Latest Pluto Brexit Outrage: Dictator Johnson Suspends UK Parliament

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrice Ayme

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nazi Panzer Korps invading France, 1940

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrice Ayme

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ernest Montague

Oakland, CA Aug. 19

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

[135 Recommend]

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

@Ernest Montague

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

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

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

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

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David in Le Marche

Italy Aug. 19

@Patrice Ayme

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

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

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

27 Recommend

I replied:    

@David in Le Marche

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alan

Germany Aug. 20

@Patrice Ayme:

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

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

@Alan

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

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

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

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

Genug!

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

Kenneth Thomas

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

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

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

Nicolas Berger

FranceAug. 20

@Patrice Ayme

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

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

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

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

Patrice Ayme

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

In light of the Biarritz 2019 G7 Summit:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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German fascism rested on lies:

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

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

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Lies Rule History: 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paul Krugman in The World Has a Germany Problem

The debt obsession that ate the economy.

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

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

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

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

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

***

And Paul Krugman to explain:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrice Ayme

Ongoing German Lies, And Why They Matter, Destroying Europe, & World. 1) Ecology

Some German anti-democratic lies have been ruling the world, for two decades now. It’s high time to get rid of them. A combination of Trump and progressive minds such as Uber-influential Nobel Paul Krugman of the New York Times, may well succeed to amplify my meek bleating in the dark.

Our times are cataclysmic, apocalyptic: after all, a sixth mass extinction has been launched. To stop it, we need the truth. Nothing but the truth, and all of it… that is we must denounce lies, and lying temperaments. We need science, that is, what’s left  

Trump lies outrageously, everybody knows this, but he is not the only one, all too many forget the latter. I have long said that Merkel’s Germany was off the track, and a big lie, in so many ways. Consider my Merkler? essay of 2012. Some will scoff that only Greeks got injured. No, all of Europe, and also Merkler’s insanity caused Brexit. I was ahead of times: now, seven years later, this point of view is gaining broad acceptance.

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

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

***

Energiewende Lie: Germany produces twice more CO2 per head than France (though about half of the USA). Worse: present policy does not make any improvement possible. In contrast, the USA has been best in the world at reducing CO2 emissions (albeit from a high starting point)…German Chancellor Merkel originated, lie has been “Energiewende”. the “Energy Transition“… which has consisted into Germany tapping some more coal, the bedrock of its heavy industry, for centuries.

Germany used its clout in environmentally correct policies (a lie!) to instill a mood of keeping on burning CO2 to produce energy, and, in particular, for burning coal. This has spread to all of Europe, and beyond:

https://www.ips-journal.eu/regions/europe/article/show/europes-coal-problem-3523/

Cute little picture… Full of lies, and implied dread. For example the picture describes and expect a lowering of energy consumption in Germany. All that means is that Germany is importing more, including nuclear from France. “Biomass” is a lie: it means making CO2 by burning old forests: it worsens the CO2 problem, planet-wide.

The truth is that, at this point, we have two new energy sources: photovoltaics and nuclear. Photovoltaics doesn’t work everywhere, and all the time. Nuclear is vast: U 235 fission, U 233 fission, Thorium, fusion, etc. Some have nuclear waste, others, not really. Even U 235 fission can be realized in many ways. The important point is that both danger and waste can be avoided completely using some nuclear technologies.

Nuclear devices will have to be developed, just to colonize other planets:

https://www.space.com/nuclear-propulsion-future-spacecraft-nasa-chief.html

I am positively completely, even fanatically against some nuclear technologies, such as graphite-gas (see Chernobyl for the inconvenience), surgenerators (with present tech), or second generation U235 reactors. At Fukushima, three such reactors exploded and melted down (due to a litany of grave errors). In the end, the radiation stayed confined: babies can now use the Fukushima beach… (Contrarily to expectations.)

Germany is against nuclear some will say, because it is more interested to milk coal for as long as possible. It’s not about higher principles, but greed. Germany has said, explicitly, under Merkel, that nuclear was more of a danger than coal. Now we can see how false that is: the greenhouse is accelerating. Siberia was on fire, for weeks, now so is the Amazon:

Following expanding wildfires in the Amazon rainforest, NOAA/NASA’s Suomi NPP satellite captured a natural-color image of smoke above South America using the VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) instrument on Wednesday (Aug. 21). The image shows smoke above the Brazilian states of Amazonas (upper left), Para (upper right), Mato Grosso (lower right) and Rondonia (lower left). Lake Titicaca in Bolivia is visible, so are the Chilean and Peruvian coasts. Fires in the Amazonian rain forest used to be unthinkable… And so was our planet’s climate, unsinkable. But, surely, it’s flammable…

Usually perceived as culturally advanced Germany is helping to cause another holocaust… The entire planet on fire this time… Current oxygen levels are the result of millions of years of annual production. The loss of the Amazon won’t cause oxygen levels to immediately plummet… But the Amazon produces up to 6% of the Earth’s oxygen. So, as I have said in the past, there is an oxygen threat… Indeed, acidification of the ocean from CO2 could kill the plankton… Losing 50% of world’s O2 production.

But, says, Merkler, nuclear is the scariest thing…

Next we will consider the problem of debt, where the German attitude has proven even more hypocritical, and immediately injurious, abating industry in Europe (hence counter-measures to the CO2 built-up…) Something for the G7 to mull…

Patrice Ayme

Big History View Of China, How It Relates To Hong Kong

How did China get united, 22 centuries ago? Under the rule of law. The state of Qin grew, over the centuries, from relentless application of the law, just like the other greatest civilization, Rome. This mood, of the rule of law being paramount, is why the generals of the First Emperor were able to conquer China… Very similarly to what the Roman Republic did, at exactly the same time, and for the exact same reasons: Rome won, and Qin won, because people accept to be ruled by law, if it is fair and clairvoyant. The Mission Civilisatrice is no lure: it wins wars. Superior war fighting capability comes from superior philosophy. Inferior philosophy brings extinction. 

In the end, the First Emperor slipped, and led China astray, for millennia to come, when he ordered the books of 100 philosophy schools destroyed. Right, records, science, medicine were preserved… So the disaster was not as great in China as the Christian generated destruction of the Greco-Roman heritage in the West. (Yet, in the West, the Franks, a minority, took over, and, as a minority, they had to be smarter, and thus domesticated Christianism, rendering it innocuous… for the next five centuries… before it rose its ugly snout again…)

However, that Qin instigated wanton destruction of higher thinking, and the respect thereof,  set-up in China a mood of embracing a lack of wisdom and tolerance for exotic thinking, which, in the end, had ethical consequences (and from there, social, economic, and ultimately, military). That mood of irreverence for higher thinking out of the box, prevented China to learn to treat individuals as well as they were in the West.

In Francia, in 655 CE, the government of the Imperium Francorum led by queen Bathilde, a former English slave, outlawed slave trading; this was imposed all around Europe. For example in 1066 CE, when the Franks conquered England… and freed the slaves, 20% of the population. As Aristotle pointed out, if one had no slaves, one would need machines. The Franks developed those machines. European visitors to China. around or before Marco Polo, were struck by the fact that cutting trees in China involved hundreds of people carrying those trees around… when similar tasks were accomplished by a few in Europe, thanks to various tech tricks. 

What Xi wants to be, when he grows up? Hopefully, the Present Masters of China Will Learn That This Is All Over Now: Xi Can’t be Qin Shi Huang!

(Huang, emperor, maybe, Shi, first, certainly not…)

Treating individuals better in the West, as was imposed under the Merovingians and Carolingians, brought up a technological, and even bioengineering explosion: human muscle and multitude had to be replaced by mechanical advantage or specially bred animals (for example hydraulic hammer to forge huge iron beams, hence the cathedrals… and, a bit later, field artillery). [1]

An indirect result of this tech explosion was Western military superiority, which was so great, even the Mongols left Western Europe alone (after conferring among each other about why their ancestors the Huns had been defeated in France, eight centuries prior). Thus Western Europe was unconquered, for two millennia, insuring independent ferocity of thinking and self-worth, spurring inquiry of the indomitable human spirit, with more freedom than occupied China.   

Indeed, in contrast, in the last millennium, China spent most of its time ruled by foreigners (Jurchen, Mongols, Manchus). Mongol generals even proposed to annihilate China, demographically (holocaust) and even ecologically (turning northern China into a steppe) The rule of law, intellect and science suffered in China, from this foreign occupation.

In the Twentieth Century, China reacted, mostly by adopting Western ideologies: rule of law, then Marxism, then the sort of mercantilist, tech led development leading Western powers, used in the Nineteenth Century; powers such as the USA, Germany, UK, France… even Japan (a new honorary Western power!)

So far, so good. 

However to lead, one needs to create ideas, not just mass produce goods. Western European supremacy was born out of human rights (when the Franks put back monotheism in its place, by replacing Christianism by tolerance and pushing back Islamism, after outlawing slavery). If China doesn’t learn to drive the rule of law from human right, it will just become one more dangerous super power, like Prussia, and the Second, and Third Reich of Germany.

Democracy and Human Rights are not just fair. Humanity in full, is made for fairness, and blossom fully that way. Democracy and human rights are how one maximizes mental creativity… And thus military superiority. Hence, should the Chinese dictatorship decide to crush democracy, once again, it is Chinese security that it is also crushing, long term.

Hong Kong is an irreplaceable gift to China, an antidote to Chinese intellectual and governmental fascism: it forces China to learn to become more tolerant to thinking outside of the particular box which pleases at this moment the present emperor (right now, Mr. Xi). [2]

Destroying that gift would instill an even more ignorant mood.

But ignorant moods are exactly what plutocracy loves.

Lack of construction for homes and dearth of living wages, have been a chronic disaster, throughout the West. It’s particularly bad in Hong Kong, but also in all top producing metropolises, such as Paris, San Francisco Bay Area, Tokyo, etc. Not only are homes unaffordable for the jobs at hand, but the economy suffers from the unaffordability crisis.

Then We The People, observing the collusion between plutocrats and government, revolt… by asking for more (real, that is direct) democracy. And that goes through decreasing the power of tycoons, so precious to governments. Ironically enough, what is Xi, but a super-tycoon, a super-typhoon putting equality to waste?

OK, Xi was an abused child, an abused princeling, abused by the Cultural Revolution. Xi suffered a past of violence. But that’s a diagnostic, not an excuse.

Patrice Ayme

***

***

[1] The cognitively challenged friend of monopolist plutocrat Bill Gates, Jared Diamond (author of Guns, Germs, and Steel; Collapse) didn’t understand any of this, that the husbandry of Europe over nature was not the product of chance, but human will, deployed over millennia (although in his latest book, Diamond shows flickers of progressing wisdom, as he ponders successful cases of government intervention… more or less mangled by his data management…) All the riches of Western Europe were greatly the fruit of will, indeed. The same holds for China (or Kerala)… But, as I point out above, and why, to a smaller extent. And the Beijing hysteria about Hong Kong is a case in point, that Chinese governmentalism, however glorious, fundamental and effective, can’t be the whole story:

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/synthesis-found-governmentalism/

***

[2] France is another example where centralism, and the accompanying governmental, social and intellectual fascism has run havoc. Louis XIV, a bloody stupid monster, threw 10% of the French population out, so that it could better terrorize the rest, and please his fascist god. That was aggravated by his grandson, Louis XV, and Napoleon…

Zhōngguó, Central State, is the most common Mandarin name for China in modern times. The first appearance of 中國 on an artifact was in the Western Zhou on a ritual vessel. It is formed by combining the characters zhōng (中) meaning “central” or “middle”, and guó (國/国), representing “state” or “states”; in contemporary usage, “nation”. Prior to the Qin unification of China “Zhongguo” referred to the “Central States“; the connotation was the primacy of a culturally distinct core area, centered on the Yellow River valley, as distinguished from the tribal periphery. Hence the common mistranslation as “Middle Kingdom”.

Computation Of Roman Republic Absolute Wealth Limit. Caesar A Revolutionary.

Greed, the power of a few, can’t grow to heavens, all over the solar system, then the galaxy, or we will end with evil so great, we can’t even imagine it.

The Roman Republic had the same problem, and succeeded to limit greed and power for around 5 centuries… This is why it lasted so long, until it was increasing replaced and displaced by the imperial plutocracy known as the Principate. 

By 150 BCE, Roma had a gigantic empire, taking weeks to cross. Plutocracy got out of control, thanks to globalization which, then as now, enabled the wealthiest to escape local laws. 

In -133, the tribune of the plebs Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a very high level military official renounced his (topmost) Patrician status to be elected Tribune of the People. He attempted an agrarian reform in Rome (lex Sempronia) which stipulated that no citizen can personally occupy more than 500 jugeres of the ager publicus (public lands), with a maximum of 1000 (250 hectares) if he had two sons and forbids grazing on the public pasture more than one hundred head of cattle or five hundred of small. The land, taken over by the State from the large landowners (compensated), was to be distributed in inalienable lots of 30 jugeres to the poor citizens. Tibérius hoped to encourage the inactive plebs to return to the land and fight against depopulation of the countryside, and the increasing underclass..

Tiberius passed his law by relying on the tradition (the limitation to 500 jugeres was a return to the agrarian law of Caius Licinius Stolon) and on the liberal fraction of the Senate. The proposal is first supported by the consul P. Mucius Scaevola, the ex-consul Appius Claudius Pulcher, Pontifex Maximus  P. Licinius Crassus, Q. Metellus  and some others. The tribune M. Octavius, who opposes the reform, is deposed of his office unanimously by the comices summoned by Tibérius in violation of the constitution. The agrarian law passed in an aggravated form (no indemnity).

Now think of it. Say one acre is worth 4,000 dollars… 

https://www.nass.usda.gov/Publications/Todays_Reports/reports/land0818.pdf

The maximum wealth is then 2,000 x 4,000 ~ 10 x 10^6= 10 million dollars.

This gives an idea of the order of magnitude of what Roman Republicans thought was reasonable as wealth limit. Later, under the fascist Principate (the degraded republican oligarchy Augustus set up), individuals worth many billions (of today’s dollars) were many: they would build entire circuses or theaters, organized and financed extravagant, extremely costly “games”…

***

Topmost general, top revolutionary… But too trusting in human nature’s rationality… Iulius Caesar…

Roman censors punished those culprit as what was viewed as extravagant living (and they were busy). When that became not enough, the Roman Republic enacted “sumptuary laws”, limiting extravagant private wealth exhibition: no woman could wear more than half an ounce of gold, for example (Lex Oppia, 213 BCE, passed during the Second Punic War). Lex Orchia, passed three years after the Censorship of Cato the Elder (181 BCE), limited the number of guests at parties, among other things.

SUMTUARIAE LEGES, was the name of various laws passed over the centuries to prevent inordinate expense (sumtus) in banquets, dress, &c. (Gellius, II.24,XX.1). In antiquity, and not just in the Roman Republic, it was considered the duty of government to put a check upon extravagance in the private expenses of persons. The censors, to whom was entrusted the disciplina or cura morum, punished by the nota censoria all persons guilty of luxurious mode of living: a great many instances of this kind are recorded [Censor, p264, a.] 

There were many such laws. An example: Lex Didia, passed 143 B.C.E, extended the Lex Fannia to the whole of Italy, and enacted that not only those who gave entertainments which exceeded in expense what the law had prescribed, but also all who were present at such entertainments, should be liable to the penalties of the law. (Macrob. Sat. III.17.6). But as the love of luxury greatly increased with the immense foreign conquests of the Republic and the luxurious moods of various potentates thereupon infected the Republic, the sumptuary laws went by the way side too.

Nowadays, we could start sumptuary laws by not having We The People subsidize private jets… Or having cruise ships pay tax on fuel, etc. The French put a tax on business and first class air travel…

***

Julius Caesar, Redistributive Revolutionary:

Caesar was elected consul for 59 BC. The most controversial measure Caesar introduced was an agrarian bill to allot plots of land to the landless poor for farming, which clashed with the traditional conservative opposition. In historian Cassius Dio‘s opinion, Caesar tried to appear to promote the interests of the optimates as well as those of the people (POPULARES). Caesar read the draft of the bill to the senate, asked for the opinion of each senator and promised to amend or scrap any clause that had raised objections. 

The optimates were annoyed because the bill, to their embarrassment, could not be criticised. Moreover, passing the law would give Caesar popularity and power. Even though no optimate spoke against it, no one expressed approval. The law would distribute public and private land to all citizens instead of just Pompey’s veterans and would do so without any expense for the city or any loss for the optimates. It would be financed with the proceeds from Pompey’s war booty and the new tributes and taxes in the east Pompey established with his victories in the Third Mithridatic War. 

Private land was to be bought at the price assessed in the tax-lists to ensure fairness. The land commission in charge of the allocations would have twenty members so that it would not be dominated by a clique and so that many men could share the honour. Caesar added that it would be run by the most suitable men, an invitation to the optimates to apply for these posts. He ruled himself out of the commission to avoid suggestions that he proposed the measure out of self-interest and said that he was happy with being just the proposer of the law. 

The senators kept delaying the vote. Cato advocated the status quo. Caesar came to the point of having him dragged out of the senate house and arrested. Many senators followed suit and left. Caesar adjourned the session and decided that since the senate was not willing to pass a preliminary decree Caesar would get the plebeian council to vote. He did not convene the senate for the rest of his consulship and proposed motions directly to the plebeian council. 

Appian wrote that the law provided for distribution of public land that was leased to generate public revenues in Campania, especially around Capua, to citizens who had at least three children, and that this included 20,000 men. When many senators opposed the bill, Caesar pretended to be indignant and rushed out of the senate. Appian noted that Caesar did not convene it again for the rest of the year. Instead, he harangued the people and proposed his bills to the plebeian council. Suetonius also mentioned the 20,000 citizens with three children. He also wrote that the allocations concerned land in the plain of Stella that had been made public in by-gone days, and other public lands in Campania that had not been allotted but were under lease. Plutarch, who had a pro-aristocratic slant, thought that this law was not becoming of a consul, but for a most radical plebeian tribune. 

Land distribution, which was anathema to conservative aristocrats, was usually proposed by the plebeian tribunes who were often described by Roman writers (who were usually wealthy aristocrats) as base and vile. It was opposed by ‘men of the better sort’ (aristocrats) and this gave Caesar an excuse to rush to the plebeian council, claiming that he was driven to it by the obduracy of the senate. It was only the most arrogant plebeian tribunes who courted the favour of the multitude and now Caesar did this to support his consular power “in a disgraceful and humiliating manner”.

***

The Gracchi were assassinated. By the wealthiest. Because of the land redistribution law. So was Caesar, leader of the POPULARES… Caesar was in a league of his own. He was not just a fantastic general and a dictator, or, as some have erroneous said, the first “emperor” (there had been many “imperators” before). Caesar was also a genuine revolutionary, just what Rome needed. Like the Gracchi, he took shortcuts (they all may have had to). Their biggest mistake was to have been assassinated.

A few months ago, I was reading a new misinforming book by a famous historian from one of the wealthiest universities (most of the book was good, but that made the misinformation within that much more lethal). The professor pontificated that there was not a shred of revolution in Caesar’s bones. But, actually, the Lex Iulia, Caesar’s agrarian reform, passed… 15 years later, the plutocrats killed Caesar…

The absurd, counterfactual position of this US university professor teaches us that, to this day, the quarrel of the Populares with the plutocrats is ongoing. His wealthy sponsors (through his wealthy university) instilled in that historian, a spirit of dismissal of Caesar, where it could really hurt plutocracy….

Now Elizabeth Warren 2% wealth tax above 50 million dollars is far from the ferocity of the Roman Republic laws against wealth, power, and luxury. But one has to start somewhere…

Patrice Ayme

August 1944 Landing In Provence: The Real Thing. D Day Was A Lure.

During the Landing In Provence, more than four times as many soldiers fought as during D Day. They were all French, and US Americans. More than twice the number of Allied soldiers died during this Operation Dragoon as in Normandy on D Day. And Dragoon was much more important than D Day strategically… because it provided the Allies with ports.

So why is the Landing in Provence, Operation Dragoon, so studiously ignored? Was it because more than half of the army was from French Africa? Or is it because the logical universe in which Dragoon occurred tells us a lot about how today’s world, complete with why finance supreme, fracking, Uberization, and spying all over blossomed so magnificently?

I read thousands of books and articles on World War Two, and interviewed exhaustively people who took part in it including my grandparents and mom (resistance, saving of more than 100 Jews, among others, personalized hunting by Gestapo in 1944), or my dad (African army), or uncle (officer in the French army, fighting for six years).

Toulon and Marseilles fell within ten days, thanks to remarkable assaults by the French army. Smaller ports in France or the Netherlands, would stay under Nazi control for 8 months, until the reddition of the 1,000 years Reich… 7,301 US soldiers died, during the Provence Landing, including lots of elite paratroops…

The same things are always said, presumably to please the same authorities, and because authors, anxious to publish what works, read each others. So here a few points, never emphasized.

The Vercors mesa fighting was a major diversion: the French Resistance was made to prepare an airfield, to get heavy weapons and Allied troops. But that was a lie. The Resistance believed in it, so did the Nazis. Thus elite SS and paratroops landed on said airfield… instead of intervening in Normandy, where they would have made a difference. 

The real disembarkment was supposed to be in Provence, not Normandy. The reason is obvious: Normandy had no significant port, and especially no port expected to survive Nazi sabotage. Normandy, like Versors, was a lure. Provence has two huge, indestructible ports, so huge they were: the vast bay of Marseilles and the nearly enclosed, gigantic rade de Toulon.

Sure enough, the Provence disembarkment had three times more soldiers (450,000!) than the famous “D Day”. All the units were elite and very experienced from fighting the Nazis in North Africa (where 160,000 elite Afrika Korps personnel were captured in Tunisia, and sent to the USA to be watched by black US soldiers…)  The armies landing in Provence had also fought the Nazis in Sicily and in a grueling war up the mountainous dorsal of Italy.

Initial US plans had Normandy and Provence simultaneously, but, supposedly fighting among US commanders about the availability of ships, delayed Provence.

French African troops en route for the Reich, Operation Dragoon.

In any case, two thirds of the army was French, the other, US. All combat proven elite troops. The US army chased the Nazis up north, while the French army wheeled around, and besieged the extremely well defended Toulon and Marseilles… Many Nazi held French ports surrendered only May 8, 1945, when Nazi Germany capitulated without conditions. But seizing Toulon and Marseilles was crucial to the assault on Nazi Germany, and the French captured them quickly. 

The French? Some have scoffed: those were African troops. That sort of remark is racist. These were French troops of African origin: my uncle and my dad (born in Algeria) are examples. Those troops may have been born in Africa, but they were Franco-French in mentality. They hated Nazism, because they hated racism (they may have suffered from it a little bit, some of them, motivating them even more). Those French troops born in Africa wanted to kill racism. They made war by choice. (Although there was a draft, in Algeria, that was just in Algeria, and those who wanted to get into combat volunteered for combat; my dad wanted to become a fighter pilot, but his eyesight was not good enough, he ended up in anti-aircraft unit, and saw combat there as Nazi jets tried to destroy those units first…)

A small part of Operation Dragon invasion fleet. The invasion was spread over 100 miles of coastline…

The preceding is official history. Let me now put my grain of sand in this well oiled US propaganda: why didn’t the southern attack against Nazi Germany not occured before? After all, this is what Churchill had been begging for… for years. After the French army of general Juin (same army as later in Provence) broke through the Hitler Line, east of Monte Cassino, Juin asked for more divisions and means: he declared he could be in Austria in three weeks. Juin, nicknamed “Hannibal” by his US colleagues, could have done it (long story). He had no Nazi forces in front of him. Instead Allied command removed divisions from Juin. 

What was the US Deep State game? According to my general theory, Nazism was all about the US leveraging Nazism for US benefit. As Hitler was clearly on his way out, he had to be replaced, as a dictator occupying Europe, and Stalin was the obvious choice. If General Juin’s proposal of operating a Blitzkrieg straight into the core of the Third Reich had been accepted, having a French army cavalcading into central Europe was not part of the plan: Comrade Stalin was supposed to do that, and did… a year later. More generally this is why Churchill’s insistence at displeasing Stalin by attacking from the south was always rejected. 

Clausewitz said war is politics by other means. To understand a war, one has to understand the politics underlying it. World War Two was the extension of the darkest politics, the same festering today. Progressives would gain by understanding what really went on then, because it’s the same which is going on right now.

To relax our US friends (most of them Trumpists at heart, even if they don’t suspect it), a contemporary case is Hong Kong: the People Republic of China wants to recover it… And that means recovering it to the same Chinese imperial mentality which cost the degeneracy of China to start with. Clearly, Hong Kong is too democratic, and Beijing, not enough.

After the landing in Provence, the US army rolled north in record time through disorganized, Resistance harassed, Allied planes hounded Nazi defenses. They arrived just in time to save my family fleeing the Gestapo through the woods, south of Grenoble. 

Under US (racist) insistence, the French army was then dis-Africanized, and painted white: all too many French African troops were disbanded, in spite of their great combat experience. Some of them, in Algeria, would launch the Algerian independence movement, as they were mistreated as they celebrated May 8, 1945, when the Nazis surrendered.

Was it because the French and the Americans got only a bit more than 25,000 casualties? Is it because the US forces got only 7,301 killed (plus hundreds of MIAs)?

By comparison, *only* 4,402 died on D Day!

D Day had an invasion force of 156,000 (with a bit less than half from the USA). Operation Dragoon, the Landing in Provence had an invasion force of 573,833 men, including 260,000 French infantry, plus 75,000 French FFI (French Forces Interior), fighting the Nazi from inside.  

800 French Special Forces launched the assault shortly after midnight on August 15 by climbing up the vertiginous rock cliffs of Cap Negre (named for the volcanic rock’s dark colour). On top of the cape laid giant guns, which they destroyed (those guns would have been a problem for the 2,200 ships of the invasion force approaching the coast).

So why was the landing in Provence forgotten?

Because a massive attack from the south could have been done earlier (Churchill begged for it). Because one has to hide the truth: the US Deep State’s mood was to keep Europe under dictatorship, as much as possible. That meant an orderly transition from Hitler to Stalin (both US clients), giving enough time to Stalin to conquer half of Europe, that meant not having a Franco-African army in Austria, after conquering industrial Northern Italy. That was not just racially insufferable, that defeated the US Deep State vision, the entire purpose of World War Two, keeping Europe weak, divided, confused, self-defeating.

This is why D Day was organized the way it was, before the landing in Provence, which was the real Reich killing move.  

Some will search the Internet for a link certifying this revelation. They will not find it: I came to this synthesizing conclusion by studying a lot of documents. 

In recent years, the US has been in full subjugation mode versus European industry, and France has been the number one target. The US Deep State has weaponized the US “Justice” system to do so. Macron was even a (maybe unwitting) accomplice of this. Now he shows some sign of understanding. Thus he celebrated with gusto the Provence landing.

Said Macron to veterans in Saint-Raphael: “The glory of all these soldiers of the Liberation is immense, and our gratitude must never fade. We will never forget anything, nor anyone”.

He was joined by the presidents of Guinea and Ivory Coast, Alpha Condé and Alassane Ouattara, for a ceremony marking the 1944 operation which saw French forces take a lead role in freeing their mother country from Nazi Germany’s grip. The all too US friendly Senegalese president was absent.

The Provence offensive included remnants of France’s free forces from 1940 and thousands of soldiers from its African colonies. Macron rightly insisted: “For decades these African fighters did not have the glory and the esteem they deserved for their bravery… France has a part of Africa in it…These men make all of Africa proud, and express the essence of France: a commitment, a love of liberty and greatness, a spirit of resistance united by courage,” Macron said.

Condé also lauded the “shared memory of the French and African people,” even more important, though, are the shared values. France will be hosting the G7 in Biarritz in a few days. More significantly, Macron will host personally Russian semi-eternal president, Vladimir Putin, on the Fort Bregancon micro peninsula, before that.  

Time to revisit history, and, especially, what it all means, seriously misunderstood, so far…

Could a landing in Provence have worked in 1943, using Corsica as a giant aircraft carrier? Probably.

Starting September 9, 1943, a complex war against the Nazis started in Corsica, first with the Corsican Resistance and the Italian army (soon under French command). 10,000 French troops (and 400 US Special Forces) soon defeated 42,000 Nazis. By October 5, 1943, Corsica had been liberated. It became an important air base for the Allies. It’s only 100 miles from the beaches of Operation Dragoon, and an invasion could thus have been mounted there quickly.

To have started with the landing in Provence, or to have provided Juin with the support he needed in Italy, while the Nazis were bottled at Anzio, would have considerably shortened the war: the Nazis were not ready for either, they would have been taken from behind (the best way to take Nazis). Neither happened, because shortening the war from the West was not the mood in the highest spheres of the USA. In the absence of reasons to the contrary, malevolence has to be suspected.

Patrice Ayme

Houellebecq’s “Sérotonine”, Or When Schizophrenia Causes Globalization. And Reciprocally.

Houellebecq’s “Sérotonine”, or when an anti-hero dies of sadness induced by globalization and lack of moral compass (of which globalization is a consequence)…

To my surprise, I read (among other things) a new book, Houellebecq’s “Sérotonine”. I don’t usually read novels because most novel authors and the resulting works they give birth to, are neither smart nor interesting enough (whereas a crocodile, although not too smart, is quite interesting, while being much more direct: the croc wants food, or, if tame, scratching of the neck, while not claiming to have higher pursuits such as wealth, fame and respect). 

I bought and I have tried to read Houellebecq several times in the past, and failed miserably within a few pages. I was put off by the sort of universe Houellebecquian heroes evolve in, a sort of universe I always avoided studiously, carefully, exhaustively, successfully, on various continents. (I remember some sort of cults trying to incorporate me at Columbia U, and another at Stanford U… For decades all my environment was academic, and an eminently stern academia …) So there I was in a bookstore, waiting for family, and I got intrigued as I sampled pages within Sérotonine. I was stunned. Was the famous author from the little Paris pseudo-intellectual scene, really attacking globalization, with an intensity similar to what presidents Trump or Cristina Fernández de Kirchner exhibited in the past?

When I say I cautiously always avoided Houellebecq’s style universes, I am not just talking about the chain smoking, and also the general aura of frantic sex with strangers, depression, etc., a perpetual fog with Houellebecq. I cordially despise serial sexers. Moreover I hate smokers, because not only are they drug addicts (a general indication of an unworthy brain, unworthy of my social skills, just there), but smokers aggressively direct their gases to poison others. They truly hate humanity, they are symbolic portable Auschwitz (I won’t tweet that one…) So smokers are actually lethal aggressors, differently from those who pump heroine, who are just idiots (this one I tweeted).

For me, the only positive side of smoking, definitively attractive, is that it gives me all the moral superiority to experimentally deploy my aggressive skills in retaliation, and study how creeps do to justify their creepiness (a science which can be put to good use in other domains). In the last few days I had US family visiting and that meant restaurants, hence the occasion of personally enforcing French law on smoking, beyond what timid French restaurateurs do. In one notable situation, a smoker held her cigarette as far from her lungs as she could, while her smoke went straight to my nine year old daughter’s innocent lungs fifteen feet away, thanks to a pernicious and persistent mountain breeze… The situation attracted my own counter strike (of the verbal type, but it was a scorcher designed to inflict maximal psychological pain).

We used to have pot types, with useless brains, just good enough to step in front of garbage trucks. It happened to a professional pothead friend of mine, a famous cover-of-magazine US climber. Ruined by pot, he confessed to me:”Patrice, my brain doesn’t work anymore.” (Pay attention, dedicated pot heads!) The next day, my pot head friend stepped in front of a garbage truck. Pot glues up synapses (yes, thus it may work for chronic pains, though)…

Now we also have the very worst, vaping. Vaping has been presented as an enormous progress: plenty of nicotine, for the nicotine addicts, no more smoke for their victims. Instead, the victims get dispatched with poisonous gases. Indeed. Killing from smoking kills in decades (although it degenerates people faster than that)… Whereas vaping can kill in hours (accordingly the WHO/OMS came out last week with a scathing, amply justified attack against vaping). It does that through innovative organic chemistry, generating deadly poisons such as formaldehyde.  [1]

Houellebecq observes the disaster, the self-immolation of Europe, its destruction by globalization. And Houellebecq thinks about it, but does he think enough? Baboons also think, but they are incapable of producing civilization, they don’t think enough for that… Or even survival: the baboon species now lives, just depending upon our good will, our human good will… which is not that good, much of the time. Dies Houellebecq think enough? No (as his idiotic opinions on Europe amply demonstrate, especially with someone living in Ireland!) Egyptian baboon, 4,000 years old, Museo delle Antichità Egizie, Egyptian Museum, Turin, Piedmont

Vapers are out of their drug riddled minds. I saw a (French) mom vape in her toddler’s face… At a climbing area. The toddler was coughing without stopping. I came upon the scene, and could smell the formaldehyde from ten feet away. I chewed her head off about killing her child in public. She replied that, if it bothered me, as it did, she would stop. But I was still bothered by her little plan to vape her own child to death behind closed doors.

Houellebecq’s “Sérotonine” theme is all-too real and important. The hero is an expert agricultural engineer employed as a private consultant by the French government. His task? Helping to dismantle European indigenous agriculture and food production, by providing a flow of reassuring and mitigating reports, as the Titanic of European food production sinks under the assault of treaties with distant countries such as Argentina.   

Serotonin mediates an animal’s perceptions of resources; In less complex animals, such as some invertebrates, resources simply mean food availability. In plants serotonin synthesis seems to be associated with stress signals. In more complex animals, such as arthropods and vertebrates, resources also can mean social dominance. That’s when “Will to Power” appears, endowing social groups with a well-ordered structure (in the mathematical sense).  In response to the perceived abundance or scarcity of resources, an animal’s growth, reproduction or mood, may be elevated or lowered. This may somewhat depend on how much serotonin the organism has at its disposal.

Houellebecq does not explain why such treaties, those treaties destroying Europe, have been signed, and are still signed (his livelihood depends a lot upon not explaining it). But I can explain it, and I have (however, my explanations are no explanation Houellebecq wants to read). On the face of it, it  may sound strange that Europe would waste so much energy, destroying itself. Why? Why signing treaties which ensure the eradication of European agriculture? Houellebecq does not explain that, not at all. He just implies over and over again, that this is the general mood of despair and destruction, from lack of solidarity now rampant in Europe, itself tied to glittering, flittering, fluctuating, chaotic activities which lead to irreversible disasters (as when the hero holds hands with a British black lawyer he just slept with, in  a train station, and they come across the hero’s real love, Camille… who is shattered irreversibly). 

The (anti) hero, this French engineer, is delivered to the deepest despair, as his job, his worth, consists into killing the means Europe has to feed itself. A subsequent girlfriend of his, a Japanese princess (of sorts; with government employ and connections, that’s why such a princess: governmental types rule the world, just below the Pluto class). The Japanese princes is all into Appearances, and secret, wild promiscuous sex with the multitudes, just like French agricultural policy is all into Appearances (and probably wild sex too, with undefined multitudes). In truth there is nothing there in European policies, and in the anti-hero’s muddled mind, below those Appearances: the core is fully empty. Houellebecq explains that human beings are made to live in small groups the size of a hamlet, a theme I have harped on for many years. Thus, living in cities guarantees solitude… And even worse one guesses from the mood of the book, it fosters not caring about humanity at all.

Taking medical drugs does not  solve the problem at all, it just destroys the hero hormonally and neurobiologically.  

So why is Houellebecq, so good at describing Europe’s self-destructive madness, yet incapable of suggesting its causes (besides anti-smoking regulations, speed limits on freeways, etc.)? It’s just because the novelist lives, admittedly on a small scale, off what is at the origin of what he decries.

More on this interesting contradiction… or is it feeding at two throughs (that’s always better than just one)? Latter…

Meanwhile, what we have now is not just dictatorship. It’s much less than that, we are even more deprived. Globalization has become annihilation, nihilism of realism. Minds in conflicting pieces. Serotonin has been implicated in cognition, mood, anxiety and psychosis. There is increasing evidence for a role of serotonin, as well as dopaminergic mechanisms, in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia means minds in pieces.

How did the European psyche get into pieces? Ever since World War Two, the European (pseudo) intellectual mainstream has claimed we had to save all of humanity from European rage and destruction… Not noticing that the courageous and high minded powers who declared war to Nazism, France and the UK, were European powers… while the USSR and the USA helped Hitler, on an enormous scale (Hey, let me remind indignant cackling turkeys, that I am talking about 1933-1941, here. Not that such turkeys would know what happened in those eight years, which have been misinformed not to say deformed as convenient “isolationism“). Indeed it’s France (first) and Britain (belatedly following France as a contrite proverbial French poodle) which forced Hitler in a world war he wasn’t yet ready for… and thus that he could only lose.

So, instead of thanking France (especially) and Britain, for their good and heroic service, against Nazism, against mass-extinction fascist racism, the pseudo-intellectual European class embarked on a campaign of denigration of Europe, and its highest ideals, the mission civilisatrice, fostered by, and profiting (who were by then) Europe’s masters, Stalin and the US Deep State. Percolating down, this hatred of Europe’s best masked by highest principles, brought up a deep, murderous contradiction, the desire to serve distant masters, while murdering one’s neighbours (in “Serotonin”, death occurs). Despair is the only hope out of it.

Thus Europe is being destroyed in guise of saving it (for the greater profit of global plutocrats). No wonder we swim in an ocean of serotonin.

Patrice Ayme

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[1] I consider likely that my own mom got Inflammatory Pulmonary Disease (IPD) from a close relative who vaped in her face (makes for vigorous family dynamics). IPD kills in a median 5 years. There is no cure. It’s becoming the most frequent disease. My mom took more than a year to die. Once a 28 year old died in the US, within hours of being exposed to vaping…

Identity Crisis Promoted By “Social Networks”.

Plutocrats need to destroy any pretense We The People may have to create our own identity. The best way to do this is to impose on us identities plutocrats have pre-packaged. The arch example, most famous in all of humanity’s history, is “Roman Catholic Orthodoxy“, which is 2,000 years old, and still around, playing with little children as if they were all sorts of toys, after giving birth to a profusion of just as genocidal sub sects, most tucked inside Islam and Protestantism…

Genocide is the friend and servant of plutocracy and its handy theocrats. The Bible, old or new, and its desert variant, the Qur’an, are full of genocidal paradigms to show the naive masses which way to go… to the slaughterhouse..

There is so much identity politics, a form of tribalism, that it’s not amusing anymore. When Martin Luther King and company marched against racism, they marched against tribalism. Racism is a particular form of contrived, engineered tribalism. Contrived and fake? As when green eyed, blonde, white skin US “blacks” tell you they are “black”, although they look more Nordic than any of Trump’s three sons. Or when one sees strident pseudo-progressives of 2019 being more right wing fanatics than even the worst McCarthyists of the 1950s, and those fascists are real serious, calling themselves “antifa”, while serving the established order better that the worst Trumpist, the amusement fades away…

None of this is an accident: we live in the age of ideas ready to wear, as prepared by corporations which are well considered by the establishment, or have even been instituted by the establishment as self-financed world class spy agencies (as the GAFAM are, and the galaxy of government supported successful startups around them too).

Tribalism is bad, in its present form, not just because of its effects, but in how it originates and why. Tribalism is well known to be a gateway to war. But, in modern form especially, it is chosen for its intellectual fascism, and maybe even what one could call hormonal fascism. If a young German soldier in 1914 wanted to conquer Europe, it was not so much his choice, as the choice of the imprinting the German school system had imposed on him, forcing him to behave as a fascist, racist brute, ready to follow the most inhuman orders.

When people are not themselves, but just one, the same, always, fitting in little definitions prepared by the oligarchy, we are not just treated as little robots, but humanity itself is robbed from the diversity of perception which makes it human.

However, what we see nowadays is a much more subtle form of imprinting. The “likes” system of “social networks” is crucial: by “liking” the US (Internet) providers of fake tribalism find out which pre-packaged tribe one could fit in, and then foster that fake tribe with ever more suggestions. Although the US CIA, Saudi SIA and Pakistani ISI invented rabid Islamism as a worldwide phenomenon, the social networks have been following similar methods, on a grander scale [1]. 

What’s the interest in grouping up people in little mental tribes? Mental packaging… Yes one can sell products to those packages. More generally, the interest at the level of the Deep State, in particular of the Deep State of the US empire, is that minds then become predictable species. For plutocracy in general, it’s even more wonderful: by fostering simplistic mental speciation through artificial tribalism, We The People becomes stupid. And why is sheep easy to control? Because it’s stupid.

There is also identity everything: identifying is popular, because it provides with systems of thought and emotion, packaged and ready for consumption, open and serve, no debate necessary: insult the Prophet, they say, and I want to kill you. That way, even the biggest decisions, one does not have to make.

Identity comes, through French, from the Latin identitatem which means of “the sameness“[2]

Similarly, the more significant the individual, the more important the ideas, and important ideas are different ideas. We are an idea civilization, and all too many ideas recently have been low quality, relative to what’s at stake (the planet). 

To have difference, mental differences, fruitful mental creativity, we need to have authenticity. Authenticity: the contents of the thing in question correspond to the facts and are not fictitious: they are trustworthy, reliable, really as presented. However, nowadays, we live in the world of inauthenticity… Representative “democracy” being the number one exhibit. Fake progressivism feeding the worst and most egregious tribalism is an example. But so is a fake economy (watch the GAFAM, which were pretty much engineered by the US Deep State, to “dominate” (Zuck’s prefered word), as they themselves put it, the world)…

And even more inauthentic is a financial system which lies when it pretends to be fair, or even to be wise in a satanic way (how wise was it to fund fracking?) There is even fake sexual identity. Fake sex, as in males who pretend they are biological females, when it’s presently impossible to make it so technically, like fake news, fake nature and fake thinking, should be discouraged. 

On this, more soon…

Why so much lying? Because it became possible to do so. In Merovingian and Carolingian times, propaganda was difficult: this was before printing. Printing enabled propaganda, thus became tightly controlled by the states. To compensate, atheism was punished by death [1]. Some states (the Ottoman empire) outlawed printing for centuries. Now we are so much long after the invention of printing by the few, for the few, we can do it ourselves. But of course, someone has to read the best thinking, and this is why the Social Networks are organized the way they are: to make sure higher thinking doesn’t get to the lower masses, and that they can be “influenced” by “influencers” who are little more than pornography in action.

None of this is new: Roman identity, by 100 CE had been reduced to craving for “panem et circenses” (bread and circuses), the contemporary Juvenal pointed out. Once well engaged, this stupidification of the masses proved irreversible: by the Sixth Century, in Constantinople, We The People felt smothered by the imperial system of Justinian. However, the Nika riots, originally a tribal clash between the “greens” and the “blues” sport supporters, proved unable to graduate from the circus they originated from in a timely manner: Roman conscience, even consciousness, had been made tribal silly, by centuries of Roman mental fascism, starting with circenses, and culminating in the instauration of legally murderous “Roman Catholic Orthodoxy”. Ancient Romans would not have recognized, or believed this could happen to the Roman Republic…

Nietzsche thought no price was too high to own oneself. The herd, though, thinks exactly the opposite: no price is too high to pay for the privilege of belonging to the herd.

But new ideas never come from the herd, and this is precisely why the herd finds itself so comfortable, and hate new ideas passionately, reinforcing the herd that way.

Patrice Ayme

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[1] According to many in the Bin Laden family, and a just published book by said family, Osama himself was brainwashed by those wishing to engineer Islam as a weapon to foster the sinister aims of the US Deep State (after Algeria against France, earlier, Afghanistan against France, again, and the USSR).

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[2] The attitude to atheism was more relaxed in the high Middle Ages. Cracking down on atheism had an effect similar to what has long been going on in Islam: various sects hurl “atheism” at each other, and then try to kill each other. Dolet was executed for atheism in Paris, and, within a few years, Protestants and Catholics were trying to kill each other, in seven consecutive wars and one massacre…