Fascism Weaponized French Early Retirement

French retirement used to be at 65 during the “30 glorious years”, the time of reconstruction which followed World War Two [1]. Then Mitterand became president and lowered retirement to 60. This was a trick to weaken the French People. It worked. Mitterand was a fake socialist and true demagogue: as an authentic fascist, having launched his career wih fascism, Mitterand received the francisque medal from his boss the racist dictator Philippe Pétain, a collaborator of Adolf Hitler, who was condemned to death as a traitor upon liberation from Nazism [2]. Mitterand instead of having been tried as a traitor became a politician. The fascist Mitterand is vastly admired in France, a proof of national derangement.

The socioeconomic theory behind lowering to 60 was that the fewer older people worked, the more young people would go to work. The opposite happened: GDP grew less, and so there were fewer jobs overall. Indeed, older workers have expertise, younger workers do not. Left to the young and arrogant, France became incompetent. Mitterand and his right wing PM, Balladur privatized companies that Mitterand and his Communists had just nationalized, by giving their leadership to young people who knew-nothing, yet viewed with awe, as they came from grandes écoles (where their families’ background had made sure to put them).

The practical result was that the French economy crashed and is still crashing. Art 14.5% of GDP France spends twice more on retirement relative to GDP than the USA. Germany spends 10.4%. While tyrannies are doing their best to launch and win a world war, and hundreds of thousands were killed or gravely wounded as a result in Europe alone, Paris spends only 1.9% of GDP on its military… while leaving Africa to be reorganized by China and Putin’s Wagner “Private Military Corporation”…. Paid in part by a French deficit is 5% of GDP… and more borrowing, at ever higher rates, keeps the state going.

As work got decimated in France, the ultra rich rose to prominence and pulled the levers: France is embellished with the world’s wealthiest man, and the wealthiest woman… The former from selling overpriced trinkets (luxury), the latter from rents (and not paying taxes). 

France has also the second highest taxes in term of GDP, just behind Denmark… taxes for the common person, that is. The ultra rich families mostly avoid taxation, having engineered the tax code that way (as in the USA, but even relatively more so). 

17 million French retirees live from sucking the energy of 23 million workers. As recently as 2014, they earned 106%, that is, more, than the average French wage earner. As the country slowly collapses, from the lack of attractivity of compensated work, this strange dependency has bought civil peace. Ah, but there is a war…. And the war is actually related to the weakness of the West and of France in particular: leaving an entire continent such as Africa, to the mercy of dictators Putin and Xi has consequences: all Africans want to move to France (they get generous social benefits)… while, of course, as most of them can’t do so, hating France.

In 1940, Stalin was allied to Hitler, and brand new French planes were not armed because authorities were afraid that the Moscow addicted workers would seize the guns. Consequence? The defeat of May 1940… Which put Mitterand and his ilk in power…

A spectacular spiral of evil.

UlTRA WEALTH IS FASCIST And UNEMPLOYMENT ITS FRIEND:

The power of hyper wealthy families has been growing in France enormously (that can be measured in their size in the financial markets). Following North America and Asia, Europe is controlled by the ultra-wealthy . In 2021, the top countries for the ultra-wealthy were France (30,000), Germany (28,000), U.K. (25,000) and Italy (17,000). Each of them has more than 30 million dollars of net worth, the level at which the 100% Roman Republic wealth tax applied. France, relative to population has nearly 1/3 more ultra wealthy than Germany… No wonder all the strikes…

The power of the ultra-wealthy is inversely related to the power of We The People. So to grow and prosper, the ultra wealthy need to weaken We The People. And how do they do that? As under the Roman Empire, successor to the Roman Republic: they deprive We The People of employment. So send the jobs to China, de-industrialize: in 1946, any little French town had a factory. Now, of the 20 or so so-called French car models sold in France, only one is really made in France. (Similarly US electric cars would not exist without Chinese manufacturing as the fundamental elements of batteries are made there.)

Early in the Roman Republic, 25 centuries ago, to get more rights, the Roman Plebs went on strike, retiring to a hill. Rome completely stopped functioning. The Plebs got its rights. Why? Because without the Plebs, Rome could’t not work. This is why the tyrannical empire made sure that the Plebs had no work, or at least no important work. In the modern Western world, the employed Plebs is in China, making important devices, and China is where the power is, and the French Plebs has little residual power: it goes on strike, but cars are made somewhere else.

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David Mcmahon: “The socioeconomic theory behind lowering to 60 was that the fewer older people worked, the more young people would go to work“That is a key part of the flawed socialist outlook – they believe in a zero sum economy. In other words, there is a fixed pie, and for young people to work, old people have to exit the workforce. That is inaccurate, in fact reality is the opposite.

PA: Absolutely! I have a friend who is a senior French executive (C suite) long detached in the USA in a fully owned subsidiary company of a major international French company. When he decided to return to France he discovered that all his mentors had gone into “pre-retirement”. So those senior executives retired at a time when their expertise had fully matured! Their US equivalent had 8 years of maximum productivity, leadership and mentorship to contribute. My friend then discovered he had nothing to return to….

I think to call that self-destructive behavior “socialist” is too nice a euphemism. It’s more like vampirism: suck the blood until the victim collapses. Epic failures are multiplying in France and much of the rest of Europe. Some are totally self-inflicted, like the ban on gas fracking in France: French ecologists believe gas is OK, as long as it comes from Putin, Qatar, or Wyoming… Ironically, but as a direct consequence of these nonsensical policies, France is more and more controlled by the… hyper rich… thanks to the stupidification they generate…

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AS FRANCE GOES, SO DOES THE REST 

Some will say: oh, but the retired French just want to party. However, it’s not that simple: France was the core of Western civilization, over a millennium, creating in the process Italy (freed from the Lombards, 8C, and Islamists, 11C), Spain (north freed from Islamists circa 800 CE), Germany (christianized, civilized and unified by Frankish conquest, 400s to 800 CE), England (conquered and re-romanized, 1066 CE), the Netherlands (80 year war against Spain in the Netherlands, part of the 200 year war between France and Spain, which Spain finally lost). 

France is also the geographical core, the crossroads, in more ways than one. 

As France goes, so does the rest (with the notable exception of the US, child of Britain and France, with its own teenage personality…. 

Actually Britain has been going through a similar process of deindustrialization, no better than France (better GDP behavior in the UK was correlated to more input from Russian oligarchs and their ilk… the result of which was the Brexit insanity ). Italy has been even worse.

Right now, the French population is clueless. It has been clueless before in similar sitation of grave danger.

In 1939, courageously, the French government declared war to Hitler who was allied to Francoist Spain, fascist Italy, Imperial Japan and the genocidal Stalin… among others. However, thereafter, France sort of relaxed: the mood, deep down inside was grim, but superficially all about dancing and the good life. It was called the “Drole de Guerre” (Fynny War). 

Well, come Spring, the gory Norwegian campaign started, with victory but severe Franco-British losses to the invading Nazis. Then came the catastrophe of May 1940, when the french army was sent on a foo’s errant, while the Nazi army fueled by Stalin cut it from behind. 

Let it not be the same!

Patrice Ayme 

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[1] For more background see WSJ: The Party Is Ending for French Retirees
All advanced economies face demographic strains, but France’s stand out; now President Macron wants to raise the legal retirement age to 64.

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[2] Pétain  was a complicated figure, and he had a hopeless task. Pétain had to navigate among the fascists (Pétain told Franco not to collaborate with Hitler to the point of letting Hitler’s army through Spain…). After Allied landings in November 1942 in North Africa, Pétain secretly ordered Admiral Darlan, then in Algeria, to merge the French forces in Africa with those of the Allies. But, at the same time, he published official messages protesting the landing.

Pétain’s double-dealing was probably necessary. But Mitterand embraced only one side of the double-dealing, the fascist side (although, like many fascists he proclaimed later it ain’t what it looked like… enough French believed him to elect hi president.)  

The inventor of retirement at sixty, Mitterand, on the right (of course!) receiving from Marshall Pétain, the fascist-in-chief, the highest medal of the Vichy junta. From Travail, Famille, Patrie to Chomage, Famine, Party.

Franco-British Strategic Nuclear Deterrence Is Considerable

Nuclear war may be around the corner, the deluded Putin, tail between his legs, is that crazy that he may not realize that his “escalate to de-escalate” insanity would be of no advantage to him and his criminal entourage. So it’s a good point to consider the main deterrent of the West: the strategic nuclear forces of the US, Britain and France (3 of the 5 powers allowed nuclear weapons under UN law). It turns out that, in a strategic nuclear exchange involving the ultimate weapon, the strategic nuclear submarines, the Franco-British contribution is equivalent to 50% of the US… No doubt that complicates considerably the computation of nuclear war planners who are criminal enough to work for Putin…

Who has a stronger navy: the United Kingdom or France (not counting nuclear submarines)?

Both European navies have Strategic Submarines Ballistic Nuclear. Four of them each. The French ones carry an armament of 16 M51 SLBM missiles manufactured by the Aérospatiale (now Airbus Defence and Space), plus conventional torpedoes and Exocet anti-ship missiles. The M51 missiles carries on a “bus” 6 to 10 MIRV warheads of 110 kiloton (kt) each, 8 times Hiroshima, with penetration aids, and a precision of 150–200 meters. One such missile could annihilate all the decision centers in Moscow (and millions of deluded Moscovites who watch too much Putin TV). The range of the M51 is secret, but believed to be around 10,000 kilometers (the same tech is used on the Ariane rocket).

These SSBNs are really Armageddon weapons… Yes Putin has them, sort of, namely at least on paper; but the devil is in the details: nukes have to work, and subs have to be undetected. France, the US, and the UK have dozens of hunter subs… Keeping nukes in good, that is explosive, order, cost a fortune (it’s unlikely all the 6,200 nukes of Putin work; it’s more likely that most of them, don’t work…)

To come back to France and Britain,

the two Navies are roughly comparable, and, the French having dutifully forgotten the tragedy of Mers El Kebir, and the Brits more than contrite about it, the two navies are more than friendly to each other. If Scotland seceded, British subs would use French bases. France Naval Group has launched its second 100 meter long nuclear powered Barracuda attack submarine, arguably the world’s most modern and silent sub. It is using a type of propulsion the US Navy plans to have around 2030… The Barracuda class subs can silence their nuclear reactors for long periods, something no other nuclear sub can do (yet). Hot nuclear reactors have always circulating water and tend to be noisy… whereas air independent diesel subs can made much more silent… and can be much more silent for a full month under water! The Barracudas have the best of the two technologies…
Although not directly strategic, such subs can hunt and destroy Putin and Xi’s subs…

One of the British SSBN used to be without nukes, but, considering the increasing Sino-Russian war noises, that has been reversed (nukes cost a lot of money to just keep ready to function; French nukes cost 5 billion dollars a year, just to keep them ready to explode with enough fresh Tritium, etc.). Also the French SSBNs have 100% French equipment, including French equivalents of the US Trident II. UK subs have US systems, US missiles, Trident II… Also the UK Navy uses Thales and other French electronics all over, for the UK subs and the UK ships. Thales is French (originally)… Thales also makes 24/7 in Belfast, Ireland, the British “NLAW” antitank weapons which have destroyed so many of Putin’s tanks.

British carriers are restricted to F35s, since they do not have catapults (which make the French carrier interoperable with the US ones; CATOBAR enables it to launch heavier, more capable planes).

The real defect of Franco-British defense is not quality, which is top notch, but having too few weapons. Macron, following Biden by a few months, has called the French military-industrial complex to go into a war mode. However the expanded French military budget has not been voted on yet, and it takes time to ramp up. Thales is producing nearly enough electronics for five Rafales a month.

All the British nuclear deterrent is in its 4 SSBNs… the French have the same number of SSBNs, but also also nuclear bombers and supersonic standoff 300kt nuclear missiles). So Franco-Britannia has 8 strategic nuclear subs so silent once two collided with each other while deep in the ocean… whereas the US has 14 such submarines… In other words, the nuclear strategic strike capability of the West is considerably augmented by the Franco-British arsenal. Just one of these 22 subs could kill of the order of 50 million people in 20 minutes, and as a French general officer commented:”We think that’s enough!”.

However, tyrant Putin has definitively demonstrated that this is not enough, because threatening the enemy with Armageddon does not help fight a conventional war.

British SSBN going back home in Scotland…

US Pluto Media Pretends to Worry About French “Right”

And what if the “Right” was right, and, to put it in one horrendous word, popular… Also known as “populist”. In Hungary, Orban “right wing” party won the legislative elections, for the fourth time in a row, with 54%… (Lest I be accused of being pro-Orban, just from observing reality, let me point out that Orban said, after his re-election, that Zelinskyy was an “opponent”… I am definitely pro-Zelinskyy)

The French extreme right, on the big practical items is left of the US extrme left…Why is US media so worried about the French “extreme right”?

The short of it: because France is a welfare state owned by oligarchs, who are busy destroying the middle class and even the lower class, in the same way as it was done in Russia between over centuries, until most Russians became “serfs” under Catherine II “the Great” Best way to optimize plutocracy! (The distant ancestors of these serfs, six centuries earlier, used to be free.) The same Catherine conquered Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic countries, etc…

The following comment to the article The Man at the Center of the French Election Isn’t Even on the Ballot, April 7, 2022… was censored by the New York Times [1]: 

The French extreme right is on the left of the US left. It does not want to weaken the French welfare state with free healthcare, free education, all the way to professional degrees, free medical drugs. The existing French welfare state can indeed be abused. As a partly overseas French, I had to pay for the (difficult, by mandatory C section) birth of my (French) daughter, more than ten thousand dollars. The Albanian woman next door didn’t pay a dime. She had entered France, as many do, on the last day of her pregnancy, and was driven by ambulance from the border with Italy as is the usage of the French border police. Now her child was French, and she was free to go back to Albania (which is not in the EU). This is typical, very frequent, and one of the many ways in which the French welfare state has been abused.

Another is male Africans with many wives, gathering welfare checks from their many claimed children.  

In exchange for all this, the abusers of the French welfare state claim to have been abused, or, if not themselves, their ancestors ten generations ago. Law abiding citizens, though, can’t abuse the system, so genuine French citizens have fewer children than the replacement rate, as the welfare state is not generous with parents anymore… while the taxation rate in France is the highest in wealthy countries… And those taxes strike the middle class: the oligarchs do not have to pay inheritance tax, for example, while poor people pay inheritance tax as high as 60%. Oligarchs write the laws: owning a castle, works of art, factories exclude them from taxation….

A practical result is that French per capita GDP is going down relative to peer countries…

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By censoring the previous, all true and unadorned comment, the plutocratic NYT showed how correct it was, and how wrong their posing as the adjudicators of virtue, is.

Patrice Ayme

 

 

From 1950 to 2006, REAL French GDP per capita went up steadily at a clip of nearly 5% a year. Since then, it has stalled. What happened? De-industrialization and stupidification from plutocratization!

[1] On the NYT piece typical of anti-French propaganda these days:

PARIS — Like the rest of Europe, France is gripped by the war in Ukraine…

But for all the talk of a united West, the truth is that a noxious blend of oligarchy, nostalgia and bellicose nationalism is ever more ubiquitous on this side of the new Iron Curtain. In France, it is led by a buoyant and confident new right, represented in this election by Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally; Valérie Pécresse of the ostensibly moderate Republicans; and Éric Zemmour, the pugilistic proto-fascist commentator turned [presidential] candidate.

… a sideshow in a broader attempt to remake French politics. Behind them all, to one degree or another, is someone not even on the ballot: the media mogul Vincent Bolloré. The scion of an old industrial family, Mr. Bolloré wields a fearsome agenda-setting power; his outlets, known for adopting the flair, tics and style of Fox News, play an outsize role in directing the national debate.

A few remarks: all the French media is owned by oligarchs, but for the French state TV. It’s not just Bolloré. For example Le Figaro is owned by Dassault. Le Monde has several wealthy investors, not all French… Libération is owned by French telecoms giant Altice…  

Bolloré, who is worth around ten billion dollars, roughly 5% of the worth of the wealthiest French oligarch, like other French oligarchs, did not have to pay inheritance tax. Normal French citizens of the lowest middle class can pay more than 65% inheritance tax… For example there is minimum mandatory 5% of the value of total inheritance for “furniture”… even if there is no furniture… It’s Kafkaesque… And the result of Kafka is what happened in Eastern Europe and Russia: the systematic destruction of the middle and lower class, to leave only an underclass, the Lumpenproletariat of Marx…… And the noble oligo-plutocrats on top, owning everything, even minds, hearts and souls…

Amusingly, the NYT talks, correctly, about France, the way it should, but would not, dare to talk about the USA:

“Those trying to get a handle on developments in France… look to Mr. Bolloré, whose name is a byword for the political power of French oligarchs. Mr. Bolloré is a bellwether of a dangerous mood at the top of French society, one that extends far beyond the conservative wing of the elite. Fearful of decline, anxious about movements and ideas from below, the broader French establishment is eager to capitalize on the country’s divisions to cling to power.

Mr. Bolloré himself has ties in the most exclusive circles of the Parisian elite. After inheriting and reviving his family’s struggling paper business with his brother in the early 1980s, he developed a near monopoly on West African ports and logistics—activities from which he appears to be withdrawing. In the early 2000s, Mr. Bolloré set about building his media empire, which today encompasses two of France’s largest publishing houses, a major advertising agency, an array of society magazines and weeklies, a national radio network and the premium TV production group Canal+. Then there’s the jewel in the crown: the hard-right 24-hour news station, CNews.”

Mr. Bolloré portrays himself as above the partisan fray, yet by building an integrated media apparatus for a hysteric, inflamed conservatism, he has reshaped French political life. France, according to CNews, is on the cusp of a breakdown of order and civility, one spark away from civil war. American-inspired “wokistes” and “islamo-leftists” — terms wantonly used as synonyms for progressive activists, intellectuals and politicians — are concocting a plot to emasculate France and its republican traditions. Immigrants are the massed bearers of collapse… In January, to cite just one recent example, Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer gave the introductory speech at a two-day colloquium at the Sorbonne on the perils of “wokisme” and progressive identity politics.

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My comment to the NYT was all true, just as it is, and as it was. Censored. Putinized. 

Day after day the NYT publishes these anti-French articles. That particular piece of Americano-fascism was by Harrison Stetler, a journalist who writes about French politics.

NO MILITARY SUPERIORITY, NO REPUBLIC, 30 Centuries of Franco-Gallic History Say

This is in answer to the following question:

How has modern France become such a military powerhouse? When did they become more powerful than Britain and Germany?

France did this by having the correct mindset, which has been necessary to the apparition of a large, unified military power where France and its Gallo-Roman predecessor has been for 20 centuries.

Arguably, France is, by far the country most involved in war. Ever. And there are three excellent reasons for that: location, location, location.

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

France declared war to Hitler on September 3, 1939. The British army was tiny even smaller than the 400,000 men US army. So World War Two, initially was a duel between the French Republic and the unholy alliance of Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, fascist Japan, and the fascist Soviet Union of Stalin. By 1945, Italy, Japan and Germany had been utterly vanquished, thanks to France and her Allies. They had no more army. However, France had reconstituted the strongest army in the West, behind the US and UK. The USSR had been forced to switch sides.

For reasons I will now expose, France is, first of all, all about her military.

Paul Jamin’s Gallic King Brennus “and his share of the spoils”. He contemplates Roman ladies at the ready. The Battle of the Allia was a battle fought c. 393 BC between the Senones (a Gallic tribe who had invaded northern Italy, who lived at the source of the… Seine, hence the name) allied to the Averni (modern name: “Auvergne”) and the Roman Republic. The battle was fought at the confluence of the Tiber and Allia rivers, eleven Roman miles (16 km, 10 mi) north of Rome. The Romans were routed and Rome was subsequently sacked by the Senones, who were bought out by Roman dictator Camille, to bring them to leave.

France is a Republic built at the crossroads. Some may sneer that it is only a Republic since September 21, 1792… But that’s overlooking the REPUBLICAN way political power in France was built and justified itself. Even before the Romans came, many of the 60 polities in Gaul had senates, and were de facto republic. Each of them struck coinage. After five centuries of Roman unification, invasions broke the unity. The latter, though was quickly rebuilt by the Franks, who were Roman Confederates.

Thus the Frankish army was a Roman army, and beat the Goths at Vouillé (507 CE). Far from being savages, the Franks endeavored to rebuild the State, using the general program of the “Christian Republic”… To understand the “Christian Republic”, one has to backtrack to the Fourth Century, when Christianism was imposed onto the empire: the excuse for that, among intellectuals, was that a “Christian Republic” would be established. The idea goes on, to this day.

The “Founding Fathers of the Church” tried to establish the “Christian Republic” after emperor Theodosius I’s death in 395 CE: the bishops were in charge and governed (the Jew-hating bishop of Milan, Ambrose, after excommunicating him, got Theodosius I on his knees, begging forgiveness). That first attempt at establishing a Republic that would be “Christian”turned into a disaster. Indeed Theodosius’ military alliance with the Goths, plus the empire-ruling bishops’ hostility to military force, and funding the latter by force, brought the main Germanic invasions, in 406 CE. The most important thing the Roman Bishops’ government did was to formally put the Franks in charge of defending the three Roman provinces of the north-west: the two Germanias and Gallia.

The mass murdering Catholic fanatic, emperor Theodosius I, had hated the anti-Christian Franks (the Parisians had elected the de-Christianizing “Julian The Apostate” earlier). To the point that the god crazed Theodosius allied himself with the Goths, to defeat Arbogast, head of the mostly Frankish occidental Roman army at the battle of Frigidarius,in 394 CE. This destruction of the Occidental Roman army led, within 12 years, to the fall of the Occidental Roman empire… The catastrophic defeat of the Roman Occidental army at Frigidarius in 394 CE of secularism against Goths allied to fanatical Catholicism should be seen as the real moment the Roman state was mortally wounded in Occident.

The Franks, who were very fierce and free (that’s what their name means) understood, and all could see, that the Republic (Christian or not) could only be established by military force. In 507 CE, they did what Rome had never done before: they beat the Goths, and threw them out of Gaul. In the next three centuries, they would establish, through military force Western Europe as it is today (completed by the conquest of England in 1066 CE). The Franks also did something the rest of Roman power had been unable to do: they repel three invasions of the Muslim raiders between 721 CE (battle of Toulouse, huge Muslim defeat) and 748 CE (battle of Narbonne, another victory of Charles the Hammer, his phalanx and heavy cavalry). The Umayyad Arab Caliphate, based in Damascus, deprived of its army destroyed in France, then fell (750 CE).

In the Ninth Century, two things happened: disunion (think Brexit), leading to the monster (first) battle of Fontenoy, of Franks against the Franks, when the streams ran red (848 CE). Around 50,000 were killed in this fratricide (the second battle of Fontenoy would be of the French against the British, nine centuries later).

Soon enough, left without enough of an army, the “Renovated empire of the Romans” (aka Carolingian empire) was invaded on three fronts: Viking, Hungarians, Muslims. This showed to the collective French mentality, once again, as circa 400 CE, that military weakness led to devastating invasions. Disgusted by the attitude of the emperor, who negotiated with the Viking instead of destroying them during the siege of Paris, the Parisians and then the French, seceded from said empire (“Frexit”; turned out to have been a very bad idea, as it led to 1,150 years of war)… France didn’t secede formally, but by refusing to elect a Roman emperor, preferring to elect a French King “emperor in his own kingdom” as the official formula had it (so the elected French king was equivalent to the elected Roman emperor).

In the next millennium, that means in the thousand years prior to the present times, it would be proven again and again: the key to comfort, health, survival, morality, happiness, let alone sufficient food, was a strong French military. Everything else was secondary. (When the Germans invaded France in WWII, they stole as much food as they could so that the French would still be able to produce food and other stuff for them, Nazis…)

Why is France attacked so much? For the same reason as French is a melting pot, morally and intellectually superior: France is at the crossroads of Europe, it’s how one went conveniently from north to south in the last 12,000 years. If one is in the Mediterranean (thus coming from the Near East, or even further: Indies, Silk Roads, etc.), the way to reach the Atlantic or Northern Europe was through France (one route is to travel north of the Pyrenees, the other two go up the Rhone valley, one branching up right to Germany, the other, straight up to the Northern European plain and Great Britain.

The defeat of May 1940 occurred in a few days, when drugged out Nazis full of amphetamines, broke through where the Second British armored division was supposed to be, and was not, where the Prince of Wales, inspector of the British armed forces, had told his dear friend Hitler, that the French front was the weakest. Indeed, the French Front was held there by just one reserve infantry division, and three elite Panzer divisions attacked, helped by the elite Gross Deutschland regiment, and the entire Luftwaffe, concentrated their assault on a few kilometers. The French Republic had started a nuclear bomb program in January 1938 to drop bombs on Germany (it would take seven and a half year for the first bomb to be ready). The French were the first to bomb Berlin (the Nazis called for execution of the French fliers… although that was in retaliation of the bombing of French cities).

Ultimately British heavy bombers fleets (followed by US ones, years later) wreck havoc with Germany (one million soldiers had to man air defenses and German industry had to be relocated in the woods, underground…) This showed, once again, that if one is the most intelligent civilization, military superiority is all the moral right one needs to crush infamy.

The Romans purchased, for centuries superior Gallic armor and swords. At the battle of Poitiers in 732 CE, superior French steel and superior heavy cavalry on genetically formidable horses, destroyed the Muslim army (Muslim corpses were left to rot, out of contempt). The so-called “100 year war” finished when the Bureau brothers engineered the first battlefield guns. The 75 mm gun was indispensable in WWI. During the French Revolution, superior French artillery, with superior French explosives did much, if not most of the work (in particular at the crucial Battle of Valmy, September 20, 1792). Hot air balloons, invented in France, were militarily used. One of the first planes was also militarily financed, and flew, long before the Wright brothers. The first cars also made in France were the fruit of a military program: what was specified corresponded actually to tanks. The French taught the USA how to mass produce them with the required precision (this is how precision mass engineering was introduced to the USA). So the connection between superior tech and superior military was long ingrained.

The defeat of May 1940 was due in part to the exploitation by the Nazis of a few tricks which took the French military by surprise: amphetamines, good connection between the air force and ground forces, the usage of radios inside tanks… And lack of practice and arrogance of the top commanders. Morality: the Righteous should make war all the time, so as not be surprised by Evil.

All of these Nazi tricks could be fixed quickly, and they were, but not before the Franco-British being defeated in the most major battle of the Western front in WWII (the Franco-British never suffered a major defeat after that). The lesson for the future here was simple: if the French Republic had fought the Nazis in Spain in 1936, as it was asked by the Spanish Republic to do, it would not have been surprised in May 1940, and superior French military might would have done the rest. Why did France not attack the Nazis in 1936? Because the Anglo-Saxons asked France not to attack Hitler, who was, at the time, a source of enormous profit for the most major US corporations. So what is the meta lesson here? In spite of the affectionate parent to child relationship between France, England and the USA, the latter two self-obsessed buffoons should not be taken seriously all the time. France has 30 centuries of institutionalized, partly oral and behavioral tradition, that the UK and the US do not have. Only China or maybe India can reflect as deep upon the errors of history…

After World War Two, which started with the betrayal of the USA, France observed more betrayal, as the US Deep State was firmly intent to replace the French empire by an American one.

So now here we are. The defense of the West is mostly insured by a reconciled France and the US… which are at war in a dozen countries. This is good: in Libya, the French air force demonstrated it could overwhelm Russian air defense using stealthy Rafale fighters (the US is now using the same method in training with the stealthy F35). Recently, in the attack on French and US ally Saudi Arabia, the powerlessness of the most sophisticated US air defenses against drones and cruise missiles was demonstrated: now the US and France are scrambling to find counter-measure (it’s no coincidence, and entirely related, that the laser which blasted rocks on Mars was French made).

France has no oil, no gas, and no more coal. France can have only ideas; it is the only large country with a large economy which produces so little CO2 per capita that, if all countries did it, the CO2 cataclysm would be much delayed (only 4 tons/person/year for France; US is at 16 tons, and Canada and Australia are even worse). Ideas which can create technology enabling military superiority. The USA and Britain long embraced the same credo.

To be a real, thoughtful French citizen, steeped in history (as they used to be) is to learn that the Republic needs to be defended by force, that this is mission number one… of the Republic, something that the cultural ancestors to the French Republic, the Athenian and Roman ones, discovered 25 centuries ago. And just as 25 centuries ago, this superiority has to rest upon military and thus technological superiority.

As the ice caps melt, great wars are coming… And if they don’t happen this will be simply because potential aggressors understand they can’t win (as they do now). And the climate catastrophe is a war too, and only superior technology can win it. Same old, same old: if one wants a better existence, or existence at all, one has to fight for it.

Patrice Ayme 

***

P/S: Although the preceding is centered around France, it fully applies to her child, the USA. We have peace now because the relatively better guys (France, US, UK) have had military superiority, and the bad guys (Russia, China) aren’t that bad (although Putin engaged in invasion lately) and other guys surrended (Japan) to what passes for democracy, and the rest of the world is pretty powerless…

World peace depends upon the military might of that trio, another reason to look at Brexit with fear and suspicion…

 

French, Mandarin, Indo-European Languages; Why Multilingualism Brings Higher Wisdom

Multilingualism is a basic human capability, long honed by biological evolution. It may be necessary to achieve the highest mental capabilities, as multilingual speakers learn to adjudicate between modes of expression, the most advanced form of thinking.

So which languages? Excellent article by my frenemy Mehdi Lazar, summarizing well most of the situation with French:”The New Dynamic of French In The World.”. To point out that French and Mandarin are the most important languages (with English, de facto lingua franca) is crucial. Indeed, French is basically the core language of Europe: it is grammatically impoverished Latin bastardized with German prepositions, where many words have been phonetically and alphabetically simplified from the Latin originals. English was an afterthought. French is a fast evolving language (hopefully to go with fast minds).

This understates reality: for example North Africa spoke Latin for 900 years before the Arab invasion. Modern Latin, that is French, is widely understood, practiced and spoken in the Maghreb (in spite of efforts by local dictators of Islamist inspiration to kill it). Africa, light green, has to speak Latin derived languages (including English), because there are way too many native languages (or slave derived languages like Swahili)

Compare say the French “opital” from the original Latin “hospitalis”… English, which is actually more conservative than French, is in between with “HoSpital”: the H and S are still pronounced in English, not in French. The french found that the aspired H in the beginning, the S in the middle, and the “IS” at the end, were all useless, so they dropped them!

English, although technically classified as a “Germanic” language is mostly poorly pronounced French, and the more so, the more sophisticated the vocabulary is (85% + of words in common). Naturally, per its central position in Western Europe, French is then a happy medium between English and the other “romance” languages.

Now the baby elephant in the porcelain shop is that unruly child of Great Britain and France, the USA. Ironically enough, the dreaded “Anglo-Saxons” contribute to French by often going back to the Latin, that is, the original French, and creating words that way.

Here is an example: impact. The word appeared in English circa 1600, for “press closely into something,” from Latin impactus, past participle of impingere “to push into, drive into, strike against”. The word appears in French science and technological vocabulary only in 1824. But not just that, it’s an extremely important word, as it expresses the transmission of force (= how things act upon each other). Thus, in US English it has come to be used, since the 1990s as a… verb. As in: this essay impacts linguistics hard.

Thus it’s only a matter of time before the French verb “impacter” appears… and it would be a very useful verb… created as words should be created in French, going to the original Latin.

Another view: this time more of Africa shows up. Erroneously, but it’s a traditional error, English is not viewed as a Greco-Roman language (although it is fundamentally Greco-Roman, with more than 85% sophisticated words basically French…

Multilingualism is natural, humanity evolved as multilingual: our brains are made to learn several languages, and it enables us to better learn to adjudicate thoughts and forms of expression.

How so? Transportation was extremely difficult in the world of the past, except in those few places with steppe (like the Eurasian steppe, which goes from Hungary to Korea, that enormous freeway in the middle of Eurasia). Thus people evolved many languages even over very short distances. An example is Senegal: in this small countries, seven languages evolved, and some are tonal (Serer) and others not (Wolof). This is typical of the past, so human beings had to be multilingual.

However, there are only that many languages one can learn: French and Mandarin are the great linguistic anchors of the world, a continent apart.

But not just this: except for deplorable episodes such as the ephemeral collapses of the Greco-Roman and Chinese states under the invasions of various savages, Western Europe and China have long been at the forefront of civilization, spearheading progress. Learning basic Chinese arithmetic is fascinating: the Chinese found more rational ways to do it.

The state of Qin and the contemporaneous Roman Republic were remarkably based on the same principles of law, reason and technological progress… and that’s why they founded great empires (alive and well to this day, as descendant regimes). Actually the present inchoate world government embodied by the United Nations rests on Roman Republican legal principles, or even the letter of the Roman law (that’s similar to the Qin obsession with law… which was even applied to one of its most ardent proponent, a famous Qin PM who finished quartered by horses, as the law prescribed for the sort of corruption he had unfortunately engaged in…)

China understood the importance of intellectualism (the “Mandarin” examination system) and science… And that is why China was so successful, and the anchor civilization of East Asia (Japan and Vietnam used to employ Chinese character… Although the French switched Vietnam, and japan evolved a bit on its own…) Thus, from all this will to advanced thinking, China invented many technologies the world uses now. Even in the Nineteenth Century, Chinese drilling for natural gas, one kilometer down, or more, was the world’s most advanced.

The Frankish empire, both Merovingian and Carolingian, soon renamed itself “Renovatio Imperium Romanum”. Indeed, it “renovated” Rome on way better principles: no more terrorizing, stupidifying, sordid Christian fanaticism… and, soon enough, no more slavery: Saint Queen Bathilde outlawed the slave trade in 655 CE… Throughout much of Western Europe. So when the Franks invaded England in 1066, they freed the 20% of slaves there. These philosophical changes had huge economic, social and military impacts… 

Thus learning French and Mandarin is not just about speaking what many speak, and will speak. It’s about learning what made civilization what it has become… including learning the grave errors which made it so much better.

The “mission civilisatrice” is not over, it’s just starting. It’s not just a matter of feeling, and being, superior, it’s a matter of surviving. And not just for this species, but for the entire biosphere. You all will learn to think better, or you will learn to die, sordid. Go multilingual!

Patrice Ayme

Brexit Vote Killing Brexit Mood

It took 13 years for the Germans of old to realize that the Nazis had lied about all too many things. It took 13 hours for the British to realize that the strident anti-Europeans produced an ocean of lies. And in that ocean Brexiteers swam, claiming they were not really lies, but something else, more substantial. But one can see them, confusing sinking and thinking. Here below will be found a sample of the sort of debate. But first:

Patrice Ayme: Brexit will NOT happen. Keep calm and carry on.

Paul Handover: “Easy to write but impossible to accurately predict. If I were to make a bet it would be that Article 50 is going to happen.”

[Article 50  can be invoked by any European State at any moment, for any reason. It starts a 24 month process at the end of which said State is not a member of the European Union anymore, come what may.]

Patrice Ayme’:  It is so incredibly obvious that there will be another vote. That’s why Labor is in a rush to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn, a notorious Europhobe from 43 years ago. The European Union did not extinguish one person, one vote. Just the opposite. Britain has been made rich, because it was the payment organized mostly by Germany to please Britain and its American owners. Now Germany feels strong enough to follow the more egalitarian French Republic rather than Wall Street and its London pet. The aim was always to construct a Union so strong that it could be not be undone by war, ever again. Those who stand in the way of that ought to be extirpated of all and any decision-making. Let England be the new Norway (Norway pays twice per capita, but had to accept Schengen! It learns of European Union policy through press release, as a common minnow would). 

The French Republic Will Be Delighted To Brexit The English Plutocracy. Break Shit All Over, Right On, Guys!

Article 50 of the European Union Constitution, Lisbon Treaty:

1 Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union in accordance with its own constitutional requirements.

2 A Member State which decides to withdraw shall notify the European Council of its intention. In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. That agreement shall be negotiated in accordance with Article 218(3) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. It shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council, acting by a qualified majority, after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament.

3 The Treaties shall cease to apply to the State in question from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification referred to in paragraph 2, unless the European Council[…]

4 For the purposes of paragraphs 2 and 3, the member of the European Council or of the Council representing the withdrawing Member State shall not participate in the discussions of the European Council… in decisions concerning it.

A qualified majority shall be defined in accordance with Article 238(3)(b) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

5 If a State which has withdrawn from the Union asks to rejoin, its request shall be subject… Patrice: As if it never had been a member (Article 49).

Article 238 (b): “(b) ….”the qualified majority shall be defined as at least 72% of the members of the Council representing Member States comprising at least 65% of the population of these States.”

Practically, in the case of Great Britain, it means that at least 23 European Nation-States representing at least 330 million people have to agree with the exit treaty.

Of course the preceding may as well be Quantum Field Theory for Brexiteers. They know very little beyond the minds plutocratically owned tabloids endowed them with.  They probably don’t know what the “European Council” is. Let me help among Brexiteers those of good will who can read beyond tabloids:

The European Council … is not one of the EU’s legislating institutions, so does not negotiate or adopt EU laws. Instead it sets the EU’s policy agenda, traditionally by adopting ‘conclusions‘ during European Council meetings which identify issues of concern and actions to take.

The members of the European Council are the heads of state or government of the 28 EU member states, the European Council President and the President of the European Commission.

The European Council defines the EU’s overall political direction and priorities

The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy also takes part in European Council meetings when foreign affairs issues are discussed.

Decision-making process: The European Council mostly takes its decisions by consensus. However, in certain specific cases outlined in the EU treaties, it decides by unanimity or by qualified majority.

The number for France is an under-estimate. Many places in France have local English newspapers.

The European Institutions are as follows:
Section 1 – The European Parliament (Articles 223-234)
Section 2 – The European Council (Articles 235-236)
Section 3 – The Council (Articles 237-243)
Section 4 – The Commission (Articles 244-250)
Section 5 – The Court of Justice of the European Union (Articles 251-281)
Section 6 – The European Central Bank (Articles 282-284)
Section 7 – The Court of Auditors (Articles 285-287)

Here is a typical opinion of a Brexiteer in response to me.  Nick Brackenbury says: “The British Tabloids don’t get a vote. Her Majesty’s Subjects do. Patrice, the vote produced a majority to leave the European Union. We shall remain as part of Europe and possibly carry on buying French wine, cheese and motor vehicles (we have two Renault). But now none-British people are no longer able to pass Laws that govern British people. Fini!”

French made helicopters and planes will also come in handy, with most of the electronic equipment of the two Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers (it’s made by Thales), not to talk of nuclear power plants on order…

Notice in passing how proud some of the British are to be “subjects”. What’s the difference between a subject and a slave? For the slave, one needs a whip, whereas for the subject one needs only a debased perverted sense of pride? Happy to live on one’s knees, in front of a man-made deity? I wrote the following rejoinder:

Her Majesty’s slaves got their minds made up by tabloids owned by global plutocrats, for example the liar Murdoch and his lying papers. Non-British people have NEVER passed British laws. Learn. Please try to stop reading tabloids and, or listening to tabloid puppets.

Some will chuckle that the term “slave” may be a bit strong, that I do not appreciate the pride of being owned by another human being whom one reveres, like the dog reveres his master, and the Briton, his queen, and his princess, and his prince. A real fairy tale, Britain, I tell you. Complete with tax evading queen.

But slavery made Britain, and, especially America. Like in the US of A. No, this is not an allusion to the Franks retaking Britain from those who had invaded it, and liberating the slaves there, in 1066 CE.

No, it’s an allusion to how English America was made: by condemning vagrants to death, and then proposing to them deportation instead of the rope. How come that did not happen in France? Simply put, France was, and, de facto, is, much more civilized: in France peasants owned their land. However small. In Britain, they did not. Instead plutocrats employed them as quasi slaves.

The Brits are still slaves, in the sense that they do not own their land. All land in the United Kingdom is still “held of the Crown” in England and Wales and other jurisdictions in the Commonwealth realms. There is no “Allodial Title” in these desperate places. Something related to having a monarch, and being “subjects”. Exception exists, for example in parts of Australia (held by the original inhabitants). Owners of houses and businesses and the like within the United Kingdom are merely granted the use of the land by the reigning monarch, and are subject to return the land to the monarch if called to do so.

Amusingly, allodium, in earlier Latin alodis, alaudes, is already recognized in the early Salic law (circa 507–596 CE). Muslim law is often more than 13 centuries late (Islam recognizes slavery, which was abolished in Salic Law just when the Islamist empire was created, circa 650 CE). Here we see that English civilization is around 15 centuries late.

Nick Brackenbury:”Patrice, I don’t read tabloids. The Vote to Leave is done. Stop being a bad loser. When we joined the EC it was a Trading Community, now it is a controlling political movement. We like one person, one vote to count, and not be instructed by foreigners. Perhaps we are different. I often think of how the Euro Group of countries have treated Greece. Soon Italy, Portugal, Spain, Ireland. Many areas with over 50% unemployed, no investment, no attention to the young. Junckers is a joke, we fight wars to get rid of people like him. This time it just took a vote.”

To this Dominique Deux correctly replied: “When we joined the EC it was a Trading Community”

Yup, and moving to an ever closer union, as was EXPLICITLY stated when you voted to join. Vote as you like, but those of you who keep whining that you ONLY voted for a Common Market are liars. Then as now, now as ever. Or if not liars, suckers… then as now… now as ever.”

More than 43 years ago, in a referendum, the French population, one person, one vote, voted to let Great Britain in the European Community. Then Britain’s Parliament and government joined the European Community EVER CLOSER UNION. Within three years, Britain tried to get out, conducted a referendum, and voted to stay in.

The European construction, ever since 1948 was for an EVER CLOSER UNION. The European UNION was/is just part of it. The idea was to make war between Francia and Germania forever impossible. Economics was just one of several means to achieve this. There was a complete trade union before August 1914. Did not work too well.

Tabloids, and tabloid strength minds opted to believe that the UNION was a “bloc” or a “club”. And that this “club” was just about trade. That was a total lie. It was an EVER CLOSER Union.

I am no bad loser. The Brexiteers are bad winners. They are winners who can’t win. Their ship of lies is disintegrating for all to see. The Brexiteers’ win at the voting booth was the best way to insure the defeat of Brexit in the real world. Thankfully, it’s giving an opening for true Europeans to kick Britain out of the EMU (European MONETARY Union).

The fact so many Brexiteers, such as Nick above, think foreigners pass BRITISH laws, a 100% UNTRUTH, tabloid strength, is rather typical. It is actually astounding to see clever, well-informed, worldly and multicivilizational individuals such as Chris Snuggs, believing 100% such lies. On the positive side, it makes my study of fanaticism, Nazism, Jihadism, Stalinism, and other public mania so much easier.

The whole Brexit thing being such a silly thing. Britain will now leave Europe. Right. Keep calm and carry on. Sail east of New Zealand? Hahaha.

The English suffers from their home-made plutocracy… And accuse foreigners. Another of my correspondents, the English-born and tremendously educated, US biology professor Karen Eilbeck wrote:

“Reflecting on my trip back to the UK, I feel quite sad. It is easy to fly the St George cross out of your bedroom window and blame others for your state of affairs but harder to actually do some positive and impactful. Start with something small. Pick up the rubbish. When I see my home strewn with garbage, it hurts. Don’t stop to blame anyone. Take the initiative. Do something. I promise, it will make you feel better, and it will make those around you feel better and maybe everyone will be a little less depressed.”

Please read my essay especially around Martin Wolff’s considerations, which I have long written about. But now that the Financial Times says what I said, it should be right. Fix English plutocracy and its addiction to immigration of savage people and stolen, tax evading capital.

Meanwhile start by getting out of the European Monetary Union. Sunday, Iceland kicked England out of the European soccer cup. Today was the day the unworthy Cameron was kicked out of, and by, an exasperated EU. Tomorrow the Europe of 27 Nation-States meets and decides.  

On the EVER CLOSER UNION. The Ever Closer FEDERAL Union of 27 Nation-States (with Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, Montenegro and Kosovo taking orders; the last two use the Euro, the former two obey and contribute).

Europe is a matter of war, not trade.

If Great Britain cannot play democratic, or does not want to, it will still have to take orders from the democratic European Union, just like Morocco does, and for the same reasons. Guess what? The time to get rid of these tax havens which have enriched British plutocracy so much, has finally arrived! And let’s see how well the City of London does, when all Euro trading is done in the Euro Zone. No wonder the French are pressing to get Great Britain out ASAP. The UK Prime Minister has been asked to get out of Brussels for the European Union meeting of June 29, 2016.

A Union with disunited lunatics having surreal visions made little sense, indeed. It also means that the French Republic is effectively ejecting Great Britain out of the European Union, without waiting for the ignorant Britons and their tabloid addicted brains, to realize the enormous extent of the tremendous error they made. Half of the art of war is the surprise element: at Waterloo, Napoleon got surprised by the Prussian army. With Brexit, the Brexiteers are surprised. To their surprise, they found that they did not want to really leave, at least not now. And it turns out, second big surprise, that France wants them out, now. 

Patrice Ayme’

“You Will Not Have My Hatred”

Six months ago, the Wahhabist attacks in Paris killed and wounded 500. The number of victims to get financial compensation from the state is now 2,500. A young mother, one of many, including many that some would define as “Muslims”, was killed at the Bataclan, a well-known theater, where a Californian band was performing. She was perforated by bullets. Her husband of 12 years, Antoine Leiris, was watching at home their 17 months old son. The world has been talking about Antoine Leiris’ mood and system of thought.

Hours after the tragedy, Antoine Leiris posted the following touching and admirable thoughts and feelings on Facebook, which became “viral”:

“Friday night you stole the life of a being of exception, the love of my life, the mother of my son. But you will not have my hatred. I don’t know who you are and I don’t want to know it, you’re dead souls. If this God for whom you kill blindly, made us in his image, then every bullet in the body of my wife will have been a wound in his heart.

So no. I won’t make you the gift of hating you. You looked for it well, yet to respond to your hatred by anger would be giving in to the same ignorance that has made you what you are. You want me to be afraid, you want me to look at my fellow citizens with suspicion, that I sacrifice my freedom for security. You lost. The same player is still playing.

Helene Muyal Leiris with Her Son Shortly Before She Was Assassinated By Islamists In Paris

I saw her this morning. At last, after nights and days of waiting. She was as beautiful as when she left that Friday night, as beautiful as when I fell head over heels in love with her more than 12 years ago. Of course I’m devastated by grief. I’ll grant this small victory, but it will not last long. I know she will be with us every day and that we will meet again in this paradise of free souls that you’ll never have access to.

We are two, my son and me, but we are stronger than all the armies of the world. I do not have anymore time to devote to you, I have to be with Melvil who is waking up from his nap. He is barely seventeen months old. He is going to eat his afternoon snack, as he does everyday. Then we will play as we do everyday, and during his entire life, this little boy will make you the affront to be happy and free. Because no, you will not have his hatred either.”

Antoine Leiris

***

For the original French version, see Facebook “Vous N’Aurez Pas Ma Haine”.

Mr. Leiris has now a vocal version of his message, and has been spreading his philosophy.

***

So what do I think of this?

Sometimes, silence is the best discourse. Respect, sometimes, is best. But I can only take that much:

Naivety Springs, Eternal. But Eternity Did Not Spring From Naivety Alone.

Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. Mr. Leiris is apparently confusing Christianism and Islamism. Same god, but there are subtle differences. In Christianism, we have been created in the image of god, indeed. Whereas in the direct Qur’an, we are his slaves. And in the Qur’an, it is ordered to “set every ambush” for the Non-Believers. Such is the “Verse of the Sword”, Sura 5, verse 9, an ABROGATING verse (meaning it makes all verses which contradict it, invalid). Sura 5, verse 9 follows Luke 19; 27 in the New Testament, showing that Christian viciousness inspired many, and far away, for centuries to come (a Christian monk arguably set the basis of Islam in the mind of his close relative, the “Prophet”, PBUH).

When god is nuts, naivety is no long term strategy.

***

So what do I think of this avalanche of haughty goodness? Well, it’s a long story. I can see perfectly why Mr. Leiris decided to feel, and think, the way he did. I approve of it. It is a defense mechanism which I have, myself, used many times. Hatred is too serious a subject to be embraced frivolously.

Thus, surprisingly for some, no doubt, ignoring hatred is  not a fundamental contradiction from what I deeply advocate. As it turns out, a fundamental debate of the same sort happened during the establishment of the state of Israel.

Same as Israel, or Julius Caesar, a creature born of many subtleties will have many Modi Operandi. Everybody has many Modi Operandi. Real, habitual, virtual, potential… Like everybody else, it turns, out, but even more than everybody else, a would-be philosopher will cultivate perversely an exuberant garden of Modi Operandi (Modes of Operation in Latin; Airbus, a company which makes large flying computers uses a more arrogant concept than M.O., the word “law”. Boeing is affected my the same syndrome. Changing “laws” inappropriately will make a plane crash).

Antoine Leiris’ text is beautiful, it conveys the awesome will of putting love, freedom, play, the positive appreciation of the world,  above anything else. Putting only the positively awesome above everything else, is awesome. I will make sure to inform god of this astonishing revelation, reheated a trillion times again. I could, some will say I should, leave it at that, before I become positively obnoxious anymore. And I will restrain myself, in an exceptional moment of respectful self-control.

Just one point: Antoine observed (in an interview on ONPC) that in other people, or in other circumstances, completely different reactions would be much more appropriate. And of this we will talk later, pretty much as we did before. Here is a foretaste:

Grass is made to be trampled on, we are not. That’s how we play, and appreciate. That’s why we can play, appreciate, love, and be awesome. Survival is also a humanism.

Patrice Ayme’

Logic Is Not Everything: It Can Be Anything

A common mistake among many of the simple ones, is that, as long as we keep calm and use logic, we can solve any conflict. It was understandable that one could do such a mistake due to naivety and inexperience, before the Twentieth Century. However, we have now, black on white and well known, demonstrations to the contrary, in formal systems studied by professional logicians. Besides, as The French Republic is demonstrating in Libya again, in collaboration with the USA, war has a logic which squashable critters don’t have.

Yes, I am also thinking of the famous Incompleteness Theorems, but, obviously, not only. There is way worse.

This Means All Important Choice Have to Do With Love, Esthetics, Will, Power, Craziness, The Proverbial Human Factors. Logic Can’t Go Where The Heart Rules. Or Then Go Into METAlogic.

Before I get in incompleteness and further evils, let me recap some of the traditional approach. I thank in passing Massimo P, for calling my attention to this.

The value of logic, February 23, 2016, Massimo

This is going to be short and rather self-explanatory, with no additional commentary on my part necessary at all. Here is the full transcription of Epictetus’ Discourses, II.25, a gem to keep in mind for future use:

“When one of his audience said, ‘Convince me that logic is useful,’ he said, Would you have me demonstrate it?

‘Yes.’

Well, then, must I not use a demonstrative argument? And, when the other agreed, he said, How then shall you know if I impose upon you?

And when the man had no answer, he said, You see how you yourself admit that logic is necessary, if without it you are not even able to learn this much–whether it is necessary or not.”

Actually Epictetus uses “logic”, it seems to me, rather in its original sense, a discourse. Yet Massimo, like the moderns, will tend to use logic as it was meant in, say, 1900, just before Bertrand Russell objected to Frege’s forgetfulness of the “Liar Paradox” in his formal system justifying arithmetic. A further exploitation of the Liar Paradox brought the incompleteness theorems.

Logic is indeed how human beings communicate. Logic enables debate, and debate is the equivalent of sex, among ideas. It generates entirely new species. However post Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell, logic has progressed much.

Modern studies in logic show formal logic can be pretty much anything. Formal systems contradicting the most cherished axioms have been found to be consistent. Some have cute names, such as “paradoxical logic”, “fuzzy logic”, “linear logic”. Thus, Logical Pluralism has been discovered. “Classical Logic” (which neither complete nor coherent) is just a particular case. In some logics, a proposition can be neither true, nor false.

Along the line of ones of the greatest logician and mathematicians of the 20th Century, Generalized Tarski Thesis (GTT):
An argument is valid if and only if in every case in which the premises are true, so is the conclusion.
So yes, madness can be logical. “Logic”, per se, is not much of a constraint. It’s only a set of coherent rules to draw a conclusion. The only constraint is to keep on talking.
The Ancient Greeks would have been very surprised.

So if logic is not the end-all, be all, what is?

Knowledge. Knowledge of the details. In other words, knowledge of evil. That is why, when I demonstrate, using knowledge, that Marcus Aurelius, supposedly the big time Stoic philosopher, makes the apology of Intellectual Fascism, I hear the cries of the Beotians, whose pathetic logic have crushed underfoot. What happened? I went outside of their logic. So they insult me. (Should I spurn them, and make them feel that I have nothing to say, or insult them back, by showing them, and others, what idiots they are? Sitting on one’s hand in front of rabid fascism is neither wise, nor safe!)

In other news, French special forces are operating on the ground in Libya, helping, among other things, very precise US strikes. This is a case of using the same logic as the enemy. The Islamists terrorize and kill: a logic which is pretty drastic. It can also be adopted. Let see how it goes, when the country with the greatest, longest military tradition, adopts it too. (France has a long history of drastic war against invading Islamists, since the Battle of Toulouse, in 721 CE)

Speaking of the enemy, the French Internal Revenue Service is forcing Google Inc., the famous monopoly. to pay back taxes. Google has sent the clown it uses as CEO to Paris. Google was transferring profits it made in France through Ireland, and then Bermuda. The bill? 1.6 BILLION Euros. Great Britain has a similar situation and economy, but is asking for only a tenth of that. Such is plutocracy: greater in the UK than in France.

Ah, the French Defense Ministry is not denying media reports that the French army is in combat, on the ground, in Libya. Instead, the French government has announced the start of an inquiry for finding out who compromised National Defense. In other words, it wants it to be known. Or there is much more coming, which it wants to hide. Or then American paranoia is contagious.

In other news, Belgium, historically a part of Gaul, has closed its border with France, as if Belgium were Great Britain, and France, full of Huns (instead of only Afghans). Amusingly, and a testimony of how much old gripes have subsidized, the Franco-German border stays open.

Logic is not all. Facts are much more important, including facts on the ground.

Patrice Ayme’

Long Live The Euro: 2) Friedman Ignorant Anti-Euro Rant

Is Europe an “optimum currency area”? Milton Friedman believed it was not, and he gave apparently cogent, and now much repeated reasons, why it was not. However one should remember that appearances are deceiving, the most venomous snakes look like pretty leaves. Some people do not know how to add, but they claim they can multiply.

American economist have been lying, they are paid to lie, because their lies in economy give justification to otherwise unjustifiable policies. The policies of the USA have been, overall comfortable: having eliminated the Natives, American and Canadians, like the Australians, enjoy entire continents for themselves, far removed from the rest of the world, and its often crowed, overwhelmed realities.

Whereas France is in a different situation. French major policies have not been comfortable, since 360 CE (when the elite Parisian legions revolted, refused to leave France, and proclaimed the Caesar Julian, Augustus; the central government in Constantinople was not happy, and those in-between, distinctly uncomfortable).

France did not just declare war to the Nazis in the 1930s, when the USA was busy doing profitable business with them. France has been fighting Islamists since 721 CE (before that the Franks’ James Bonds were spying on said Islamists in the Middle East).

The war with the Islamists requires much power and determination. Here is a picture from April 2015, taken at night, with a high resolution radar. The famous Second Foreign Parachute Regiment (2 REP) is dropping at night on the Salvador Pass, in the middle of the Sahara, at the Libya-Niger border. It then engaged Islamists in combat:

Reality Check: Economics Serves War. Combat In More Than Half A Dozen Countries Costs France Beaucoup Euros

[The dots are French soldiers, and equipment, not trees. The area is the most barren desert on Earth.]

Here is Milton Friedman, that supposedly great economist, as we will see a great liar, a little man, a European war lover, in the conclusion of his famous essay supposedly demolishing the Euro. That essay is oft-repeated with glee since, by pseudo-”liberal” luminaries such as Paul Krugman, and, in general, all faithful, one should even say, obsequious, servants of Uncle Sam:

“The European Commission based in Brussels, indeed, spends a small fraction of the total spent by governments in the member countries. They, not the European Union’s bureaucracies, are the important political entities. Moreover, regulation of industrial and employment practices is more extensive than in the United States, and differs far more from country to country than from American state to American state. As a result, wages and prices in Europe are more rigid, and labor less mobile. In those circumstances, flexible exchange rates provide an extremely useful adjustment mechanism.

If one country is affected by negative shocks that call for, say, lower wages relative to other countries, that can be achieved by a change in one price, the exchange rate, rather than by requiring changes in thousands on thousands of separate wage rates, or the emigration of labor. The hardships imposed on France by its “franc fort” policy illustrate the cost of a politically inspired determination not to use the exchange rate to adjust to the impact of German unification. Britain’s economic growth after it abandoned the European Exchange Rate Mechanism a few years ago to refloat the pound illustrates the effectiveness of the exchange rate as an adjustment mechanism.”

This sounds all very smart, but, it’s mostly poorly informed BS. When one knows enough, and when one is in a mood favorable to European Unification, Milton Friedman just sound like a highly paid prostitute. What he sells is lies.

Examples of Friedman ignorance, or deliberate lying:

1. The member countries are more important, true, but only to some extent.Even France and Germany are tied up by the various European institutions, because the latter are part of the member countries national laws (that’s called the Single European Act). So France, for example, cannot contradict the European Court of Justice, without contradicting the FRENCH Constitution.
2. Member countries are of three types: great powers (France, Germany, Britain), middle powers (Spain, Italy, Poland; Italy is a middle power because its north is more Franco-German than Sicilian, so it’s de facto divided; Spain has the same problem: Catalonia historically is more French, or Roman, than Spanish). And then small powers. Small powers can stand in the way, but not for long (Greece being the best example).
3. That “regulation of industrial and employment practices… differs far more from country to country than from American state to American state” is simply, a lie. A lie disguised as a truth. European regulations are extremely similar to each other, and very far from the American ones. The exception is Great Britain, which asked for an exemption, and got it.
4. Labor is less mobile in Europe, because Europe is made of different nations talking different versions of English.
5. “If one country is affected with negative shocks”: the entire idea of Europe, Friedman, is to have no more “negative shocks”.
6. When Friedman talks of France, he brays like an ass. The strong Franc policy is an atavism of France. France invented the strong currency thing, like 12 centuries ago. Those who did not believe in it, were boiled in wine. Alive. France applied it in the 1920s and 1930s, when the USA, the UK, Germany, and other critters tried to devaluate themselves to health (some got mad in the process). The strong Franc is a case of Germany coming to think like France, not conversely. (True France devalued in the 1960s, but then Germany wrote off more than half of its debt, with the benediction of its allies, in the 1950s.)
7. The United Kingdom has been highly successful with its currency policies in the 1990s, and after 2008. However that is, first of all, because enough money was provided to run the economy. Although having a national currency allowed it to do so, currency independence is neither necessary, nor sufficient.
8. Wages, prices, regulations, national laws are under convergence in Europe. Recently Germany finally imitated France and introduced a high minimum wage. German workers are now for the first time as expensive as French workers.
9. Friedman ignores ways in which European countries are more similar to each other, than to American states: no death penalty, universal health care, strong privacy laws, labor protection are examples.
10. The important political entities in the Eurozone are France and Germany. United, they form a superpower, especially when adding their automatic influence zone (Austria, The Benelux, Northern Spain, including Catalonia, Northern Italy, and yes, Switzerland). Since May 8, 1945, France and Germany did not have ONE serious differences, and have pursued a steady program of “ever closer union” (to use the language of the European de facto constitution). The heads of France and Germany sit together at the European Parliament, during important events. I believe, and French and German leaders believed

All right, so Friedman does not know what he is talking about.

Friedman also asserts what is well-known, that the Euro is a political project (what he does not say is that it is a French political project, because he is not anxious to spoil his hidden bias with obvious francophobia). Notice that, if some project is mostly driven by politics, that does not mean that it cannot turn out to be economical. Says Friedman:

“The drive for the Euro has been motivated by politics not economics. The aim has been to link Germany and France so closely as to make a future European war impossible, and to set the stage for a federal United States of Europe.”

Of course a USE, a United States of Europe, would be a formidable rival to the USA, and probably less friendly to the people who paid Friedman for his flood of BS venom. Then Friedman, in his conclusion, slips into psycho-politics, a domain which mixes psychology and politics, for which, considering the long list of erroneous ideas I exposed above, he has no expertise whatsoever. Friedman is like somebody who does not know how to add, and now he wants to multiply:

”I believe that adoption of the Euro would have the opposite effect. It would exacerbate political tensions by converting divergent shocks that could have been readily accommodated by exchange rate changes into divisive political issues. Political unity can pave the way for monetary unity. Monetary unity imposed under unfavorable conditions will prove a barrier to the achievement of political unity.”

The truth? Milton Friedman, the economist does not the history of economics. Let me give him a F. F for “Failed”. The Thaler/Tollar, functioned as a currency in Europe for centuries without any political unification.

The truth? France and Germany are unifying ever more. The last divergence was about Libya: France decided to overthrow the dictator there, and Germany did not help. However in Syria, Germany, and Britain are now helping France. Germany is presently sending troops for occupation and control in Mali, because and while France is getting its shock troops for attacks in Syria and Libya.

The truth? When Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s president, decided to switch to the Euro for international transaction, thus exiting Washington’s orbit, Washington decided to make Iraq an example for those who switch to the Euro. The Washington strategists wanted a murderous mess for those who switch to the Euro, and now they have it, and one must them chuckling at night, far from prying eyes. (People like Paul Krugman absolutely refuse to understand any of the preceding, as it would murder their careers to do so. At the very least.)

The truth? In the 1940s, the Nazis and the French resistance, the Free French and the French Republic agreed that “divisive political issues” and “exacerbated tensions” came from “converting divergent shocks”. To eliminate divergent shocks, eliminate differences. In this respect, the Euro is helping France and Germany achieve an ever closer union. (Notwithstanding the sea of lies American economists swim in.)

And it’s all that matter. American Jews such as Friedman, Krugman, and all these other “mans”, should remember that, when “Francia”, the Renovated Roman empire, Franco-Germania, extended from Barcelona to Berlin and beyond, there was no discrimination against the Jews.

Why? Because the very nature of a sustainable, vast empire, is tolerance. So let a common European currency be, it will be more comfortable to divergences, hence ideas.

Patrice Ayme’

Love Without Wisdom: Ruin of Humanity.

Love without wisdom is only ruin of humanity? Lying, too, is the ruin of humanity, which is truth, if nothing else.

Lying about Islam will not seduce youth. Just the opposite.

If there is no love of wisdom, there is no wisdom in love.

Attack of the day, this time Al Qaeda on Bamako’s most prestigious hotel. Ten Muslim Fundamentalists versus 200 guests and 30 employees. What could go wrong? “God is great!” screamed the gun totting Radicals. Therein were airline crews from Air France, Turkish Airways, and many Members of Parliament from many countries, including France (of course), Senegal, Quebec, etc.

Human Spirit Is Indomitable

Well what could go wrong is that there were 40 French gendarmes from GIGN (Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale) plus French and U.S. Special Forces in the immediate area. The siege got resolved very quickly with only two dozens killed.

The deepest problem we are facing is philosophical. There is the Islam we have, and then there is the Islam we wish to have. The Islam we have, is the one in the Qur’an. Nobody reads the Qur’an, everybody talks about it, as if they had. Well, nobody reads it, except for the Islamist State, and other Muslim Fundamentalists, or “Radicals”

The West says:”The Islamist State is not Islam, it’s terrorism”. The Islamist State, and other Muslim Fundamentalists reply:”Just read the Qur’an”. Young, dissatisfied people (rightly dissatisfied from austerity, discrimination, inequities, etc.) then decide to make a little experience for themselves: who is right? They read the Qur’an and discover that the Muslim Fundamentalists told the truth: the Islamist State is the Qur’an, unadultarated. As long as the leadership of the West (political and intellectual) lies in a blatant way, and is easily caught lying, it will have no credit, and will only enrage youth ever more. (Maybe that’s what they want? As war serves plutocracy well?)

Islamism Is Terrorism, Wisdom Is Love

It’s as simple as that. Don’t agree? Well read the Qur’an oh you silly ones who talk about books you never read and were mostly told lies about. Before reading comprehension, one needs reading. Right, normal people prefer reading novels than reality.

In the Qur’an it is famously said that who kills someone, kills all of humanity. Never mind that Muhammad himself killed more than 1,000, including an entire tribe of Yathrib (now Medina). Yet, the Qur’an says this. However that verse is ABROGATED by tens of later verses which order all sorts of people (remember that later verses take precedence over earlier ones):

Imams bemoan “Radicalism”. But “radical” means about roots, and in the case of Islam, it means the Qur’an. Radical is the Qur’an. The Qur’an itself is a fabrication of Uthman, not Muhammad, as Aisha pointed out. Entire pieces of it were removed (notably the famous “Satanic Verses”).

So why not rewrite the Qur’an in a new version, the “Real Message of God According to Muhammad, Which Uthman And Others Hid From You”?

That will allow to remove the verses in the Qur’an which are in conflict with civilization.

Meanwhile the comedy of stupidity unchained, keeps on unfolding. I showed an educated lady from California hyper-threatening verses from the Qur’an, which should be unlawful, just because they are hate crimes. She quietly told me: ”Oh, there is the same in the Bible.” She has been a professional woman earning her keep as an engineer for decades.

‘So the pan is hot?’ Say who pass nowadays for smart, well-balanced people. ‘No problem, the fire is hot too.” Surely, the argument that we should be happy with the Qur’an, because it is similar to the rule book of the Inquisition belongs to those who hope keenly to bring back the Inquisition.

If there is no love of wisdom, there is no wisdom in love. It’s not enough to love God. You have to check first it’s not the Devil, as the Cathars pointed out.

The Vatican had the King of Paris (also known as “France”) annihilate the Cathars, using a Bible Fundamentalist army. One million dead. And all the Cathars’ writings.

But not, as you can see, all their ideas.

Meanwhile in Algeria, the local dictator, Bouteflika, had cartoonist Tahar Djehiche imprisoned 6 months in jail for cartoons ‘insulting the president’ -https://t.co/nJ9tF5xafX”. When the mood is around that insulting the Prophet deserves death, surely insulting the president deserves 6 months. Islam is the bed of gory dictatorship.

Who is Bouteflika?  A terrorist who became a general. He is one of the original principals from the FNL, a terrorist group to whom the French dictator (the one who dictated), De Gaulle, gave power in… 1962. De Gaulle, a famous racist, thought that Bouteflika was perfect for Algeria. De Gaulle thought he could keep “Muslims” or North Africans at bay, and away, by giving them to the wolves. That mood persisted, although its racism had to morph a bit. So the children of the North Africans who fled to France, or Europe, were mistreated by austerity (no schools for you, Muslims, the Qur’an is good enough, and selling drugs, too). So here we are. (Fully describing the relationship between France and North Africa deserves 1,000 pages, I am myself a byproduct; this was just an appetizer…)

If there is no love of wisdom, there is no wisdom in love. People are born from love, and thus have a capacity, and a need to love whatever, including evil. Love is not enough. Love without wisdom is only ruin of humanity.

Patrice Ayme’