valleys, and cities with 5 miles (= 8 kilometers) radius for the turns at 250 mph = 400 km/h, trajectories, bridges, tunnels, sunk sections, and the attending claims of eminent domains have all to be carefully determined!

There are many other massive works to be engaged to make the USA more efficient. The USA metro areas used to be crisscrossed by very efficient electric railways and tramways systems. Automobile based plutocracy bought them, and destroyed them, to force people into cars. Many of these ought to be rebuilt. because, once again, the price of fossils will skyrocket.

Besides the tunnel the republican neoconservative want to stop, there is a lot to do around most metro area of the USA (Silicon Valley does not have a subway yet, for example, although the commute there is miserable). Here are most of the major works around New York City:

PATH Tunnel Opened 1909
Holland Tunnel 1927
North River Tunnel 1910
Lincoln Tunnel 1937
GW Bridge 1931

Notice the dates: Imperial fascist Japan made a big mistake to attack the USA, when it was a nation of engineers. Now the USA is led by banksters and fast money operators, spending about 5 billion dollars a year, buying their obsequious servants in politics.

***

DEMOCRACY IS BEST TO HANDLE DEMONOCRACY:

Now what of the big picture? What of nuclear armed Pakistan? Well, that’s the baby from the policy of making friends with the Salafists. It’s not Obama’s fault (for once!). But Obama ought to explain to the American people the mess, and the threat. So that no one gets too surprised if some Salafists got lucky, and nuclear bombed the West.

Obama told Woodward something all Americans, and all of those attached to democracy, worldwide, ought to meditate: "We can absorb a terrorist attack. We will do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever… we absorbed it and we are stronger… A potential GAME CHANGER would be a nuclear weapon in the hands of terrorists, blowing up a major American city."

What a cool guy.

“Game Changer”? Oh, sorry, I did not know it was all a game. And, after the game has changed, then what? What does Obama exactly mean? That, after a nuclear strike, not even the appearance of democracy will survive? That the game will change, and fascism will be absolute? Obama should learn to explain to people what is on his mind, instead of just reading what ex-Vice President Walter Mondale called his "IDIOT BOARDS". Some of the people writing some of the stuff Obama is reading like a smile machine are not even 30 year old, with little background and culture, but for plotting and blahblahbing around, and it shows.

In case of nuclear strike, and one is likely, my deeply considered recommendation is this: TOTAL WAR. Do what was done with Nazism, and do it faster. No regime does total war better than total democracy. So no need to allude to a the instauration of fascism. If national defense is what one really wants, democracy is best.

Now, of course, if one really wanted to impose a fascist plutocracy, to start with, a nuclear strike would be indeed an excellent pretext for a change of game. Maybe Obama should explain himself more…

***

Patrice Ayme

***

The French republic announced, a few years ago, that, in case of a massive terrorist attack, it may retaliate with a nuclear strike. Intriguingly, Pakistan protested, as if it knew all too well who France was talking to, and then promptly arrested and deported to France a Pakistani national accused of the murder of a French woman.

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/

EVIL IS WITH US, BUT IT CAN BE GOOD.

(Pun intended.)

HOWEVER, NO EVIL OUGHT TO BE LEFT UNTURNED TO CONDEMN GENOCIDAL SINKERS, & THEIR INSANE NIHILISM.

***

In brief: Genocidal thinking itself is now promoted in some elite American universities, and widely disseminated by the New York Times. This is the highest imaginable nihilism. To decry it, one needs to foray further than Nietzsche ever did. So I introduce a new instinct, beyond the Will To Power, the Rage To Exterminate. This is an occasion to expose bits and pieces of a new theory of evil. Nihilism, deliberately stupid, is the worst. Indeed, against deliberate stupidity, evil itself contends in vain.

***

Abstract: LOVE HOPES FOR THE BEST, BUT SOMETIMES, ONLY EVIL, AT ITS BEST, CAN MAKE IT SO.

A number of leading American philosophers from superior universities, Singer and Mc Mahan, claim that massive genocide is an acceptable solution. Never mind that there was no drastic problem asking for this draconian solution. The mood is turning ugly in the USA. It is the first time in the history of civilization where salaried philosophers come right out in the favor of genocide. Even Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi philosopher, never expressed himself that brutally, or clearly (Hitler said of Rosenberg’s work:"Nobody understands that stuff"). However, Rosenberg was hanged at Nuremberg.

Yes, salaried American professors are promoting genocide, like in killing all the Jews, all the Native Americans, etc. And yes, this is happening in 2010, that final solutions are presented as wise scenarios, all over the New York Times, as they have never been so clearly presented before. Even the worst Nazis did not dare going official with what they truly intended.

Is there, in these calls to genocide in the most prestigious USA media, a hidden message designed to steer the emotional systems of masses towards final solutions? Should we think about Iran? After all, after contemplating genocide, does not simply committing to one more war come as relief?

Are these calls to genocide related to the ethical evolution, or shall I say devolution of the American presidency? Indeed, the American presidency seems to believe that torture is nothing that the USA engage in, and that assassination of citizens without judicial examination constitute civilization.

Promoting genocide gives a nice backdrop to these practical considerations. It’s the cherry on the cake. Promoting it from the New York Times, and considering this definitive break with tradition to its full perspective, would suggest that genocide is the Novo Ordo Saeculorum, the New Order of the Ages (as the Great Seal of the USA has it).

I stoop down to the sinking that these philosophical critters confuse with thinking to address their murderous squeaking. History has proven aplenty that not taking philosophical vermin seriously has terrible consequences. It’s not because viruses are small and stupid, that they are not dangerous.

Unsurprisingly, those psychopathic professors justify their genocidal posturing by the evil they deplore out there, as psychopaths are wont to do. It’s only understandable that devils would vaunt evil, even in the guise of denouncing it. (Thus the demonization of Hussein allowed to invade Iraq.)

I turn their entire logic on its head. First, by condemning the proposed genocides, as the proposed hate crimes they truly are. It’s not because there is evil out there, those flames necessary to warm up the baby’s bath, that baby and bath ought to be thrown out of the window.

Secondly, when looking at history one can notice the following. The main psychological engine of genocide has consisted precisely into distorting evil into various misrepresentations, some caricatural. American kindness to Nazism before World War Two was justified by decrying out some evils which did not exist (France’s "belligerence") while minimizing others (the Nazis’ racist fascism). The reason for misrepresenting evil is obvious. The preferred tactic is to exaggerate a danger, thus activating the fascist reflex among the tribe, allowing the fascist mode of government to rule.

Pure evil is less culprit than is generally supposed. Patriotism and nationalism’s excesses are not grounded in raw evil, but love. In other words, evil and love can turn into each other. Love as patriotism killed about 5% of humankind, just around the Second World War. (Fascism always puts on the mantle of patriotism.)

Although evil is big, and evil is bad, evil is ethologically meant to be as big and bad, as much of a big bad dad, as needs to be.

Hence Humanity, and humanism, understood in full, are far from being just all about love, and the most gentle sea breezes, warming just so the coconut grove lining the shore of hope we can believe in.

Humanity is the most conscious projection of power onto the world. Love without evil is about as relevant as existence without fields (matter, gravitational, electroweak, strong, etc.) Evil is what brings the imagination into the world. (Parents defending their children to death are a prime example.)

Imagine love and evil as two singularizations of the same action Quantum Wave. Love and evil are entangled, and it’s each others’ business to keep the other in check. Quantum random walk between the alternatives are moderated by conscience. Otherwise criminal madness sets in.

Singer and Mc Maham, as some (mis)interpretations of Buddhism, choose the Dark Side, pure evil. They cannot say it is good, so they say evil is bad, so bad that we have to do away with it, and to do away with it, we have to do away with humankind.

The struggles of conscience seem to them as the highest chore, to be avoided at all cost, even that of the reign of pure evil, and its ultimate achievement, total and complete annihilation, as in the Bible’s "apocalypse", and its Muslim translation, in the Qur’an.

Thus people such as Singer and Mc Mahan are fundamentally anti-thinkers. Most of Heidegger’s work is an example of anti-thinking, and Nazism itself, another. It’s typically the sort of thinking cows would express, if only they could write, a succession of turds on the landscape evoking a path to nowhere only dung beetles find allure in.

The rise to prominence of genocide is no accident. As the USA tries to bite more than its increasingly puny self can chew, increasing savage methods are being promoted (such as using huge lies to invade countries, violating the laws of war relative to occupation, torture, assassination instead of judicial examination). Of course Obama has turned into a perpetrator of these, instead of terminating them as one had every right to expect. Philosophy and history will judge this drift of the USA against the flow of civilization. But let’s start with Singer and Mc Mahan.

***

***

GENOCIDAL THINKING IS BACK IN FASHION:

The USA seems to be ethically imploding. The New York Times runs a series, on line, "The Stone", "a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless". So here comes Peter Singer, honorable professor, as far as the American establishment is concerned, and recognized philosopher at Princeton.

Verily, Singer is just a parrot of a small part of Nietzsche‘s philosophy, but since Singer is much less intelligent than other, more famous parrots of Nietzsche, he misunderstood Nietzsche completely, and just as much, and in the exact same way, as Adolf Hitler, a famous politician who believed in "One Germany", did (although he was not born there).

Singer wrote “Should This Be the Last Generation?”, June 6, 2010. Indeed why to discriminate against minorities, by just applying genocide to minorities? That would be unfair. Singer proposes to annihilate all. A new moral imperative from the USA: destroying humankind. In its entirety. This is literally genocide, the killing of the genotype. This time, the entire human genome, as it were smallpox. Singer’s “thought experiment”, or rather, suggestive question invites us to compare ourselves to small pox. 

As Singer puts it: "very few ask whether coming into existence is a good thing for the child itself… we don’t usually think the fact that a child is likely to have a happy, healthy life is a reason for bringing the child into existence…If there were to be no future generations, there would be nothing for us to feel to guilty about. Is there anything wrong with this scenario?"

Yes, what is wrong is that Hitler is dead, and left no survivor, aside from Singer and his kind. Some of the ethically aware among us, may not feel guilty about slavery, or various holocausts, but we still regret them, although we did not perpetrate them. In Singer’s “scenario”, though, we are called to perpetrate genocide. No less. And then that idiot wonders "Is there anything wrong with this scenario"? Some people call Singer "lucid", because he is "mild mannered". So was Himmler.

Just as Hitler, or Himmler, Singer claims to be acting out of justified compassion. The first two were out to take care of the German people, and German speaking oppressed minorities, whose pain they were trying to reduce. The weasel weasels, but still devours prey.

Singer’s idea is to do to all men, what Hitler tried to do just to the Jews, the Gypsies, a few million Slavs, and various other groups he did not fancy. I guess Hitler was thinking small. To justify himself, Singer clings to the "19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer who held that even the best life possible for humans is one in which we strive for ends that, once achieved, bring only fleeting satisfaction. New desires then lead us on to further futile struggle and the cycle repeats itself. "

Ah, if Schopenhauer said so. I guessed he read Buddhism too much, and chased too many young skirts. Schopenhauer spent 20 years making court ordered payments to a woman he had beaten up because she talked too loud on his doorstep.

Schopenhauer knew better than engaging in vicious cycles. As he said with characteristic depth: "Marrying means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties… Marrying means, to grasp blindfolded into a sack hoping to find out an eel out of an assembly of snakes." Thus, if Singer’s mentor identifies women to snakes, instead of more edible eels, it is only normal that one would not wish to give importance to the fruits of their entrails. So no more children, says Singer. With "philosophers" like that, who needs the most moronic Nazis? Well, apparently the USA needs Singer, tenured at Princeton, in the "Center for Human Values".

Apparently, for the New York Times, doing away with the human race is "both timely and timeless". Maybe we could start with the enemies of America. So many to kill, so little time.

Singer writes: "Should This be The Last Generation? But, If one wrote "Should This be The Last Generation Of Jews?" judicial authorities in several serious countries would react strongly to this violation of anti-hate crime laws. It is rather curious that the famous Singer suggests to do away with all blacks, all Jews, all Arabs, all Muslims, and all Australians (Singer’s homeland), and all children, and do it in the most prestigious media of the USA, while being revered in Princeton. Is Princeton a neo-Nazi university? And what about the laws protecting children against those who advertize that it would be a good idea to kill them? Because that is what Singer is saying, barely hidden by devious, weaselly verbiage.

***

KILL THEM ALL, THEY WILL SUFFER LESS: THE BIBLE AS PURE GENOCIDE, NO GOD NECESSARY!

Not content with proposing the holocaust of the entire human race, the New York Times found another mass murdering terminator, Jeff McMahan, a professor of philosophy at Rutgers University and a visiting research collaborator at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University.

In the “The Meat Eaters" Mr. Mc Mahan claims that "It would be good to prevent the vast suffering and countless violent deaths caused by predation.  There is therefore one reason to think that it would be instrumentally good if  predatory animal species were to become extinct and be replaced by new herbivorous species…  The claim that existing animal species are sacred or irreplaceable is subverted by the moral irrelevance of the criteria for individuating animal species.  I am therefore inclined to embrace the heretical conclusion that we have reason to desire the extinction of all carnivorous species, and I await the usual fate of heretics when this article is opened to comment.”

So Mc Mahan claims that species are not moral persons, and so have no moral rights. Interesting in a country, the USA, where the superior, so called "supreme", court, recently decided that corporations were moral persons, and had the right to give money for fascist or plutocratic political causes, lest their right of free speech were taken away from them.

This reminds me a bit of the Tea Party candidate with the "fully functional human brain mice”, but in a much more sinister way. Stupidity rules, and takes itself seriously. "Replace by new herbivores"? Why “new”? Apparently Mc Mahan never heard of the hundreds of people killed by elephants in India? Much more than by sharks, leopards, tigers…

Mr. Mc Mahan tries to flatter himself by posing as an "heretic", one who chooses. Implicitly: one who chooses to not follow the dictates of the Biblical God, as ordered by the catholic hierarchy at the beck and call of Roman emperor (self proclaimed as the "13th apostle", no less!).

However, in truth, Mc Mahan, far from being an innovator (as emperor Constantine and Saint Augustine were) is just a vulgar parrot. Indeed what Mc Mahan chooses to do is actually to quote the Bible, to justify his pathetic attempt at reason, when he is just at sea. Here professor Mc Mahan finding justification in the Bible: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and the little child shall lead them.  And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.” (Isaiah 2: 4 and 11: 6-7)

Mc Mahan takes the Bible at face value: "Isaiah was, of course, looking to the future rather than indulging in whimsical fantasies of doing a better job of Creation, and we should do the same."

"We should do the same": Mc Mahan-Isaiah has spoken of the future. Why? Well, it’s in the Bible. Prophets can’t be wrong, otherwise they would not be called prophets, but they are called thus, so they are right (I just made an imitation of Mc Mahan’s and Singer’s exalted verbiage, which they confuse with ethical thinking). Mc Mahan then anticipates the objection that he is "playing God", by saying that there is no God.

I went into the details of this because it shows how Main Stream Thinking (Princeton professors) make genocide honorable, using, naturally enough, that genocidal book par excellence, the Bible. And this demonstrates what I long claimed; the interest of the Bible’s main mission is as an encouragement to genocide. "God" is just a backdrop, representing the emperor.

The basic argument of Singer and Mc Mahan is that avoiding pain ought to be the ultimate metaprinciple. To avoid pain, one ought to do anything, and genocide comes in handy. (hey, maybe Hitler got something right!) Humankind hurts, therefore humankind ought to die.

Either eliminate humans (Singer), or eliminate carnivores (Mc Mahan; carnivores include man in a fundamental way, as the rise of man was possible only through meat; by the way coyotes are omnivores classified as carnivores…). But, in any case, eliminate. Brandish a final genocidal solutions as what works best.

Those for-profit philosophers are contradicting themselves, though. If they thought that there is so much pain, they ought to swallow enough barbiturates, and put an end to their own suffering. And if their own suffering is not that great, why do they want to kill us all? Instead, by writing monstrosities in the New York Times, they make the rest of humankind anxious, knowing such monsters are teaching the youth in American universities, draped into the mantle of alleged "ethics". The ethics of elimination of what Obama calls "band that perverts religion", no doubt.

See how it all fits together, in the end. Obama has called for the physical elimination of American born citizens, without indictment, and, a fortiori, trial. Obama exhibited the same sort of cool detachment as the suspects above, Singer, and Mc Mahan: we have a problem, problem causes pain, so let’s exterminate problem.

This metaprinciple of extermination advocated by Singer, Mc Mahan, and unfortunately, or so it seems, and more worrisomely, by Obama himself, is nothing new. Extermination, and especially mass extermination has been the last resort of politicians, since ever, and it has been used, since ever. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Roman emperor Justinian used it to massacre millions of Christians he viewed as heretics, thus causing a monster war with the Persian Sassanids, and making the bed of Islam, two generations later. That, in turn caused the destruction of the 2,000 year old Persian civilization, and the near total destruction of the even older Creto-Greco-Roman civilization, saved ultimately by those Germans known as the Franks.

The Nazis had their own philosopher of extermination, Dr. Alfred Rosenberg. Although he was never as clear as Singer and Mc Mahan, but actually completely obscure, Dr. Rosenberg was hanged at Nuremberg. That Hitler said "Nobody understand that stuff", speaking of Rosenberg’s work, did not save him.

***

PAIN CAME BEFORE CONSCIOUSNES, AND BECAUSE IT WAS GOOD:

Life on Earth is one system, and predation is how it avoids terminal imbalance: pare down the herbivores before they kill the last grass, algae, tree, or phytoplankton. Thus, destroying predation is destroying balance and then life, all of life.

And pain is irrelevant to that splendor that life is. Pain is life’s friend. Faced between average life with average pain, and death, all conscious animals, most of the time, prefer life, with the pain associated to it, to simple, merciful, death. Death is not what life does, what life strives for, it is what life rises above, what it contradicts.

Not always, of course: buffaloes cornered in water by lions have been seen committing suicide rather than waiting in water forever. In general, although conscious animals view life as a value, but they do not avoid their own death at all cost. To protect the young, or family, group, pride, pack, territory or leadership, they often commit for the "ultimate sacrifice".

Thus Schopenhauer’s contention that “one simple test of the claim that the pleasure in the world outweighs the pain…is to compare the feelings of an animal that is devouring another with those of the animal being devoured,” does not hold water. How did Schopenhauer compare devouring 10,000 times versus being devoured once? He should have interviewed a lion in the savannah, somewhere. Differently from Schopenhauer, I have exchanged view points, or at least glances and shouts, with wild, free lions, lucidly exerting their free will and caution.

Besides, so as not to destroy the predators predating, by uselessly violent struggles, prey animals are blessed with endorphins which are released profusely when they are put to death, so they do not suffer as much as Schopenhauer thought, the one time they get devoured. And certainly not as much as genocidal "philosophers" deserve to. Natural evil is not a monster, but more like an equilibrium. Stupid monstrosities such as Singer’s and Mc Mahan’s divagations, are a new type of synthetic evil, funded, just as Schopenhauer’s , on a total misrepresentation of nature.

Singer says, among other things, that rats are more aware than humans, because he is not aware of what a rat is, that a rat is made to be eaten, and that, for saying such absurdities, most human cultures would have put him, Singer, on the menu. Right away.

***

IT TAKES ONE BAD TO TERMINATE THE OTHER, & THE RAGE TO EXTERMINATE IS NOT ALWAYS WORSE

What else do we need predators for? First, what is a "predator"? (Besides being the name of a flying robot used by the USA to kill people they don’t like, plus whoever happens to be there, far from battlefield?)

"Predator" etymologically comes from plunderer, taking booty. But, when buffaloes, the most dangerous animal in (wild) Africa for humans, charge, it is not because the buffalo wants to acquire booty. Similarly, when France and Britain declared war to Hitler, they had decided to act as two lions when they decide to eliminate a hyena. Not for food. France and Britain did not intend to predate on Germany, just like lions don’t intent to eat hyenas. France and Britain were not out to acquire something material, but to eliminate Nazism, a spiritual movement they found intolerable.

France and Britain wanted to terminate the Nazis, just as buffaloes or elephants, when they charge lions want to terminate the lions. France and Britain acted on an important ethological drive: the RAGE TO EXTERMINATE. Nietzsche brought us the Will To Power, which I salute in passing, but the Rage To Exterminate is still something else.

The rage to exterminate is a great motivator, and it does not reduce to Nietzsche’s Will To Power. The rage to exterminate is what kept, historically speaking, the human-ruled planet in balance.

Buffaloes and elephants attack lions because lions are dangerous to them and their young. Lions and hyenas fight each other for the same reason, plus their competition about natural resources, namely prey. This is also found intra-specifically: lions fight lions to death to access territory and pride control (or even sex and food). Wolves do the same.

But that Will To Exterminate is even more prominent in people, to keep the earth in balance. Human beings are no simple predators, or carnivores. They are not just brainy Tyrannosaurus Rexes, or killer apes.

***

HUMAN BEINGS ARE ALSO STEWARDS OF THE EARTH, AND HAVE TO APPLY FEROCITY FOR PURELY ECOLOGICAL REASONS.

The Will To Exterminate is animating Singer, Mc Mahan… and made Obama forget the constitution he used to teach. They don’t know it, because the Will to Exterminate has not be recognized yet as fundamental drive. However, it is even more important than the Will To Power (that wolves, or elephant seals have), or the Will To Survive (that buffaloes and elephants have). Interestingly, chimpanzees seem to some of have it (they are obsessed with eradicating the chimpanzee group in the next valley over).

As the Will To Exterminate blossoms it brings in the darkest most violent neurological structures and hormones, and it tends to persevere ever more diabolically. Thus the Roman sentence "Perseverare Diabolicum" (it is diabolical to persevere… implied: in one’s error). The perseverance is hard to avoid, because once the neurological structures are built, they tend to persist.

And they tend to persist all the more, because eliminating the maximum of human beings is an absolute good for the planetary ecology. By the way, Singer says nothing less, or more, while thinking of himself as very creative, just because he does not know the past. So what he confuses for a deep reasoning is actually the deep ethological instinct of extermination Homo Erectus was completely animated with. People think Singer is a philosopher, but he is just a living fossil from a terrible past.

Perseverance and its tie-up with extermination, is not just philosophy in the clouds: NATO is persevering diabolically in Afghanistan, a decade late, if you count naively, or four decades later, if you count intelligently, precisely because the Will To Exterminate is so powerful. The more the adversary resists, the greater the perseverance, the greater the Will To Exterminate.

It’s not all negative. The Will To Exterminate, humankind’s ultimate weapon, can sometimes also be the weapon of progress, because humankind is all about progress. Progress in all ways. Spiritual, moral, technological, scientific, philosophical, poetical…

Not all humans are about progress, indeed. Some, devoured by the Will To Exterminate, express the ecological necessity of destroying other men as the ultimate value. Sometimes they do this in sneaky ways, say by just promoting stupidity beyond any reason (the adulators of Reagan, such as the desperate Obama, spring to mind).

In the worst cases, such as Nazism, one needs to exterminate the exterminators in turn. The Will To Exterminate can, and must, sometimes be applied to the exterminators themselves (now, of course, in Afghanistan, it is mostly NATO which is exterminating, and has long been exterminating, and the Afghans, defending; as I said, the USA attacked there in the 1970s, and even earlier, if one takes into account the ISI-CIA alchemy of violent interference).

We need terminators to eliminate fools, the Mickey-mouse world falsely installed in their tiny minds, and other dangerous fantasies they want us to drown into. This means that we need, within the most advanced intelligence, the most advanced capability and inclination to inflict pain on the elected target of our ire. Humanity is not about avoiding Evil, but about inflicting it appropriately, never forgetting that ultimate value, progress.

That the worst revolutions, and the worst excesses have made that discourse before, and they were wrong in their circumstances, does not mean that it is wrong always, or that it is not the basic discourse of human evolution. Because it is. In the human species, extermination has driven evolution. That does not mean that all and any extermination is good, but it means that it is always there as an instinct. Certainly nastier, and much more powerful than, say, the sexual instinct.

When France and Britain declared war to Hitler on September 3, 1939, the Will To Exterminate, the infliction of pain came to the rescue of the highest moral principles. "Blood, sweat, and tears" were further promised by Churchill, nearly a year later. In the name of a greater good. Even buffaloes understand this. Extermination and infliction of pain and violence can be the best next action to engage into.

But some Princeton professors do not understand this, because they have no interest in understanding this. Their fame comes from having a reputation for intelligence and scholarship, while not understanding what even buffaloes understand. So doing, they become living miracles: so dumb, and yet so smart about being dumb! So good, and yet, so evil at implementing their goodness.

(Singer is not always stupid; he was against G. W. Bush’s Iraq war). As I said, the same objection can be made against some Buddhist formulations, and against pacifism, when it reaches the rarefied heights of complete idiocy, where only the most stupid organisms represent life.

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LOVE ENTANGLED WITH EVIL IS CALLED HUMANITY:

Economy means house-management. What about human-management? It is curious that we have no word for it, since it is the main obsession of philosophy, politics and, per force, civilization. Would its homonymy be the neologism homonomy? Is that humanity, in full, the entanglement of love, and evil, and conscience?

We saw above that tough, cruel, brutal, violent, inhuman decisions had to be taken to save humanity. Inhuman bombing and strafing by aircraft all over German cities was very effective to destroy Nazism. That was OK, because it was OK, said Satan, to kill children.

Bodies of school children in Braunschweig, Germany, after a bombing raid.

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Berlin was 33% destroyed by aerial bombing. Cologne: 61% destroyed by aerial bombing. Dortmund: 54% Dresden 59%. Dusseldorf: 64%. Essen 50%. Frankfurt; 53%. Hamburg: 75% destroyed by aerial bombing. Munich: 42% destroyed by aerial bombing. All these cities had more than half a million people. Many of these cities got further destroyed by ground fighting.

Evil motivates us to do what needs to be done, and that love, alone, cannot compel us to do. Think Hiroshima plus Nagasaki: 400,000 killed (maybe), 3 millions saved (or much more).

So if evil, in the abstract, is a tolerable, even indispensable characteristic of our human ethology, if Evil, the inner part of our psychobiology that is mean and cruel, can be OK, what is not OK? Abstract evil allows us, gives us the emotional motivation, to cut through love, or indifference, when they preventing us to do something which, if not done, would ultimately kill love.

Without the help of Satan, of the Dark Side, it would have been impossible for the crews wasting Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or those doing aerial bombings all over Germany, to do their duty. It was not just the duty of the West, and democracy, but that of civilization. However, viewed from our heavenly side, it was so disgusting, that only a taste for evil allowed to do it.

Some of the brutes performing their evil deeds may call what drives their conscience "God". And that is why the God of the Bible and the Qur’an is so mean, cruel, jealous, and more than a bit demented in his drive to extermination (see the book of apocalypse in the Bible, and the end of the Qur’an). Otherwise the most arduous ethical tasks would never get done, and this explains that Christo-Islamism is by far the world’s greatest religion (by comparison there are only 500 million Buddhists).

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CHURCHILL AS EVIL INCARNATED, FOR THE BEST:

Churchill’s activities in 1940 are revealing: no mountain was high enough, which he could not climb, but neither was any evil, that he would not muster to his help. Absent Churchill’s evil activities, the going would have been tougher (although a Nazi victory had become unlikely after the enormous losses Hitler’s armed forces sustained during the Battle Of France).

1) Churchill ordered the head of the Royal Air Force to send all his squadrons to France, keeping only the minimum needed for survival of England (his subordinate lied to him, and kept more than needed).

2) Churchill (and de Gaulle) ordered the unification of Great Britain and France (it failed by happenstance).

3) Churchill ordered the preparation of toxic gas and of the poisoning of wells throughout South East England (in contradiction with international treaties that even the Nazis respected).

4) Churchill ordered the destruction of the French fleet (lest it fell in Nazi hands, but also to encourage the others). British Admiral Somerville was asked to carry the orders, and did so, calling it: "…the biggest political blunder of modern times and will rouse the whole world against us…we all feel thoroughly ashamed…" Instead it showed the world that the British were even nastier than the Nazis (the nastiness was accidental, due to a miscommunication, as both French and British commands had agreed to send the fleet to the USA… but the point is that the nastiness looked good…).

What is not OK, is stupid evil. For example going into Afghanistan to support a corrupt fundamentalist theocracy (that of Karzai), while calling the opposition "a sorry band of men, which PERVERTS RELIGION, " is too dumb for easy analysis. The ways of the stupid are mysterious, and they take great umbrage when they are told they know nothing. But then, at some point, instead of tolerating stupidity, we have to crush the stupid so much that they can’t impose their stupidity anymore. So we have to be mean, at some point, with the insufficiently mentally endowed. We need a touch of evil. Thus it is a greater evil to not have a touch of evil. That is where we lose Buddhists, holier-than-thous, Obama, and those who appease at all cost. Obama needed a touch of evil to get a health care plan that made sense, or for opposing his generals, obsessed as they are, by conquering the next valley over, or for understanding that he banks were rolling him in flour, before putting him to fry.

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WHAT IS THE ULTIMATE GOOD? CERTAINLY NOT PREFERING KILL TO WILL!

SUPERIOR INTELLIGENCE WHILE CREATING A LOT OF THE UNIVERSE AROUND US IS WHAT HUMANS DO, AND HAVE DONE, FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS, EVOLVING INTO IT, AND THROUGH IT. This is the essence of humanity, and thus, it’s ultimate good. I THINK, THEREFORE I CAN (hopefully without messing things up too much). We if I don’t think enough, we can’t do enough.( Obama’s problem.)

How do humans create so much of the universe? By constructing first a putative universe in their brains, inspired by the observed universe. In other words they create first a model in their mind, naturally it’s a flawed model, something which is not, but a real little universe, made of quantum and neurological connections.

They may well use Quantum Logics and quantum Random Walk to do that, because Quantum processes can be in two places at once, making them a tempting mechanism to entangle what is happening and what might have been, or could well be. Quantum potentialities go hand in hand with free will.

The ultimate stupidity is the unconscious. However being conscious means one will experience pain. Let me explain. It is pretty clear that the simplest animals, such as Aplysia, a sea slug with 600 neurons, experience pain. Is that bad? No. Pain actually is good for Aplysia: it keeps it out of harm’s way, and that is why pain was invented, as Aplysia’s ancestors evolved. So, if pain is good for Aplysia, most of the time, why should not it be good for us, some of the time? But then what is left of philosophies which make pain avoidance their metaprinciple, and prefer kill to will?

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NO PAIN, NO BRAIN: CONSCIOUSNESS WITHOUT PAIN IS ONLY RUIN OF THE BODY (AND THE SOUL).

Although it can suffer, it is not clear that Aplysia is conscious, whatever conscious means. "Conscious" probably means that it can invent stuff. Namely go from a neurology which is purely reactive and descriptive, to one where an imaginary universe embodies itself, the putative universe.

It is clear that Aplysia knows pain, and maybe pain is the only thing it knows, whatever "knowing" means. Thus pain is more fundamental than consciousness, and a fundamental part of knowledge. Of course Buddha did not know what Aplysia was, and, a fortiori, never engaged a dialogue with it, modulo mild electric discharges. But now we have talked that way to Aplysia, and Aplysia responded, and instructed us. There is more wisdom in gaining other animals’ wisdom, than in imposing ours, without having listened to them first.

Hence, when Princeton professors want to exterminate us according to their mission, or more exactly, their front, of simple minded goodness to eliminate the pain, as an overarching principle, they are, de facto, deploring consciousness first.

Conspiracy theorists will notice that Princeton and Rutgers are private, "Ivy League" universities. These elite universities attend to the plutocracy. The plutocracy prefers its victims to be unconscious; thus Singer and Mc Mahan theorize in accordance with their pay masters: by attacking pain, they attack consciousness, and thus the adversaries of plutocracy, and you can bet that they are not even conscious of that.

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ATTACKING PAIN, PER SE, IS TO ATTACK CONSCIOUSNESS ITSELF, AND THAT IS UNCONSCIONABLE. LITERALLY.

Ultimately life and consciousness are ultimate goods, the ultimate goods. Pain originated as a way to help life and consciousness, an unavoidable way to them, a protector and parent. Actually a lot of neurobiology may have risen from pain circuitry. But it still plays this role, even in the highest way. When pain comes from the catastrophic rise of CO2, it will be a way to warn against further catastrophe, a way more persuasive to most than intellectual reasoning. Hurting the beast brings up the soul, in those who did not have enough of it to start with.

In any case, viewing the elimination of pain as an ultimate good is, itself, one of the greatest evils, because it is promoting the annihilation of what makes consciousness possible.

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ONE WORLD, ONE MIND; EVIL AS RAW ECOLOGY:

More prosaically we need predators, because predation is a great source of mind and poetry. We evolved with them, through them, in a mental exchange with them. Without predators to worry about, and admire, we are not fully us. A sea full of sharks, a bush, full of lions, concentrate the minds as only the proximity of putative death can. While relativizing and putting back in their tiny places inferior values.

The human species is not just omnivorous as pigs are omnivorous. Pigs love to kill (warthogs have been known to kill lions, with their razor sharp tusks propelled by their mean dispositions). But pigs did not evolve as killing machines. And only because they were killing machines. We did, though. We can’t live on tubers, acorns and mushrooms alone.

The human species evolved through epigenetic pressure towards making meat its source of energy, because meat is a superior source of energy (even the biggest whales use meat as energy; the tiniest meat, under the form of plankton, sure, but still meat). The earliest bones found with human made cut marks stand at 3.4 million years, a 2010 discovery. Those marks are apparently older than Homo Habilis, previously thought as the earliest tool maker. That would mean that meat eating was a solid pressure in human evolution, from way back, and that it mixed with tool, weapon, and knife usage.

Everything indicates that the difference between chimps and the human lineage is all about meat, and thus is at least 6 million years old.

Our energy guzzling brains evolved us, through millions of years, into the stewards of the land, and the lords of good and evil, each defining the other. Do away with evil, and you do away with goodness too.

Mc Mahan, the Rutgers-Princeton master thinker suggests to go kill all the sharks, all the sea turtles, sea serpents, and sea eagles. Kill all the cows, because they eat slugs and insects in their pernicious pseudo herbivorous ways. don’t forget to kill all the sea lions, and all the elephant seals, all the whales (much of plankton is made of small animals). Nazism, generalized, Hitler made coherent with himself: nothing like it, no doubt the present and more of the future of the USA.

We, the predators and carnivores will argue that doing away with stupidity is our first and proximal mission, and everything else is secondary. Such is the deepest nature of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. It is dishonest to claim that Homo Sapiens Sapiens is not a carnivorous predator. It’s our reality, we have to take it into account, if we want to keep on living. Just eating grass will not change this, and the ecological weight on the planet is commensurate with just eating meat (it’s less, but still commensurate, so either feeding mode is a problem of the same nature). Singer’s and Mc Mahan’s solution, to eliminate life itself, is no solution, not anymore that one would have solved Fermat conjecture by deciding to do no more mathematics. Singer and Mc Mahan have a problem, so they suggest to jump off the bridge collectively. It would be more moral to engage in nuclear world war, or , even more moral, to have the USA take over the world. And of course these milder solutions may be why the absurdly criminogenic propositions of Singer and Mc Mahan are given such a big soap box.

Since as predators and carnivores we are used to adversity, and we welcome their hatred, we will not be disheartened, because, to impose our superior morality, no evil will stand in the way, as the Nazis, should they still be around, could testify.

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TOLERATING PLUTOCRACY STARTS BY GETTING USED TO HELL AS THE ONLY CONTEXT AND CONCEPT:

Even the Nazis never advocated publicly, no Nazi ever advocated publicly, the "final solution". But now American professors from the highest ivory towers indulge themselves that way, and the most prestigious media give them amplification. All indicates that that ethics is sinking ever more in the USA. When do we hit bottom? Torture, assassination, advocacy of genocide: why so much impudence against civilization? Well, because civilization is losing. Losing to plutocracy, that is.

The war in Afghanistan plays a devious role in this. The USA, NATO, the West are losing in Afghanistan. They are losing, and it was a deliberate plot. They don’t mind: it is becoming the plan, increasingly so.

Various agents, starting under Carter, consciously, decided to use Afghanistan as a trap for the USSR. What they did not say was that it was a trap also for the USA, the West, democracy. What is boosted? Fascism, and thus plutocracy.

Suppose that Al Qaeda, the godchild of the Pakistani ISI, got its hands on one of the 200 Pakistani thermonuclear bombs, and exploded in a major Western city, say New York. The reaction of the American establishment would be to impose instant fascism, the dream regime for plutocracy. So, logically, plutocracy, through its influence in Washington, should have used American taxpayer money to finance the Pakistani nuclear arsenal. And that is exactly what it did (last under G. W. Bush).

Creating a semantic context where extra-judicial governmental violence, torture, and assassination are tolerated and genocide accepted as a possible, even "ethical" solutions, are part of this general effort. They are both implied threat and distraction. The increasingly satanic ambiance benefits the plutocracy, this nebulous association of the richest and most powerful. Because it makes their activities expected, accepted, acceptable, it makes the flames and heavy clouds of hell, torture, assassination, genocide, into what the respected and supposedly respectable preaches. It’s hell, it’s now, and let nobody say in the future they did not know that it was going on. Because it is. Just look.

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Patrice Ayme

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