Le Pen Is Not Racist, But European Leaders Have Been Evil

Le Pen is “deeply racist” paid media writers say all over France and the Anglosphere [1]. Proof? Why do you want proof like a quote? Are you racist? Proof by innuendo! Le Pen is racist because she fears some aspects of Islam… In a country where significant portion of the population has feared the fascist Abrahamist religion in its variously delirious variants for 20 centuries, that’s only natural, deeply “French”…

US citizens are fully unaware of the way foreigners can abuse the French health care system (that could include US citizens, by the way). Show up in a French hospital and treatment will be free… whereas law abiding French citizens from overseas will have to pay an arm and a leg (happened to me).

This method of crossing the French border at the last hour before giving birth is used systematically in some border areas (say around Briancon). I have seen it twice from my very eyes. Once it was an Albanian woman (Albania is not in the EU; she paid nothing for the birth, nor could she; next door I paid more than  10,000 Euros…). Another time, an African woman who seemed ready to explode was helped in the bus, a kilometer from the French border in Claviere. The gendarmerie got her out the bus and called an ambulance in Briançon…

The trick of giving birth in France has even been used by terrorists to rear “French” children who are trained in their primitive lands to hate France… But have a French passport, and thus abilitated to help out with terrorism inside France.

“Islamophobic” is a strange notion in France, where a law was passed in 1905 exists which limits the role of Catholicism, Protestantism and Judaism… But the 1905 law did not apply, nor limit Islam. (Yes Christian monks and priests at the time were furious and rebelled violently!)

The root of the 1905 separation of church and state law was centuries of religious wars, from the holocaust of millions of Cathars around 1200 to the Revocation of the Nantes Edict around 1700, which made two million, 10% of the population, flee France. In some families the fear of Christianism (Christianophobia), or anti-clericalism has run for centuries (half of my family was like that; they used to be protestant nobles, more than 5 centuries ago, and most were kicked out of France by the fanatical Catholic Louis XIV!).

Because Christian fanaticism has caused tremendous suffering, anti-Christianism and Christianophobia run deep in France: the Cathars are remembered, although all their writings were destroyed, and Louis XIV’s religious cleansing of Protestantism motivated the hatred of many Germans whose ancestors were French, centuries ago, before they were forced to emigrate by the tyrant Sun King.

. Cartoon from 1905, when the binding betwen Pope and France was cut (by the mighty fasces, notice!) Inspired by Voltaire (who also identified Islam to fanaticism), the pact between Napoelon and the Pope, dating from 1801, was abrogated in 1905. Inspiré par Voltaire, up in the cloud, Émile Combes, an ex-seminarist, s’apprête à trancher le nœud gordien entre l’Église (le pape) et l’État (Marianne) tandis qu’un moine cuve son vin. Notice drunk monk on the ground.

So, after five centuries and millions dead over five centuries in Christian religious wars, fear (phobia) of organized religions run deep in France and, far from being a form of racism, is a form of deeply enlightened humanism.

Islam has been basically respected and ignored by French authorities for 13 centuries (Islamist invasions were repelled thrice in the Eight Century with major battles in 721 CE, 732 CE, and 748 CE… And also in the Tenth Century; later Frankish and Normands armies freed Rome, Souther Italy, Sicily… However no restriction were ever taken under individual Muslims on religious grounds… A proof of this is the presence of Arab and North African genes in France, from more than a millennium ago. And historically speaking Muslim peasants left over were left alone, this is known: no forced conversions.

However now the situation is different because of a poisonous mix of anti-France rhetoric, anti-Enlightenment, anti-European, post-modernist hatred for civilization or even reason, and weaponized Muslim immigration… I am not saying all Muslim immigrants are bad: some are very good, and historically a lot of variants of Islam in Africa have little to do with Suni or Shia superstitions… However, propped by hydrocarbon money, just like Putin, many nasty ideologies have tried to carve their own empires, and have smothered advanced African Islams…

I am myself half African, so I have viewed the problems religions can cause (my first memories in life are from a charming oasis where most Muslims had been prevented to come for centuries: the local branch of Islam, older than any other, came under terrible repression from the tyrannical Shia and Sunni, thus defended itself by excluding them; I a pprove that sort of Islam, and many other sorts, just as I generally disapprove forms of Islam which treat women as lesser beings).

The hatred against Le Pen, resting on fighting words (accusing her groundlessly to be “deeply racist“) calls for a refusal of debate, and thus destruction of democracy. Unbalanced critique of otherwise honorable politicians and their demonization is not helpful to democracy [1]. It creates anger and even hatred. I was actually going to vote for Macron, with profond distaste, because I find Le Pen’s position on Russia even more friendly towards Putin than Macron’s (who has been all too friendly towards Putin over the years).

The way the French constitution is, the governmental program emanates from Parliament, not the President. le Pen could have Macron as Prime Minister… or even a real leftist: Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-left party La France Insoumise, who came third in the first round of the presidential election, just behind Le Pen, on April 10 with 22% of the vote (she got 23% and Macron 27%), has called on people in France to “elect him as prime minister”.

So let’s relax.

And let’s reflect; a lot of the proposition of Le Pen, such as Proportional Representation and Direct Democracy through referendums, would be definitively progress. Even the question of the supremacy of European law over National law is a legitimate question: if it doesn’t apply to Swiss Canton, why should it apply to a country, Republic and Democracy, France, which is 200 times more populous than the average Swiss canton?

All the more as, as it is, the European army is NATO… giving a precedence to US weapons over, say, French ones (which can be be of higher quality than US ones)… 

In any case, it was hilarious to see an investment banker, and double dipper (Macron, who leveraged his previous state employment as finance inspector) accuse Le Pen of depending upon her Russian banker. Macron said Putin was Le Pen’s banker… Le Pen shot back that her party had been prevented of borrowing from European banks, so it had to borrow from a Russian bank, and she pointed out that Macron invited Putin over, all over, Versailles, Cote d’Azur, etc…

Let’s reflect how much of the anti-Le Pen hysteria has to do with the fact that Marine Le Pen is a woman (and not in the skirts of her husband or the establishment, as Hillary Clinton).

Not to say I agree with her position on Putin (I want full embargo, she doesn’t want it on energy). But then, again, the present, outrageously pro-Russian tyranny policies were put in place in the last 23 years, in spite of Putin’s vile tyranny… and not by Le Pen, but by dozens of very honorable Western politicians.

Democracy doesn’t demand one has to agree with everybody on all things, and should not require to demonize individuals who just want more direct democracy (the referendum of initiative populaire already has existed in Switzerland and California for more than a century, and neither fell into the sea…)  

So let’s relax… But let’s also view with suspicion those who are keen to demonize democratic opposition: we saw what happened when that was done to Tiberius Gracchus…

Patrice Ayme

[1] The NYT had a title “Marine Le Pen has not changed, she is as dangerous as ever“… the latest in many strident anti-le Pen essays (where my comments were censored), After my comment (on this latest insult torrent against Le Pen) was published (finally!), the NYT, finally aware of how vicious it looked, changed the title to something completely different, but anti-French in a worse way.

Memories:

My first memories are from this place, Ghardaia, Mzab, Sahara (a tiny portion of the city)

Origins Of PUTIN’s OUTRAGEOUS TYRANNICAL LIES And Why To Resist Them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrice Ayme

BS BBC Wants You To Believe: King Of England Was Muslim

BBC published the following title: “KING HENRY II: THE MUSLIM MONARCH OF MEDIEVAL ENGLAND?

In the 12th century, furious with the archbishop of Canterbury, England’s King Henry II threatened to forsake Christianity for Islam.” 

This was obviously not the case. BBC has no sense of humor whatsoever. The absurdity of the BBC’s misleading title is immense, and reflects a total misreading of the mentality of Frankish leaders during the Middle Ages [1]. False news! BBC has little appreciation for the mood of the Franks… Henry was born in Le Mans, Maine, France, part of the “Roman empire”, in the part of the “Roman” empire known as “Francia”.  

The root for this absurdity? Henry II told, obviously in jest, his protege the Pope Alexander, then a refugee in Paris, that he “would sooner accept the errors of Nur al-Din [the Sultan of Aleppo] and become an infidel, than suffer Thomas [Becket] to hold sway in Canterbury Cathedral any longer”.

Henry II Plantagenet With His Daughter In Law Marguerite de France

Henry had raised his friend Thomas Becket high, appointing him to the position of chancellor soon after his accession. He was “considered second only to the king”. Henry had such faith in Thomas to do his bidding that after Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury, died in 1161, he strong-armed a reluctant Becket into taking up the dual position of chancellor -archbishop, despite warnings from Henry’s mother, the “Roman” Empress Matilda, and from Thomas himself. Thomas thought it was ludicrous, protesting that Henry and he knew “for certain that if I am ever promoted to that dignity, I will have to forfeit either the king’s favour or… my service to God Almighty”. That should have been clear, and considering how nasty God is depicted in the Bible, not a good omen…

Indeed, to his horror, Henry discovered that he had installed a Catholic zealot, a soldier now for the eternal Christ instead of his temporal king. Henry was livid when Thomas resigned the chancellorship; king and archbishop soon became locked in a battle for supremacy between church and state… Something not seen since Theodosius I and the bishop of Milan, Ambrose, had a dust up in the Fourth Century. The balance of compromise – whereby the kings gave their archbishops dignity and in turn the archbishops sought to obey their kings’ every desire – was down and out, and that, for a Frank, was intolerable. The very rise of the Frankish civilization in the Fourth Century was propelled by putting back secular political power in command… as in the best times of Rome, but this time including most of Germany, Europe became a secular power again.

***

Frankly Cool About Religion:

The Franks were both cautious and relax about religion in general, and Islam in particular. Jokes were allowed. Emperors could employ Muslim bodyguards, and speak Arabic (as Barbarossa did)…. And then go on a Crusade. Even a Catholic fanatic such as Saint Louis toyed with the idea of becoming Sultan of Egypt. 

Being an “apostate” was not a crime under the Franks: the state was agnostics. When Clovis and thousands of his bodyguards  converted to Catholicism, that was not mandatory. 

The Franks had fought with Pope Gregory the Great, in the Sixth Century, when the Pope threatened to burn bishops who allowed secular teaching. Ultimately the Franks obliged all and any religious establishment (including monasteries, synagogues) to teach secularly the entire children population. The Franks sent spies to nascent Islam in the Seventh Century. They viewed the “Sons of Sara” (Saracens) as a Christian heresy, but most dangerous because most militarized. 

Ultimately, the Muslim invasion of Western Europe turned into a bloodbath: invading Muslims killed 25% of catholic Spain… Although their fight was against the ruling Visigoths. Then the Umayyad Caliphate launched three massive invasions of Francia but the “Europeans” (as the Franks called themselves then), rejected them and the caliphate fell (750 CE). In the following four centuries, the Franks led a reconquista of not just  Northern Spain, but Southern Italy and islands such as Sicily. 

One has to understand that, initially, the Franks took over a disintegrating Late Roman empire wrecked, and led, by “Catholic Orthodox” with did, or threatened to, kill everybody who was not considered to be a proper believer… others, emperor Theodosius I had decreed in 381CE,  were “madmen”. 

The Franks, led by king, imperator and consul Clovis, imposed a gentle form of Catholicism not adverse to Pagans or Jews… Or even, it turned out later, Muslims. This tolerant Catholicism ruled until 1026 CE… When the Catholic church bared its fangs again, and started to burn “heretics” again. What happened? Some European plutocrats (self described “nobles”) got the idea, coming from the Late Roman empire, to use Catholicism as a pretext to kill and oppress people. 

Born In Maine, France, Married His Vassal the King’s Wife, Eleanor d’Aquitaine, who had only daughters from the French King, proceeded to give him a son.

Thus Catholicism became more powerful, extremist and fanatical, just after 1000 CE, relaunching the Inquisition. In particular, the marriage of clerics was discouraged. Intellectuals, who had been church employees, technically, because of the three centuries old law pushed vigorously for independence from the church… that’s how the university system was born. And of course a battle started inside Catholicism between pacific tolerance and furious fanaticism. 

The most famous battle was that of the hyper famous philosopher and songwriter Abelard against Saint Bernard. Saint Bernard, more influential than the Pope, pushed for the Second Crusade. Excommunicated, exasperated, Abelard did threaten to go to Spain among the Muslims, claiming they looked more hospitable than fanatic Catholics. His sponsor and protector Peter the Venerable sojourned in Muslim controlled Spain to overview the translation of various Islamist text, including the Qur’an. 

The point of all this was that education, politics, the military, and the law were all independent of religion during the five centuries of Frankish control. Whereas in the Late Roman empire, Catholicism was the state religion, it was not the case under the Franks. In reconquered areas the Muslim had invaded, the Franks’ didn’t force-convert Muslims, nor were they ejected. 

The Franks were not against conversion out of Catholicism, they enabled Catholics to convert to Judaism. And sometimes entire villages did.

This is completely different from Islam. If you convert out of Islam, the holiest texts of Islam tell you, you die. Under Islam, education, politics, military, law are all one under God (“Allah”). Islam learned everything from the Late Roman empire. It’s quite similar, just worse: at least under the Roman empire, nominally, most of the law was independent of religion.   

Confronted to all this, the partisans of Islam bleat that Islam had a “Golden Age”. True, in appearance. But the reality is the exact opposite of what they believe. An immense empire had been conquered in a few years, and those huge populations found themselves mostly free, because of the Muslim conquest. 

The brutality of Muslim conquest (a few years), and its ferocity (killing all arm bearing males in Syria), followed by a hands-off policy (40,000 conquering Muslims left the millions they had conquered alone, as long as they paid taxes and let Muslims rule), paradoxically avoided destruction of cities, and freed the populations from the fanaticism of the precedingly ruling “Catholic” tyrants. So for a while the many millions living in the areas conquered by those 40,000 warriors found themselves to be much more free than before. They were still Christian and Jews. Many thinkers and their books had escaped earlier to Persia, just before the Arabic conquest. The appearance of Islam’s rich intellectual tradition won plenty of admirers in medieval Europe.

But this was secular, not religious admiration. The attitude of all leaders of parts of the Frankish empire was that the church could do its own thing, as long as it respected secular law. 

This is what happened with Henry II Plantagenet. He found himself confronted by a fanatic he had himself appointed, to the objections of many.   

Oppressed by their non-Muslim status, those populations converted to Islam over the next few centuries, and then it became clear, to the Muslim leaders themselves, that Literal Islam was adverse to civilizational progress. So many Muslim leaders took anti-fundamentalist measures. Saladin, for example passed a law rewarding those who interpreted I slam literally with the death penalty… Exactly what Wahhab did, five centuries later, enabling the Saud family to use Islam the way Late Roman emperors used that Catholicism they had invented… And the way early Muslim leaders did. 

***

Man was born free. Man thinks best, free. Democracy enables us to be as free as possible while enjoying civilization. All this is impossible following only what is in one 80,000 words book… especially when it’s full of orders to kill all sorts of people, many of them because of how they were born.  

Democracy makes people sufficiently intelligent to understand when people make jokes. But jokes are not tolerated by those who take Islam literally. Apparently the case of the BBC.

Patrice Ayme

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[1]: Some will object to the adjective “Frankish”. How could a king of England be a Frank? Never heard of that! It’s not in Harvard textbooks! Well, until king Philippe Auguste, the king of Francia was “emperor (of the Romans) in his kingdom” and was king of the Franks. There had been complete state continuity since Clovis… Himself Roman Consul, and first king of France…

NAPOLEON: DIRTY & Only Memorable That Way

NAPOLEON ENVY & ADMIRATION IS A GRAVE DISEASE THAT NEEDS TREATMENT. Here is some cure against this still rampant affliction:

Napoleon was no Caesar:

To immediately focus away from what is not at issue here, let me remind the reader I am an admirer of Caesar (although aware of Julius’ flaws, including deporting millions, seizing the last free Greek city-state, Marseilles, and exterminating entire cities). The point though is that Caesar lived in the most difficult times, and, although “Dictator For Life” (a stupid, but understandable idea considering the circumstances; he should have put a ten year limit), Caesar had left the Republic intact (and that cost him his life, as he had not measured the full depth of corruption of his opponents).

Napoleon had none of the excuses of Caesar. And none of his achievements. Even as a general, Caesar was vastly superior, tactically and especially strategically.

Although Caesar led a revolution (complete with redistribution of wealth: consider his Agrarian Reform of 59 BCE), Napoleon buried one. Caesar wanted to save the Republic, Napoleon killed it.

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Why is Napoleon Bonaparte considered a hero?
Napoleon is admired because most people are tempted to become nasty nuts, and are mesmerized by Napoleon for having done so. That’s the positive side. On the negative side, Napoleon’s admirers are plain ignorant. They attribute to him things he wanted gone, while other things he did, they have no idea.

On one thing they are right:  Napoleon was an authentic hero in combat, on the battlefield (as Caesar, a “savage” fighter, “like a wild beast” was). Napoleon was also an expert in calculus… and geometry (there is such a thing as the intriguing Napoleon’s theorem). 

Could Napoleon have been Caesar? Did Napoleon simply chose to be a cretin? I doubt it. Caesar’s background was unequaled; he was the nephew of seven times Consul, populist and supreme general Marius, savior of Rome. Caesar got the best teachers. His first and last words were in Greek, not Latin. 

In comparison, Napoleon, with due respect to Corsican savages, was just one of them. And it showed.

Napoleon in a nutshell: A grandeur deluded, macho, sex-obsessed, misogynistic, vain-glorious, self-obsessed, tyrannical, cruel, jealous, god-crazed, mass-homicidal greedy mafioso assassin disease ridden revolution diverting slave master… What could have gone wrong?

German philosopher Hegel, a philosopher of history who made some valid points in a sea of massively lethal delusion, was transfixed by the dictator. In a letter from Iena to his friend Niethammer, October 13th, 1806, when he had just finished writing The Phenomenology of Mind : ”I saw the Emperor -this soul of the world- go out from the city to survey his realm; it is a truly wonderful sensation to see such an individual, who, concentrating on one point while seated on a horse, stretches over the world and dominates it.” (Correspondance, T. I, p.114) [1].

History top biologist, Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck handing the book ‘Zoological Philosophy‘ to Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, 1809 (pastel on paper, 1920 by Ezuchevsky, Mikhail Dmitrievich (1880-1928); 32.5×24.5 cm; State Darwin Museum, Moscow; The French “naturalist historian” Lamarck (1744-1829) published ‘Philosophie zoologique‘ in 1809, in which he outlined the theory of evolution and in particular the smart mechanism now known as Lamarckism (soon to be proven right). [Russian, out of copyright. Soviets were favorable to Lamarckism, for obvious reasons, just as Napoleon had excellent reasons to hate it, preferring Cuvier’s catastrophism… Both Lamarck and Cuvier were right… ]

How Hegel Justified Hitler:

Hegel explains quite a bit the apparition of the likes of Bismarck, and, worse, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Hitler. For Hegel, Napoleon is a hero because he knows “what is necessary and what to do when the time comes” (Lectures, p.35). The historical heroes, including Napoleon, know ”the truth of their times and their worlds because they are aware of the historical necessity : that is why, like Alexander and Caesar, Napoleon is a wise man because he knows the nature of his era.”

Well, actually Caesar is one thing, Alexander, another. Caesar found a collapsing Republic, infused with righteous plutocrats, thoroughly corrupt at a lethal level (Cassius and Brutus, the two  main Caesar assassins, committed serious, even attempted murderous crimes against the Greeks… and that was, by sheer greed, although they were among the wealthiest men in the Republic, so powerful, their corruption was not seriously prosecuted).

Alexander, instead, found a Republic and Direct Democracy, Athens, still recovering from her near-death experience of the Peloponnese War. Alexander actually visited, as the world’s most famous tourist. The truth of the times was that Athens was the treasure. Had he really embraced progress, and the cutting edge of civilization, Alexander would have become Athens’ main weapon. Instead, Alexander adopted an ambiguous role… Which enabled Antipater, Alexander’s senior and successor, to defeat Athens and turned her into a… plutocracy. Also Alexander annihilated Thebes, and Tyre, crimes of the sort not even Hitler committed. Tyre was at the origin of the entire Greek civilization: that’s where Europe came from, or, at least, the alphabet.

For Hegel, annihilating cities such as Thebes, Tyre was a “historical necessity” which made Alexander a hero. Is there anybody reading this who still ponders why Hitler appeared where he did, speaking the same language? How come such a little jerk is viewed as a great philosopher?

Following Hegel like the sheep the shepherd to the slaughterhouse, some say Napoleon made France into a great power. False, even ridiculous, quite the opposite. It’s the Republic which won the minds, and it is the Republic which is still winning them, not the Corsican mafioso. 

Watch Brexit for further edification: in the present UK electoral campaign, all parties are running on populism, that is, Republicanism…

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France had been the superpower of Europe, nearly since the early Franks: 

Roman emperor Julian was elected Augustus by the Parisians in 360 CE (and tried to stem the slide of the empire into superstition). 

Over the next 800 years, the Franks would conquer what they called Europe, from Scotland to Sicily and from the Spanish March to Poland. The Viking even got started after the Franks gave an ultimatum to Denmark (about recovering fleeing, plotting Anglo-Saxons).

One could even say that the Franks, a confederation of Romanophile Germans were created around principles which went beyond what Rome was capable of. So no wonder they conquered Europe, succeeding where the Romans had crucially failed, with the worst consequences for the empire (maybe because conspirators assassinated Caesar five years early)

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Napoleone di Buonaparte, from artillery officer to genius general: 

The future dictator of France didn’t learn to speak their language until he was sent to boarding school at the age of 9. It was not his second language, but his third. Napoleon, that little plutocrat from Corsica, was recognized as noble by the plutocratic Ancient Regime, so he was admitted to artillery (boarding) school (after passing an exam). Bonaparte came out an officer, and a good one: he triumphed at the siege of Toulon, which was occupied by the plutocratic, invading British. Napoleon’s attack plan worked perfectly, and the Brits, finding themselves under French guns, had to flee, giving up on their invasion of France from the south. 

Severely wounded during the Toulon assault, Napoleon was promoted from captain directly to general. Soon, the republican Directoire wisely came to hate Napoleon, and sent it to Egypt, hoping he would die there. After a lunatic and mass murdering campaign, Napoleon couldn’t take an Ottoman fort full of ammunition at Saint Jean d’Acre, in his little completely demented plan to take over the entire Ottoman empire with his small army cut from its bases petered out, and he had to flee. On the positive side, he had freed Egypt from the Ottomans, and offered it to the United Kingdom…

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The legal system set-up by Napoleon was extremely misogynistic. He cracked a joke about it: women had all the power already, so his legal code removed all their rights. This was all the more remarkable as women played a central role in the Revolution and nearly got the right to vote. But Napoleon loved to enslave: he actually re-established slavery, which the Revolution had outlawed.

There is no doubt Napoleon was physically courageous, behaving as a hero many times, in many ways. But one can find plenty of heroes, in the sense of risking one’s life or limb, with many abominable causes.

Much is made of Napoleon’s military genius. However, other French revolutionary generals won great battles before him. A lot of these battles were won from the enthusiasm of the French revolutionary draftees, and also the fact that France had the best engineering, in particular the best explosives. The Polytechnique School, a branch of the military was created during the Revolution just to make sure French military tech was superior.

 

The enormous achievements of the French Revolution (the basis of modern egalitarian law, and UN Charter) are often considered to be due to Napoleon, by the ignorant. For example, on 7 April 1795 the metric system was formally defined in French law: nothing to do with Napoleon. Actually Napoleon hijacked the Revolution, and greatly demolished it, in fact and spirit. Instead of letting Europe unite as a Republic, he grabbed it as a plutocrat, and pressed it like a lemon.

The fact so many admire Napoleon, from Hegel, to all too many people around the planet, and implicitly, the structure of the French state (widely copied worldwide, even by the USA) is a serious problem. Indeed, it’s a glorification of fascism and the Dark Side. 

***

Why Napoleon hated evolution: because, by removing “God”, evolution made him responsible for his abominable deeds, his despicable character, and childish impulses:

Lamarck, by then immensely prestigious, offered to the self-declared emperor one of his books on evolution. Napoleon made the research professor who discovered evolution, cry. No doubt Lamarck cried seeing the world at the feet of such an unwise, primitive maniac. Napoleon suggested, even with his favorite Laplace, that the universe had been created by “God”,no doubt to justify his own primitivism: Napoleon’s crude behavior was an act of god, Napoleon was not truly responsible. Not really Napoleon’s fault that he had to kill innocent people he disliked.

Lamarck’s suggested that complexity and the striving for solutions drove evolution. In other words, intelligence drove the universe, not the happenstance of god, and thus, as Napoleon invaded Spain and caused havoc there, and thus, as Napoleon invaded Spain and caused havoc there, Napoleon, not “God”, was responsible for the atrocities in the Iberian peninsula. Spain was among other places that Napoleon, in the guise of propagating the Republican revolution, peppered, as the rest of Europe with his relatives made into the local tyrants…

This being said, the conflict between Napoleon and Lamarck was complicated… And at a very high level of mental debate: Napoleon sided with Lamarck’s deadly enemy Cuvier, himself a top evolutionist, but who believed in evolution generated by catastrophes (like the one which destroyed the dinosaurs). Cuvier has certainly been proven right, yet Lamarck, of course is a towering giant whose time is yet to fully come (Quantum Mechanics makes evolution intelligent, I reckon…) 

***

“Come general, the affair is over, we have lost the day,” Napoleon told one of his officers. “Let us be off.” The day was June 18, 1815. Around 8 p.m., the emperor of France knew he had been decisively defeated at a northern French village called Waterloo, and he wanted to escape from his enemies, some of whom—such as the Prussians—had sworn to execute him (the Prussians had been keen to execute the French since 1792…). By 5 a.m. the next day, they stopped by a fire some soldiers had made in a meadow. As Napoleon warmed himself he said to one of his generals, “Eh bien, monsieur, we have done a fine thing.” Extraordinary sangfroid that even then, in the midst of catastrophe, Napoleon was able to joke. However, it was not funny: thanks, in great part, to his antics, racism and oppression were to rule over central Europe, masterminded by Prussia. And British plutocracy was on a roll, and would stay that way for another 204 years (and counting).

What?

***

Like Augustus in Rome, Napoleon had not fully defeated the Republic; instead both used the Republic as leverage. As with Augustus, that was good for the tyrant, but it wore out the Republic:

In 1815, after Napoleon, and thus French Republicanism defeat, racism, anti-Judaism, oppression, occupation of Eastern Europe by Prussia and company was reestablished. 

Let me quote from: “Why We’d Be Better Off if Napoleon Never Lost at Waterloo

On the bicentennial of the most famous battle in world history, a distinguished historian looks at what could have been. 

If Napoleon had remained emperor of France for the six years remaining in his natural life, European civilization would have benefited inestimably. The reactionary Holy Alliance of Russia, Prussia and Austria would not have been able to crush liberal constitutionalist movements in Spain, Greece, Eastern Europe and elsewhere; pressure to join France in abolishing slavery in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean would have grown; the benefits of meritocracy over feudalism would have had time to become more widely appreciated; Jews would not have been forced back into their ghettos in the Papal States and made to wear the yellow star again; encouragement of the arts and sciences would have been better understood and copied; and the plans to rebuild Paris would have been implemented, making it the most gorgeous city in the world.

Napoleon deserved to lose Waterloo, and Wellington to win it, but the essential point in this bicentenary year is that the epic battle did not need to be fought—and the world would have been better off if it hadn’t been.[2]”

Yes, but plutocracy would have suffered, and plutocrats don’t like that, do they? if nothing else, their perverse admiration for Napoleon rested on the evidence that Napoleon was the best weapon against the Republican Revolution. There is evidence that, starting in 1812, with the Russian campaign, Napoleon military genius deserted him. In 1812, the Grande Armee, more than 600,000 strong, full of idealistic young Germans and Poles, was poorly managed: too many stupid, frontal battles (instead of the subtle victories an outmanned Caesar had no problem producing). Moreover, the Grand Army had typhus, soldiers were dying like flies, and the campaign should have been delayed. 

At Waterloo, Napoleon split stupidly the French army, and then committed a long succession of mistakes, including the charge of the French horse at the wrong moment, not ordered by him, and waiting for general Crouchy, at the risk of getting the Prussian army instead (as happened). In spite of its remaining revolutionary zeal which had been Napoleon’s not so secret fuel, this was too much for the French veterans.

And why did Napoleon attack the Czar? Long story. And the Czar, allied to perfidious Albion, managed a country with awful serfdom, close to slavery without the possibility of being sold. 

The basic irony, though, is that Napoleon, following earlier revolutionaries, wanted to unite Europe. The philosopher proximally culprit of the French Revolution, personal enemy of Napoleon, Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, had warned them all: don’t try to impose the Republic upon Europe. Fight mostly defensely. Revolution, the Republic, would come all over in time. The revolutionaries didn’t obey Sade. Napoleon sent Sade to a mental asylum. 

However Sade was right: the Republican revolution would self-propagate. It’s now Great British plutocracy itself which is self-imploding, and Europe can be united under Republican, that is French, principles, all over. 

So, now, for the case of Russia… 

Meanwhile, please remember: Napoleon is not even worth forgetting.

Patrice Ayme

***

***

[1]  Hegel in Elements of the Philosophy of Right (& 348) : ” At the forefront of all actions, hence of historical actions, stand individuals or subjectivities which effectively cause the substantial reality to occur. ” In Lectures on the Philosophy of History, a few years later, Hegel teaches that historical heroes ” are practical-minded men. ” (p.35). Napoleon, like Alexander and Caesar, is thus a man of action : he is not what he thinks, neither what he hides, but what he does. In The Phenomenology of Mind, he wrote: ” The real being of man lies rather in his deed; it is in this deed that individuality is effective… the individual is what this deed is. ” (p.231).

You are what you do, not what you eat? Neither: historical heroes act according to what they feel and what they think, most of it, imprinted into them as children: Alexander’s was the exact prolongation of his father Philippe, just even more nutty (bold). Caesar was essentially Marius reborn, just newer and better… And Napoleon was just according to his formation: a classical glorified island bandit, from an island famous for its piracy… by comparison, a young Caesar was captured and held hostage by pirates allied to Mithridates (and Roman plutocrats). After a second kidnapping, Caesar, held for 38 days, promised to his captors that he would seem them crucified, and he did. 

Long after his defeat, Hegel admired in Napoleon the founder of the modern State. In Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Hegel relates and then justifies the coup of Brumaire, 18th. : “Again arises a government organized like the old one ; but the leader and monarch is now a changeable Directoire of five people forming undoubtedly a moral, but not individual, unity. Mistrust was prevailing among them as well and the government was in the hands of the legislative assemblies. It had therefore the same fatal destiny, because the absolute need of a governmental power had made itself felt. Napoleon reinstated it under the form of military power and then placed himself again at the head of the State as a source of individual will ; he knew how to govern and was soon done with the internal. ” (p.342).
Napoleon is thus, to Hegel, the founder of the modern State because its principle is henceforth not the will of all, not the will of a few but the will of the Prince. There is no difference with, say, Alexander the Great, Augustus, Diocletian, Clovis, Philippe Le Bel, Louis XI, Henry VIII, Louis XIV, so Hegel is either an idiot, or a clever merchant who knew all to little history to pretend teaching it, except to the deeply ignorant.

***

[2] This is only a very small list of the satanic (Pluto!) ways which arose after Napoleon’s defeat, and thus the Republican Revolution coup d’arret. Jews were racially tortured all over Europe (except France, Britain) after Napoleon/French revolution’s, defeat. As I said, Eastern Europe would not be freed until after the Versailles Treaty of 1919… And the 1914-1945 war can be seen as Waterloo’s revenge, part one. Part two is Brexit.

 

 

 

European Union Should Extent Brexit (Article 50) Two Years. Without UK European Parliament Privileges!

Indeed, as I will explain more below, the European Parliament doesn’t create laws, just approve them. Great Britain is already out ot the European Council (which launches laws).

The House of Commons, the UK Parliament, rejected the UK government’s “Withdrawal Agreement from the European Union“, for the third time. According to the EU’s ultimatum to Great Britain, the UK will be thrown out of the EU on April 12, in 14 days. This expulsion is unwise, and no civilized way to proceed. I will thereafter suggest a different course: extending massively Article 50, putting Brexit on the European backburner, a slow simmer in the background, leaving time for Great Britain to figure out its existential issues, its Brexistential issues… Shile Europe is allowed to reconsider the future, the planet, civilization, progress, democracy, and other things which have disappeared from the Brexit debate…

The interminable Brexit process is paralyzing Europe (both UK and EU). The temptation is to expedite it, in the hope of being done with it. That will not work: instead, it will make the situation way worse. If Brexit happened on April 12, 2019, in two weeks, ten years of divisive negotiations would ensue. How to avoid that? Forget about it! Forget about Brexit, send it to the purgatory of the House of Commons, under the good care of its weaker, the excellent right honorable gentleman, Speaker John Bercow.

Another new NO, the ninth, was added on Friday. The Third No on the withdrawal agreement.

***

How And Why LEGALLY EXCLUDE the UK From The EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT (Until the UK Decides to Revoke Article 50, & Remain In the EU):

Europeans have to let the British Parliament find a solution and have it ratified by the British People, in a referendum. That will take at least a year. Meanwhile, the rest of the European Union has to protect itself from the pathology known as Brexit. That means that Great Britain should be EXCLUDED from taking part in the next European Parliament.

I don’t care what the legalistically minded come up with, mumbling that EU member nations have to be represented in Parliament, that we can’t have a precedent, bla bla bla. Right, the EU is very legally minded, a French characteristic, now permeating the EU. However, sticking to the law causes rigidities which, in turn can only be removed by those periodic revolutions shaking France.

The spirit of the law always beats the letter of the law. The letter of the law has already been broken: Article 50 extended only until tomorrow, March 29, 2019, the appartenunce of the UK in the EU.  Hence the letter of the law (24 months!) has been broken. Yet the spirit survives.

So, in a way, the UK is (sort of) out: the European Council, after one meeting with UK PM Cameron, four days after the fateful Brexit, never met as 28 members again: the UK got excluded. So the new spirit of the law is that the UK is partly out of the EU. The European Council is really the government of the EU (the European Commission just implements what the EC wants).

The European Council is more important than the European Parliament (European Parliament vote laws, but doesn’t suggest them). So, no EU Parliament for the UK. Instead UK in an indefinite Article 50: all rights and duties of membership, except for voting. In many democracies, convicts don’t vote for a while. Hey, Britain self-convicted.

The solution above, extending Article 50 by two years, but no Parliament for the UK, will free the EU from Brexit. The EU will be free to progress, pass laws mitigating plutocracy, climate change, foster research, education, etc. In particular financing of UK science and advanced tech by EU budgets will proceed. Also Eurosceptics will be informed that leaving the EU, and activating Article 50, has a democratic cost, and gives a forerun of what it means to be out of the EU: no more European legislating possible.  

***

And what will happen to Great Britain? Polls show the UK would vote for Remain at this point. Within two years, the British People will come to its senses, in spite of the shrill shrieking propaganda of its plutocratic media (the EU should pass laws to limit plutocratic propaganda). So We the British People will vote to stay in the EU. Then a special EU Parliament UK election can be held.

The non-participation of the UK in the EU Parliament will prevent Parliamentary sabotage, which would otherwise paralyze Europe some more. However, if legal minds of the stupid kind insist on having that… the fact is that Article 50 should be extended 2 years, while Speaker Bercow and the House of Commons figure Brexit out.

Why? No bad feelings, looking forward… In the end no Brexit.

***

Enough, children, who go by the self-glorifying name of “leaders”! Learn from history!

The British Parliament voted No No No No No No No No, No, on all the possibilities of Brexit, a wide spectrum selected by the very interesting Speaker Bercow. A European ultimatum expires April 12. On that date, Great Britain is supposed to have decided to leave, and how. (If if with a deal then the effective day will be in May.)

You may not know this, you children who are called leaders, because you studied just what was Politically Correct, but war is a serious thing, and a seriously sneaky thing. Apparently innocuous indifference and turning-away can turn into alienation, and war. The personal history of my family has helped me know these emotional truths. I was graced by a family which harbred resistance fighters, more than 100 Jews, which was chased by the Gestapo, while my dad arrived in France in combat, fighting Nazis… In my lifetime, I have known what it feels like to be bombed by fascist racists, and to have a young uncle who was an elder brother to me, killed by Islamist  terrorists (crucially helped by a double dealing French government).

Also I spent decades studying history, in particular of the European kind. It is not as simplistic as usually depicted. The first battle of Fontenoy (around 50,000 killed by arrows, lances, swords, and axes, in a few hours of hand to hand combat) was an enormous butchery, Franks against Franks. There was a second, even more famous battle, in the same place of Fontenoy, 1,000 years, a millennium, later, this time English against French. As one can see, French military history is rich, unparalleled… These two battles of Fontenoy were pretty much brothers against brothers, not civilization against savagery, and should never have happened.

Yes, Europe had plenty of civilization against savagery battles. France was involved in all of them (the Mongols gave up their conquest of Europe, when the top Mongol generals argued that the heavy losses they had suffered in Hungary were a foretaste of suffering again the same fate as their ancestors the Huns in France). In the Eight Century, the Franks repelled three invasions of Europe by the savage Arab Islamists, over a period of thirty years. Of course, Islam would never have happened if Catholic fascism had been defeated at the Battle of the Cold River, three centuries before Muhammad’s birth.  At the Cold River, the Western Emperor, Eugenius, a secular professor promoted by the head of the Occidental Roman army, Arbogast, confronted the catholic bigot, Oriental emperor Theodosius (originally a Spaniard). Arbogast, a Frank, controlled, for many years, a Roman army full of Romanized Franks. Theodosius was allied with the Goths. Theodosius and his goons had invented the notion of “heresy”, and laws, decrees, making “heresy” punishable at the pleasure of the government.

There is a direct line between this, and the government of Brunei establishing the death penalty for homosexuality in 2019, according to Sharia. Indeed, at the Cold River, the Frigidus river, unexpectedly, Arbogast was defeated and those who wanted heresy to be punishable by death, and Catholicism to pursue its reign of terror, won. Not only that, but, left without an army, the Occidental Roman empire promptly fell to the invading barbarian hordes, 14 years later (406 CE).

The millennium of European wars started when the French of West Francia turned their backs on the rest of the “Roman” empire (actually the west of present France, the most occidental third of the “Francia” of the Franks from 500 CE to 950 CE, including Paris had very good reasons to reject the empire… which had failed to protect them against the Viking; instead the count of Paris, soon to be duke, did the work, battling back from the ramparts, with 200 men, 10,000 bloody Vikings… while the Roman/Carolingian emperors prefered negotiations with the Viking). That turning of all French backs was, to some extent, justified. However it caused alienation between Europeans. By 1200, all of Europe was united against the French-Paris monarchy (and lost the battle and war against the “French” king Philippe Auguste, at Bouvines).

***

Treat The British Well, They Don’t Have To Be Too Punished, This Is Not Versailles:

The interminable Brexit is paralyzing Europe. The temptation is to expedite it. That would be a mistake for the British: once they inspect the situation in all details, they will come to the conclusion, except for a few vested interests, like plutocrats and media moguls, and the odd deluded fisher, that staying in the EU is the less bad of all bad possibilities.

I am of the opinion that Germany was treated very well by the Versailles Treaty (contrarily to common opinion). That’s because I studied the situation in details, and I didn’t buy the Nazi opinion about Versailles. However, there is definitively a risk of mistreating a deluded Britain about Brexit. OK, the British have the wrong mentality about the European Union. This is a particular bad case of “fake news”. Just like Islamophilia is a particularly bad case of “fake news”.

So yes, there is “fake news” problem. But does that mean that British or Muslims should be mistreated? As individuals? No. The problem is that Brexit would hurt most british and European citizens, So the rest of the European Union has to be patient.

Not having the UK NOT sit in the EU Parliament will have the advantage that a lot of laws of the pro-plutocratic, anti-federal, and unequal laws, in particular the monstrous British rebate, and the even more monstrous Swiss rebate, can be legislated out.

Yes, president Macron is understandably viewing this Brexit tragicomedy as something to flush down the toilet, ASAP. However, apparently innocuous and inconsequential acts in history have resulted in immense tragedies.

Don’t forget the present system in Britain was mostly created by a succession of French adventurers, warriors, magnates and plutocrats, with a few queens and duchesses in the mix (William of Normandy, the barons of Magna Carta, Eleanor d’Aquitaine, Yolande of Aragon, Isabelle de France, Edouard III/Edward III, Lancaster/Lancastre, de Montfort come to mind; the House of Normandy was succeeded by the House of Anjou). The estrangement between England and France was the fruit of personalities more than anything else. A striking example is Yolande of Aragon, who financed Joan of Arc’s army and the illegal kinglet (the “Dolphin”) connected to them, who got the “100 Years War” relaunched all by themselves. (Yes, now there is a lamentable cult of Joan of Arc amplifying that idiotic nationalism and bigotry.)

Small things can have big consequences: models supposedly show weather systems can be created by a butterfly flapping its wings, three weeks earlier.

Macron, the French president, doesn’t want to become that butterfly of doom, flapping Europe into division and thus oblivion. Macron doesn’t want to flap all wrong. Let Macron beat on French Yellow Jackets, if that’s his won, he does that well, the French love to be beaten up, so they can beat back. Revolutions make French law progress. But Macron shouldn’t beat on the British. That could lead to war.  

The European Union will be optimal if it acts as an empire of the highest aspirations. That includes, first of all, bending over backwards not to mistreat European Peoples or nations. Europe should focus its energy on thermonuclear fusion and the space race now engaged between the USA, China, India, maybe Russia to be first (back) on the Moon. (The European thermonuclear reactor JET is based in the UK, it’s crucial to ITER, and its financing has been compromised by Brexit.)

Oh, by the way, Boris Johnson, ex-mayor of London and co-leader of the Leave (the EU) campaign, voted for the EU Withdrawal Agreement of May, today (his colleague had adopted the same position a week ago). Why? Because for the UK to leave the EU without a deal is an unfathomable catastrophe.

So, question, if the Leave campaign leaders can be that reasonable, surely the European leaders should be? Or are the leaders of the European Council truly that childish that they risk European strategic disaster, medium term? Jut on the basis of legalistically justified resentment? 

Taking away Parliament from a EU country which has left the European Council, which originates European laws, only makes sense. Beating the Brits when they are down doesn’t. Give Great Britain time to rethink Europe. Two years. No Parliament.

Patrice Ayme

***

***

The opinion of the British on Brexit has already changed a bit. It will change some more. Hey, even the New York Times is realizing it had Trump Derangement Syndrome. Here is a New York Times editorial on Trump today:, operating a U-turn on its opinion of Trump:

Opinion

“Maybe the president brilliantly played the media. Or maybe we just played ourselves.

By Bret Stephens,  Opinion Columnist

“Maybe we’ve had this all wrong.

Maybe Donald Trump isn’t just some two-bit con artist who lucked his way into the White House thanks to an overconfident opponent. Or a second-rate demagogue with a rat-like instinct for arousing his base’s baser emotions and his enemies’ knee-jerk reactions. Or a dimwit mistaken for an oracle, like some malignant version of Chauncey Gardiner from “Being There.”

Thanks to Robert Mueller, we know he isn’t Russia’s man inside, awaiting coded instruction from his handler in the Kremlin.

Maybe, in fact, Trump is the genius he claims to be, possessed — as he likes to boast — of a “very good brain.”

***

Here is the full statement from the European commissionfollowing the vote in the Commons.

The commission regrets the negative vote in the House of Commons today. As per the European council (article 50) decision on 22 March, the period provided for in article 50(3) is extended to 12 April. It will be for the UK to indicate the way forward before that date, for consideration by the European council.

A “no-deal” scenario on 12 April is now a likely scenario. The EU has been preparing for this since December 2017 and is now fully prepared for a “no-deal” scenario at midnight on 12 April. The EU will remain united. The benefits of the withdrawal agreement, including a transition period, will in no circumstances be replicated in a “no-deal” scenario. Sectoral mini-deals are not an option.

The final two sentences refer to a claim often made by Brexiters at Westminster that, in the event of a no-deal departure, the UK and the EU would in practice negotiate a series of mini-agreements to mitigate the worst consequences. This is sometimes referred to as a managed no deal.

Football Teaches Russia A Lesson

Plutocrat Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev looks dejected, while the president of Croatia celebrates.

President Croatia celebrating. Medvedev, a football fan (on the lower right) is experiencing pain.

I call Medvedev a plutocrat, be it only because he has been very powerful, for all too long, doing Putin dirty business. Also it has been alleged in detail, from different sources, that he is personally wealthy. An internationally renown bat researcher claimed he had to flee Russia for stumbling on Medvedev’s properties under construction, which destroyed caves in the Sochi area. A video by anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny purports to show “the vast trove of mansions, villas and vineyards accumulated” by Medvedev. Putin ex-wife, who had no discernable income or inheritance, ever, is also a multi-millionaire, with one property alone…

Friends again, at least for the next few minutes…

Russia has long felt rejected by the West. And reciprocally, many Muscovite leaders intentionally rejected the West to such an excess that others (say Peter the Great) forcefully tried to westernize Russia (this is why Peter founded his capital on the Baltic Sea).

In a sense Muscovite Rus was always from the east, because of the considerable influence of the Mongols. Yet, the Rus leaders, who founded Kyivan Rus, which came first, were Swedes from eastern Sweden. Still the oldest human stock of Rus was, paradoxically, German. This is highly confusing, as a current of thought in Germany came to despise “Slavs”: Germans used to live in the area more recent Germans considered peopled by Slavs (slaves). Indeed, slaves comes from Medieval Latin Sclavus (circa 800 CE). Vengeful folk etymology turned that into “Slava” (Glory).

So the ancestry of Russia is a mix of Swedes, old Germans, and more recent Mongols and other Easterners (look at the Asiatic style eyelids of Lenin, Brezhnev, Putin…)

Viking colonization followed the network of mighty rivers of Russia, all the way to the Black Sea. Trade flourished, northern furs against all kinds of goodies from the south, Rome or the Muslim empires. It’s Ukraine which founded Rus, and then expanded east. Republics, such as Novgorod, appeared. Ukraine had seized Crimea from the Tartars, who, themselves had seized it from the Greco-Romans. Vladimir of Ukraine converted to Catholic Orthodoxy, eastern style.

The Russians were able to stop the eastward expansion of the Teutonic Knights. However, not the assault of the Mongols. The Mongols occupied Russia, massacring away. When the Mongols pushed further west, Western Europe united militarily, and the Mongol victories came with a heavy, unsustainable price. Then the Mongols remembered what happened to their ancestors the Huns when they invaded Gallia: they were utterly defeated, and owed their survival to the duplicity of the Roman commander Aetius (who had lived with the Huns prior). The war techniques of the Mongols were not adapted to wet,cold, forested areas. The superb bows would lose their snap, it would be impossible to move fast, etc.

The Mongols reached the Croatian coast and turned back (pretexting the election of the next Khan beckoned).

For many centuries Russia was occupied by savage invaders…

Yet the Golden Horde stayed in command of Russia, using Moscow as a tax collector. Ivan the Terrible would make Russia independent again. In the Russian psyche, a question looms: why didn’t the West call a Crusade to free Russia from the savages? First it was a problem of distance. Anne of Kiev, daughter of the Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise of Kiev and Novgorod had married the king of France, Henri I in 1051 CE, and acquired a tremendous importance (she spoke 6 languages and found the French court uncouth; the king proudly signed his documents, mentioning Anne approved of them…). She had four children, including the next king Philip I of France. All subsequent French kings were her progeny. She made a scandalous second marriage (the husband, not her, was excommunicated). Anne never went back to Kiev (she was too important in France, but also it would take forever to go across Europe by land: the success of the Greco-Romans was maritime, sea transport being very fast and very cheap, relative to land transport.)

***

A refined analysis shows that the Cyrillic alphabet itself and the distanciation of Eastern Christianity from the Western one were deliberate: the Bulgarians and Constantinople wanted bad relationships with the Franks, they wanted to get, and keep them, alienated, and it worked!

Those Franks were the Eastern Franks, dominated by the Saxons whom Charlemagne had vanquished… And had become the pillars of the “Renovated Roman Empire”. In a further testimony to human frailty, after the alienation with the Franks was launched, Constantinople reached the apex of its power, around the year 1,000 CE. However, things turned quickly for the worse, and by the end of the Eleventh Century, the Franks had been called to the rescue, launching the First Crusade. Conclusion: alienation for alienation’s sake, should be avoided…

It is high time to bury the hatchet.

Football/Soccer helps, and that’s good.

Croatia beat Russia, barely, during the session of goal kicks. The Russians learned something again: that it is good never to forget: a nation of four millions can beat one of 144 millions (a lesson learned the hard way when Finland won quite a few battles against Russia in 1939-1940; then the USSR suffered five times the casualties of Finland, nearly 400,000…)

Russia found one more reason for paranoia in the 1990s: the US proposed its help, the best possible help, the one from places such as Harvard. But Harvard is, at least in the humanities, including politics and economy, is, at best, a conspiracy: it is there to make things better for the world plutocracy it partakes in. So the advice to Russia was to constitute a plutocracy founded on new stock issues. In my thought system in socioeconomy, Stalin’s rule was also a plutocracy, a plutocracy of the tyrannical type (tyran = unique): one man commanded the USSR and was the ultimate capitalist. The advice of Harvard was to constitute a diversified plutocracy (many plutocrats, not just one). Thus many Harvard professors and their ilk were able to profit (there was never a special prosecutor for that scandal).

The reaction was the ascent and popularity of Putin… And Putin military expansionism, the first such madness in Europe since Adolf Hitler’s pathetic little adventure.

The solution is diversification in very advanced technology… as China is doing. Paradoxically, China can do it better, because it’s more dictatorial… Also China believes it is high-tech for a few millennia. Putin had, long ago, proposed a strange alliance with the European Union, complete with Russian guns to protect Europe. This ignored the fact that the USA is not just a West European colony, but twice the child of France (through Great Britain, and also directly). Instead, Russia should remember it started as a European colony too. One of the reason of the spectacular ascendency of the USA has been enormous injection of financial capital, in the nineteenth century, and human capital, in the last two centuries, straight from Europe.

So Russia, should it want to develop must open to European immigration, technological, human and financial and to open to Europe in general: that could actually alleviate the migrant problem Europe is facing (a mild problem so far; but that could change).

The world cup is an open hand, and Trump, a practical man, is coming with another. Let the occasion be seized… And remember to reduce the number of nuclear warheads, this should be the top priority: an accident could happen so fast… The nuclear arsenals of Russia and the USA are oversized. The French Republic, with its 600 (300 only announced, in a slight of hands) thermonuclear “oceanic” warheads has enough to decapitate all the major powers, together. So why do the US and Russia need ten times that?

Russia can, and should make friends with the West: with 70% more land area than the next continental sized countries (Canada, USA, China), and a warming climate, there is a lot to develop… With 1.5 billion Chinese ready to help, otherwise, as Stalin suddenly noticed to his own horror, when he finally understood what Mao was up to…

Patrice Ayme

Is Islam Destroying the European Union?

Is Islam Already Deconstructing Europe? Yes: consider Brexit.

I would not have thought this, that Fundamentalist Islam was already devouring Europe, a year ago, or any time before: I would have laughed derisively. Now I am not laughing anymore. Meanwhile there was Brexit.

Brexit was a first blatant revolt against the established order. The next blatant revolt was the colossal sweep of Donald Trump’s electoral victory: Trump controls the presidency, the Senate, the Congress, and most states (and the army, by putting the key generals in his government, and soon Trump will control the Supreme Court). Trump does not like the European Union (at least not as an alter ego of the USA; an independent Scotland may well suit his golf courses…)  Trump is a rebellious Pluto threatening the plutocracy, the ultimate horror, haunting plutocracy, ever there is plutocracy, and it plots.

Meanwhile the so-called judges, all over Europe, full, without knowing it, of hatred for the civilization that they are supposed to defend, have pursued their program of provocation of the survival instinct of the European population they terrorize with their obvious bias against any national instinct (I am going to explain those grave accusations). 

So what is the precise reason for my sudden pessimism? NEXIT! NEXIT originated from cancers affecting the soul of the elite: Postmodernism and Multiculturalism. 

841 CE, Fontenoy, Next to Auxerre, France. 40,000 Killed. Catastrophe Happens: the War of Brothers, the Bruederkrieg, Brought 11 Centuries of European Strife, And Ten Centuries of Rampaging Islamists. Now the same divisive spirit is back, and so are the Islamists

***

“Postmodernist” and “Multiculturalist” thinking has been the greedy ideological pretext of the venal European elite.

That vicious elite was well rewarded for it. “Postmodernism” and “Multiculturalism” basically say that the Enlightenment is not any more worthy than the primitive desert, pre-literate cult, Islam. The Enlightenment and Islam are both cultures, all cultures are the same, thus they are equivalent, say the “Postmodernists”, “Multiculturalists” and “anti-colonialists”.  Hence Islamists islamizing are fully right to kneel by the hundreds in the middle of French streets.

It does stop there: by hating “colonialism”, which tragically, put an end to cannibalism and slavery in Africa, European “intellectuals” and those they formed (the so-called judges, the so-called politicians and the so-called teachers, etc.) ended hating the very foundation of European, civilization.

The motivation of the higher spheres of this European elite was sheer corruption by the global plutocracy. Plutocracy hates civilization, always has, always will: ruling by evil ways is its exact definition. By destroying the foundations of European culture, European civilization got undermined, hence the resistance to plutocratization. Thus “Postmodernism” and “Multiculturalism” have been used as Trojan horses to demolish civilization.

In practice, some Europeans noticed the preceding, and started to vote for politicians who protested against it. This is why Brexit passed: the British were exasperated by massive immigration. The Brits were exasperated by the million Muslims lunatic Frau Merkel let in, knowing full well that, once in the EU, they could end in Britain, where “Multiculturalism”, not to say “Islamization” has long been not just desired theory, but a long-standing practice.

Brexit was, fundamentally, an anti-immigration vote.

Europeans, bless them, are finally understanding the venom, the poison of so-called “POSTMODERNISM” and “MULTICULTURALISM”.

Let me hasten to point out that I know of nobody as “Postmodernist” and “Multiculturalist” as myself: I speak several languages (and I have studied even more, including Japanese and Mandarin), I have lived on several continents, and spent 90% of my infanthood and childhood in Africa, half of my family was from, among (very nice, very advanced) Muslims.

So what gives?

My “Postmodernism” and “Multiculturalism” is counterbalanced by a hierarchy of all values, anchored in human ethology in full, and an appreciation of superior culture, not just from the inside, but also from the outside.

However, so-called judges, politicians and teachers of Europe are lower dimensional creatures who know very little, and, in particular ignore entire dimensions. And they revel in it. “Postmodernism” and the “Multiculturalism” enabled them to crow about their cultural and moral superiority. The more simple, the more superior, those European elites have this in common with the Islamists.

(In France it surface recently that some individuals so close to ex-justice minister Taubira

(Posatmodernism and Multiculturalism were actually Faustian bargains: the elite sold their souls to ingratiate themselves with the same US plutocrats who had helped to bring them Nazism and Fascism earlier, from the Kaiser to Mussolini, to the Greek Colonels, passing through Lenin and Stalin, as Lenin himself recognized jokingly… This theory of history is very much mine will not be mentioned in the rest of this essay, but has been detailed in many of my works before…).

***

NEXIT is the Netherlands EXIT from the European Union:

If someone had told me, two years ago, that the Netherlands could vote to leave Europe, I would have laughed derisively. But, as with Brexit, facts on the ground changed spectacularly. How could that happen?

Geert Wilders is the leader of the anti-Islam Party for Freedom (PVV). For years, he was hounded by so-called judges in the Netherlands. The last case was on December 6, 2016.  Wilders led a party rally during a local election campaign in The Hague in March 2014, asking whether there should be “more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands”.

The crowd’s response of “fewer, fewer”, was clearly organised, said a judge at the secure court at Schiphol Judicial Complex, near Amsterdam, ruling that Wilders had breached the boundaries of even a politician’s freedom of speech.

We wonder how the so-called judge knew this. What do judges know? Did they study hiastory, real history? 

“It doesn’t matter that Wilders gave another message afterwards [saying he was referring only to criminal Moroccans and benefits claimants],” said the so-called judge. “The message that evening from the podium, via the media, was loud and proud and did its work… The group was collectively dismissed as inferior to other Dutch people.”

Wilders said, in a statement in English posted on his YouTube channel, “I still cannot believe it, but I have been convicted because I asked a question about Moroccans. The Netherlands has become a sick country. The judge who convicted me [has] restricted the freedom of speech for millions of Dutch. I will never be silent. I am not a racist and neither are my voters.”

Wilders, the increasing popular politician, who did not attend the judgment or most of the process, apart from to give his “last word” at the end of hearings, also called it a “kangaroo court” in tweets about the judges and hearings earlier this year.

In France, facing elections in seven weeks, so-called judges have multiplied “judicial” attacks against right-wing and nationalistic politicians. The two leading candidates for the Presidency are the object of judicial harassment. So-called judges would prefer the 30 something Emmanuel Macron, a golden boy who made many millions from working for the Rothschild bank, an early start in life reminiscent of Krugman and Summers (pillars of the US Democratic Party who got launched as employee of the plutophile Ronald Reagan).

Macron just declared that France was culprit of crime against humanity for its “colonialism”.

Well, there is hope. Just before his ill-informed anti-European civilization blast, Macron, the candidate of ultra-”liberalism” was likely to become French president. His anti-French blast made him dip in the polls. 

The recently condemned Wilders, gloriously “anti-Islam” leader of the Dutch far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) is on course to win the most seats at the general election in March. His election would be the latest, potentially lethal, blow for Europe’s so-called “liberal” order in the tumultuous wake of Donald Trump’s victory and the Brexit vote.

Mr Wilders has pledged to close the Netherlands’ borders, shut down mosques, leave the euro and EU if he gets into power. To implement this, he will propose a NEXIT referendum.

The European Union as it is, will not survive NEXIT. The Netherlands is where the Franks came from: it would be tearing the heart.

A reminder perhaps?

Let’s talk about Lotharxit, when Lothar decided to go his own way, and impose it.

***

No Legitimate Imperial Power: The Old Roman-European Problem.

In 800 CE, Charlemagne was proclaimed one and only Roman emperor. Even the Regency in Constantinople agreed. The Renovated Roman Empire was united and strong. The (English-born) philosopher Alcuin, Prime Minister of Charlemagne, pushed education throughout the empire, which covered most of Europe.

However, the Franks had not improved much on the non-existent Roman imperial succession system. The results were catastrophic.

Notice in passing that this means centralized imperial power was not legitimate. The European Union has basically the same problem now: its power is viewed as neither legitimate, nor imperial.

The power struggle among the Franks resulted in the Battle of Fontenoy in 841 CE (there was another battle at Fontenoy, more famous but much less important, 900 years later…).

The three-year Carolingian Civil War culminated in the decisive Battle of Fontenoy-en-Puisaye, fought at Fontenoy, near Auxerre, on the 25 June 841. The war was over the territorial inheritances —the division of the Charlemagne’s Carolingian Empire between his grandsons, the three surviving sons of “Roman” Frankish emperor Louis the Pious (Louis Le Debonnaire in French, meaning Louis the Do-gooder and easy-Going: he kept on forgiving his wayward sons, instead of punishing them severely, even after they deposed him!).

Emperor Louis was obligated by the Salic Law to divide “his” empire equally among his sons (at the same time, the leaders of the Franks were supposedly elected; thus basically the richest was elected…)

***

The Catastrophe Of Fontenoy, 841 CE:

The battle was between the emperor Lothar, grandson of Charlemagne, allied to his cousin, leader of Aquitaine, against the coalition of Lothar’ brother Louis the German and his half-brother Charles the Bald (Charles was 17 years younger than Louis). The war was precipitated by Lothar’s proclamation, in July 840, that he was global effective emperor  of the whole Renovatio Imperium Romanorum (Lothar was already long king of Italy, thus Rome). Lothar said it was not just about the imperial title.  

Around noon a cavalry charge from Charles-Louis side broke Lothar’s lines, and the latter was put to flight. That day of butchery brought 40,000 DEAD (and much more wounded; in the worst day of World War One, the French army suffered 27,000 dead, around 21 August 1914…).

Angibert fought on the side of Lothar at the battle. He wrote a poem, which is as follows, in English:

Fontenoy they call its fountain, manor to the peasant known,

“There the slaughter, there the ruin, of the blood of Frankish race;

Plains and forest shiver, shudder; horror wakes the silent marsh.

Neither dew nor shower nor rainfall yields its freshness to that field,

Where they fell, the strong men fighting, shrewdest in the battle’s skill,

Father, mother, sister, brother, friends, the dead with tears have wept.

 And this deed of crime accomplished, which I here in verse have told,

Angibert myself I witnessed, fighting with the other men,

I alone of all remaining, in the battle’s foremost line.

 On the side alike of Louis, on the side of Charles alike,

Lies the field in white enshrouded, in the vestments of the dead,

As it lies when birds in autumn settle white off the shore.

 Woe unto that day of mourning! Never in the round of years

Be it numbered in men’s annals! Be it banished from all mind,

Never gleam of sun shine on it, never dawn its dusk awake.

Night it was, a night most bitter, harder than we could endure,

When they fell, the brave men fighting, shrewdest in the battle’s skill,

Father, mother, sister, brother, friends, the dead with tears have wept.

 Now the wailing, the lamenting, now no longer will I tell;

Each, so far as in him lieth, let him stay his weeping now;

On their souls may He have mercy, let us pray the Lord of all

Lothar later resorted to methods akin to terrorism, with a new army he had raised: the stronger Charles and Louis pushed him into the woods, out of his capital Aachen.

***

Following this huge civil war among the Franks, the Magyars, Vikings and Saracens (Islamists) swooped in, shredding Europe:

And the Islamists and their friends did this in an industrial fashion (the first Islamist attacks had been against Spain in 711 CE, Francia in 715 CE). In the Ninth Century (and again in the Tenth Century), Islamists camped by Swiss passes, capturing even a cleric grandson of Charlemagne at the Saint Bernard pass (the grandson was ransomed for a colossal amount). Vikings roamed nearly all over France. Magyars did pretty much the same in the East (until they were defeated much later by Frankish “Roman” emperor Otto 1 next to Ausburg, Austria. The Magyars came from the Urals…

The general problem is that the Franks did not have a common, admitted system for succession of the ultimate authority (same problem as Rome). The last common emperor was Charles the Fat (expired in January 888, after a coup; he had been very sick for years, and was even trepanned: surgical hole in the skull…). Charles had been elected by the “Magnates” (a hefty dosage of plutocrats therein).

***

Catastrophes happen.

Brexit is a catastrophe.

One catastrophe can lead to another.

The underlying catastrophe here is the proclaimed equality of all cultures, and the accompanying implicit detestation of European culture. This will to destroy and insult civilization, by so-called judges, corrupt politicians and the like, is actually an implementation of the submission to global plutocracy.

The election of Trump is a reaction against the detestation of all what made Europe (and thus its American colonies!) superior. Similarly, Brexit is a reaction against that detestation. Yet, Brexit is clearly self-defeating (the jury of history is out for Trump, somewhere in the future). Brexit is an alienation, and we saw what the alienation of the grandsons of Charlemagne led to (Fontenoy, see above).

The Frankish empire, mangled in many parts survived because it was, and as, a global Latin speaking entity (at the elite level of intellectuals, monks, leaders, war mongers, etc; common people talked Germanoid in the East, and degenerated Latin elsewhere). Ultimately rather centralized western Francia, an empire and a kingdom and the more decentralized  rest of the “Roman Empire” found a mission fighting off the invading Islamists for centuries, as the latter roamed over half of Europe. This led to the counterattack of the Crusades, which bred some sense in the Islamists (Saladin and Al. made treaties with Richard the Lionheart, representing Europe; while re-opening the trade routes to the Orient; the Crusades were not all mayhem, no gain, at least, some of them…)

The history of the Franks shows catastrophe can occur, and that its dreadful consequences can last 1,105 years (840 Ce to 1945 CE; the time it took for the French and German to settle their differences). Ultimately, creating a European imperial government which can carry war where the refugees come from, and extinguish their cause is a necessity.

***

Another pitfall of history is devolution of understanding. Consider Tasmania. Or, more exactly, the Tasmanian Devolution:

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2010/08/19/tasmanian-effect/

Tasmanians, for whichever reasons hard to understand, lost the technology they had. Practically it means that the English farmers could exterminate them to the last (whereas the Technology advanced, war like Maoris fought back efficiently and survived in New Zealand).i

Fanatical “Postmodernism”, fanatical “Multiculturalism”, under the pretense of universalization serve the globalist plutocracy and hate civilization. They have no better symbol and reward than Islamization.

Down the drain we go.

At some point, one loses control of events: a snowflake is cute, innocuous, light. Too many snowflakes, and one gets a lethal avalanche. There are worse fates than war. Even global war.

Time to progress in understanding. It is a question of survival.

For Europe, understanding means to move to a Federal Union as fast as possible. The leaders of the french, german and Italian assemblies just signed an open letter demanding just this:

“Now is the moment to move towards closer political integration — the Federal Union of States with broad powers. We know that the prospect stirs up strong resistance, but the inaction of some cannot be the paralysis of all. Those who believe in European ideals, should be able to give them a new life instead of helplessly observing its slow sunset.”

Right. Time to fight. For the right ideas.

Patrice Ayme’

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy

In the Real World, Foundations Saved Civilization Before:

The combination of imperial collapse followed by re-birth from Foundations within happened several times already, for real.

Civilizations collapsing into Dark Ages from the actions of dozens of millions of people occurred more than once. And then very small groups arose, often within the collapsing empire, and imposed new ways of thinking which enabled civilization to restart. One such case was the Mongol takeover of China, and the subsequent collapse of the Yuan dynasty replaced, within a century, by the Ming dynasty (appropriately founded by a Buddhist monk).

Yet the most striking examples of collapses are in the West, and the most spectacular ones come with two foundations.

The first collapse was that of the seven superpowers which made the Bronze Age civilization. They were attacked by nations which made “a conspiracy in their islands” (said Pharaoh Ramses III in 1175 BCE). Besides the calamitous invasions by these “Peoples of the Sea”, a number of disasters striking simultaneously (calamitous climate change, including super drought, quake swarm, etc.) brought the entire trading system down, upon which some civilizations depended for survival, and then generalized destruction followed. The Foundation consisted in a number of Greek city states, mostly on the Ionian coast. The Second Foundation was Athens.

However soon enough, an unserious Greece was taken over by the fascist Macedonian empire, and its successor regimes, the Hellenistic kingdoms.

The Second Foundation was the Roman Republic itself. Rome had been created where the shock waves from Magna Grecia, Italian Greece, and the Etruscans collided. That positive interference brought herdsmen to civilization. The Etruscans were themselves one of these roaming “Peoples of the Sea”, and they had settled in Syria for a while, before grabbing the part of Italy with the richest iron deposits: Foundations everywhere.

Rome freed Greece, and then turned into an evil empire itself. Rome degenerated ever more into all sorts of fascisms… and progressively collapsed ever more, as one major system after another became dysfunctional.

Then emperor Constantine re-founded Rome by imposing the Catholic Church, which had grown semi-secretly for two centuries, as a favored institution within the empire.

At the same time, other Roman generals cum lawyers equipped the savage Germans constituting the Frankish Confederation with a Latin written law, the Lex Salica. The Franks were opposed to Christianism. In a further twist, Constantine and his successors used the Franks as shock troops of the empire (Once the Franks staged a full civil war to give back control of the empire to secularists).

Meanwhile the First Foundation, Catholicism, collapsed Rome, and then it gave control to the Second Foundation, that of the Franks, which had opposed them. In a complete turn-around, the Franks then adopted Catholicism, modifying it extensively to eliminate all its bad aspects (no more apocalypse around the corner, total tolerance for fellow religions, mandating secular education, etc.), while keeping the good ones (charity, altruism, Christian Republic mentality, etc.). Within 150 years, the Franks would outlaw slavery in Europe (there had been no slavery in Germany, so this is more the German than Christian influence: all bishops were very rich and they had dozens, or hundreds, of slaves).

Small foundations can, and will always, save civilizations. For two main reasons: 1) their small size enable them to think democratically, thus better. 2) the excellency their struggle for survival forces on small foundations, require them to think straight and true (otherwise they won’t survive).

It is likely that some of the real events I just related inspired Asimov: he was a very knowledgeable person (and the Foundational aspects of Rome and Athens were well-known, as was the social failure to oppose Macedonia in a timely manner, in spite of the strident warnings of the philosopher Demosthenes).

When I read the Foundation Trilogy, long ago, I found, even then, some of its aspects very dated. But in a way, that is the entire point.

Psychohistory was not invented yesterday, we have crucially depended upon it, for millennia.
Patrice Ayme’

Skulls in the Stars

I’ve recently been trying to become more acquainted with science fiction as a genre, as most of my life I’ve been focused primarily on horror fiction.  A natural and obvious place to place some emphasis is on classic works from the golden age of science fiction, and a natural and obvious place to start there is with the work of Isaac Asimov.  A few weeks ago, I read Asimov’s Foundation (1951), and blogged my thoughts about it.

Asimov has written seven books set in the Foundation setting; I figured that I would be content reading the first one, to get a feel for it, and then move on to other authors and other series…

… and, as of today, I’ve started reading the fifth of the Foundation novels.

As the first three books, Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953), form the original trilogy, and I thought it…

View original post 1,138 more words

CONQUEST Of England, 950 Years Ago: End of Slavery, Birth of Modern Democracy

The BATTLE OF HASTINGS, WON By The FRANKS 950 YEARS AGO: Outlawing Slavery, Jump Starting Democracy

How did British democracy arise? With the exact opposite maneuver from Brexit. What is the opposite of Brit-exit? Frank-in. And when William the Conqueror, came in, conquered-in, he did not just bring, but enforced a more advanced civilization, and much more, a process to self-feed democracy.

The ascent of Britain, blossoming into the edge of world civilization is a long story which started well before Caesar’s two landings in England. The mighty, yet disorganized Celtic civilization had been divided into a diversity of a bewildering obfuscation (fostered by the Druids) of countless small units: Gaul had 60 nations, with 60 central banks, senates and three languages. Roman organization put an end to that non-sense, and Gaul came out much stronger, wealthier and more intelligent (the Druids cultivated stupidity, by outlawing written expression, except among themselves).

The collapse of the Roman state brought an even greater mess to Britain, while the continent got reorganized under the Franks’ Lex Salica (see chapter inside the essay on Outlawing Muslim Brotherhood). The reconquest of England by the Franks under the command of a Roman duke of Normandy added a whole new layer of complexity in the subtilty of government. It is William’s Conquest, a conquest by a plurality, and the most advanced principles, which instigated the rise of the world’s most advanced democracy, protected, as it was thereafter, by the insular nature of Britain (whereas the rest of the Roman empire, on the other side of the Channel, fell in ever worse divisions sheared from ever mightier armies).

After its conquest under Claudius, a Roman emperor born in Lyon (Lugdunum), Britannia was unified and pacified for more than four centuries. However budget cuts by the theologically minded plutocrats who ruled Rome around 400 CE, led to the withdrawal of the legions (which constituted the core of the crack field armies of the empire). Local Roman militia was unable to repel waves of invasion of determined Angles and Saxons in the next two centuries. Finally British forces retreated towards Wales or took refuge in what came to be known as Brittany (formerly Armorica, the large western peninsula of France advancing in the Atlantic). Then the Viking came, overrunning much of England, and all of Ireland.

By the Eleventh Century, the king ruling England, Edward the Confessor, had no direct descendant. (His earlier life had been astoundingly full of battles and unlikely events; suffices to say he was the seventh son of his father, from his second wife, Emma of Normandy who ended up marrying a Viking invader, Cnut, who conveniently executed some of Edward’s half brothers. Edward spent many years in exile in Normandy (and acted accordingly: Edward could see that Frankish civilization was superior). 

William The Conqueror Territories In Red, That Of Some Of His Other Frankish Allies, in Blue (Poitou, Anjou, Flanders) or Green (Bretagne)

The Reconquista Of Britannia By A Dux Of The Roman Empire:

The reconquest of Britannia by a Roman Dux was no accident: five centuries after being overrun by the Angles and Saxons, the British Isles were more of a wasteland than ever, as waves of Viking sloshed all over. It was high time for re-establishing civilization. Only force can re-establish civilization (a theme of mine). William would apply overwhelming force, in the service of the most advanced civilization anywhere. And it worked splendidly: the progress he launched became self-feeding, and promoted peace. Indeed, after William’s conquest, except for a victorious Dutch invasion in 1688 CE (with the objective of defeating France’s dictator, Louis XIV), England would never be conquered again. 

The closest relative of king Edward the Confessor was the Norman Dux (“Dux”, Duc, Duke, was a Roman military title of the Late Empire: a Dux was the superior military officer of a large province, only subject to command from the Emperor himself). More exactly, Edward was the grandson of the maternal uncle of William the Conqueror. The accession of William to the ducal throne had been difficult because his father had died in Nicea (Anatolia), when William was seven years old. William’s mother was his father’s mistress, an independent business woman who then married somebody else. However, Dukes of Normandy were often “illegitimate”, and there is no doubt that his father intended William to be Duke (he made his vassals take an oath of obedience to his son, before leaving for the crusade, over his family’s objections).

By the age of 23, the battle tested William was the uncontested Duke of Normandy, and Edward was back, overlording an English realm streaked by Viking raids. Thus, in 1051 CE, Edward selected William as heir (no doubt feeling that Britain needed to be reintegrated in the Roman ensemble, for its own good as it indeed turned out). In 1064 CE, a top officer of Edward, Harold, showed up in Normandy, helped William wage war in Brittany, and told him that he, Harold, would support his claim to the throne (at least that is what Normand discrediting propaganda claimed at the time).

On January 5, 1066, Edward died and Harold, treacherously, took power as king of England. Many other claimants and grandees were not happy, and a complicated war started, with four parties involved.

However William was an official Duke of the Roman empire, had been named future king 15 years prior, and thus William was the only one with real legitimacy, and enormous clout (but making William king meant that Britain was reintegrating the Roman empire! And thus who thrived from the mess were going to suffer). Indeed, consent of Pope Alexander II for the invasion was obtained, and a Papal banner was flown by William. The Roman emperor also gave consent. On top of this, William was an extremely experienced military leader, used to command in the Roman imperator tradition (namely ready to execute miscreants as needed). William had been at war since age 8. And he was now 38 years old.

An enormous fleet was built, 3,000 ships it has been said. It sailed from the Somme river, once intelligence informed William that Harold’s army had been removed from the Channel and was battling in the north.

William led an army greatly composed of contingents under the direct command of many French barons who were not his vassals. In particular William’s forces comprised Breton, Anjou, Poitou armies (which made the left wing at the Hastings battle, commanded by Alan the Red, a relative of the Comte de Bretagne) and a French, Picardy, Flanders army (which made the right wing at Hastings, and was commanded by the Count of Boulogne, who was severely wounded in the pursuit of the Anglo-Saxon forces).

***

That two-third of William’s army was made of Frankish allies not his vassals was of great consequence: his non-vassal allies would shortly enforce upon the king the MAGNA CARTA LIBERTATUM, the Great Charter of Liberty.

During the battle, William’s left wing, the Breton army at some point cracked and fled, and was pursued by Harold’s forces, led by two of his brothers. That stretching of the enemy in the open enabled William’s cavalry to surprise and destroy them. The Normans feigned retreat twice more, to expose Harold’s army to cavalry (Harold had no cavalry, and no archers, William had both). William engineered attacks after attacks, changing strategy repeatedly, and had several horses killed under him. In the end, Harold was killed, some say by William himself (that Harold was killed by an arrow is apparently a later legend which arose when the Bayeux tapestry was misinterpreted).

The war was not finished.  English clergy and aristocrat nominated Edgar the Ætheling as king to replace Howard (whose body William had ordered thrown in the sea). To win the war, William instigated reforms right away.

William changed England in many ways. For example he was partly financed by Jewish financiers and brought rich Jews from Rouen to foster lending in England (an activity forbidden to Christians with Christians, but allowed from Jews to Christians). Thus William introduced Judaism to England (so Jews were not always victimized by it did not exist prior to that there).

William had made church reforms in Normandy. He extended them to England, and replaced English clergy by Normand clergy. William also enforced all the laws passed by Edward the Confessor (the preceding English king, who had spent most of his formative years in Normandy, thanks to William’s family, and much of his life, and had made his relative William his heir). Some laws protected especially the “Frenchmen who had come with William to England”, as one would expect after a conquest. But William went much further.

***

William The Conqueror’s Laws Created A New Polity And New Civilization:

William introduced ten major new laws. The first made Christianism the official religion (exit the pagan gods).

William’s second law made all Englishmen take a direct, personal oath of loyalty to the king, as if they were soldiers in the Roman army. Those who did not take the oath would not be considered to be freemen. The oath had to be witnessed by many. That was a very significant advance: prior to this, citizens did not have to take an oath of loyalty (only the Roman soldiers had to, except for a few years under Roman emperors Diocletian and Galerius around 308 CE).

All problems have to be solved in court, ordered William. Non-attendees were heavily fined, up to the amount of the charge against them.

The final two laws passed by William were stunning:

“No man is allowed to sell another man. Anyone breaking this law will pay a fine to the king.” This law outlawed slavery in England. 20% of the population had been enslaved under Harold. William, as a Roman Dux, had to implement the Lex Salica’s most prominent feature, the one that distinguished it more saillantly from Justinian’s refurbishing of Roman Law, was the interdiction of slavery. It is also on that law that the prosperity of the “Renovated Roman Empire” rested. Britain had been reunited with the empire (although, it was implicitly intimated that it never left).

“No one shall be executed for crimes they have committed; but if they are guilty of a crime, they will be blinded and castrated. This law is not to be challenged.” Outlawing the death penalty was very much a world first. (Although the EU has outlawed the death penalty, the USA still uses it, 950 years later.)

***

Outlawing Slavery Was Not Just Frankish Law, But An Essential Part of William’s Power Grab

As a Dux of the Roman empire, William had to implement (Franco-)Roman law. Slavery had been made unlawful by the (English-born) Queen Bathilde of the Franks in 650 CE. Later the Franks conquered most of Western Europe, including the British isles and the part of Iberian and Italian peninsulas still held by the Muslims. The outlawing of slavery by the Franks was extended to these liberated territories where Roman rule was re-imposed.

In turn, the outlawing of slavery no doubt facilitated this Roman reconquest. For example, the 20% of Englishmen who found themselves to be “freemen” as long as they took a loyalty oath to William were no doubt enthusiastic supporters of William.

***

Frenchmen, and French

In the following centuries, many powerful French characters and adventurers in England, would try to preserve their power, or try to seize power, and would push for various democratic reforms limiting the power of the king. Out of that came the Magna Carta Libertatum (the descendants of the allies of William wanted to keep the powers William had conferred to them, that of allies, not vassals), the power of Parliament (Lancastre hoped to be elected king through Parliament, so he boosted its power; Lancastre was killed on the battlefield, but his reforms stayed). And so on.

Ever since William’s conquest, France and England have been entangled (although intellectual life on both sides of the Channel had been entangled for two millennia already: Druids would study in Wales, Saint Patrick was educated in Cannes, Anti-slavery queen of the Franks Bathide was from Kent, Alcuin, Charlemagne’s main PM and philosopher was English).

The reason for thinking otherwise, that England and France have serious differences (instead of being family), was the dictatorial drift under the fanatical Jihadist tyrant Louis XIV, while England went the other way, towards more democracy. Democracy brings power, dictatorship, weakness. The result was that France became weaker and England blossomed into a superpower. In the (world) wars of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Year War, and the Revolutionary-Napoleonic wars, a haggard France was defeated and more subtly plutocratic England became a world empire.  

It is the mess of more distributed power which rendered England ever more democratic. Whereas in France, the emperor-in-his-own-kingdom (that was the official expression!) Philippe-Auguste (literally: the lover of horses who augments!) colluded with the Pope to destroy the (quasi-republican) giant County of Toulouse (which was ruled under a Count, but mostly by Parliament).

However, moods perdure. Lancastre, one of those who exploited Toulouse got there the idea of using Parliament as a weapon against the king, and implemented the idea in England.

Intelligence is greater, the greater the ability to detect, distinguish, identify & imagine (knowledge, distinctions, equations & allusions).

Contemplating history shows that reason is not linear, but a web. And guess what? Quantum Theory says the same, and it has a name, entanglement. This is an entangled world, and to reveal it, one has to reveal its implicit order. It arises from occurrences. By building one’s neurology while missing the most important occurrences in the world pertaining to it, one risks becoming stupid. 

Patrice Ayme’.   

 

Charlie Manson & The Qur’an

Madness, A Mood, Can Be Contagious:

Madness is not just a disease, but also controlled, and impelled, to some extent, as a mood. Moreover, tolerance to madness is itself a contagious disease.

One modern proof? Some forms of madness in individuals can be mitigated by drugs. However, the patients’ state is improved if they undergo “Cognitive (Behavioral or not) Therapy”. They can learn that they are subject to madness (and when it’s coming), and learn to mitigate their crises..

Madness in individuals is not viewed as madness, in a mad society. Believing that the “Free Market” was a civilization, belongs to the same general tolerance to madness as the Qur’an is a civilization. A youngish French pundit (totally white and not at all Muslim, but a vague leftist) just boldly asserted on ONPC, one of the most popular show in France, that the Islamist State had nothing to do with the Qur’an. Clearly, he never read the Qur’an. I propose that he goes to Raqqa and teach the Qur’an to the Islamist State, this way, the world will be safer: what is more dangerous that unfathomable stupidity?

Smiling Manson: Thought Criminal Convicted To Nine Life Terms For Thought Crime Inducing Lethal Inclinations

[The BBC published this photo, after erasing the Swastika, weirdly enough. That shows a drastic lack of culture on its part: just as Hitler found his “Fuererprinzip” in the Qur’an (see below), he found the Swastika in Indian religions: Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism(s). Hitler was apparently better read than (some at) the BBC.]

One ancient proof that madness arise from culture-wide moods?

Watch the Romans dissecting chickens before a potential battle, to see if it should be engaged. That was obviously idiotic. One of the first Roman admirals was told by the local Imam (‘augure”) that the sacred chickens would not drink, a bad omen, and thus that battle should not be engaged, according to the respected Roman state religion. Irritated, the admiral grabbed the chickens, and threw them in the sea:’Now they will drink!’ (He lost the battle.)

Ultimately, the superstitious Roman religion was put in doubt by the tolerance extended to all the non-human sacrificial religions: the Roman saw that religions could be anything. However emperors could also see that Monotheism, started by an Egyptian Pharaoh, then amplified by the Jews, would be most useful to their rule.

Monotheism extends the Fascist Principle to the universe: everybody has a chief, everybody obeys that chief absolutely. Adolf Hitler may well as found in the Qur’an (as Sura IV, Verse 59).

“O Ye Who Believe! Obey Allah, and obey the messenger and OBEY THOSE OF YOU WHO ARE IN POWER.”

Charlie Manson was a Californian sect leader who was accused to have indoctrinated followers in such a way that they engaged in several deadly attacks (the eighth month pregnant wife of Roman Polanski, the actress Sharon tate, was butchered alive in one of these). Manson was condemned to death (commuted later to life).

The prosecution argued the triggering of “Helter Skelter” was Manson’s main motive. Manson had been impressed by a song in the Beatles’ White Album. References to that song were left (pig, rise, helter skelter). Manson predicted that the murders blacks would commit at the outset of Helter Skelter would involve the writing of “pigs” on walls in victims’ blood. Manson was viewed as responsible, although he was not at the crime scene, nor gave direct orders.

It was all completely insane. But human minds are fragile. As long as criminally insane discourses are held in books claiming to be orders from god, one should not be surprised that the unsatisfied and frustrated will find all the excuses they need there to get on a rampage.

This has now happened several times in the USA. The terrorism in San Bernardino, by a couple who pledged obedience to the Islamist State, is the latest example.

We are victims: everywhere an ambiance of terror is rising (schools, for example, have to prepare for the worst, a worst that was unimaginable in the 1960s: only the Nazis attacked schools). It brings up the police state.

And all this because a religion of hatred was preached. Several Imams in France and Switzerland, are, suddenly, under criminal investigation (at least three were financed by Saudi princes)… for preaching the sacred book, as it is. Why did it take so long? Because the mood was that Islamophilia was anti-racism?

What is the difference between a “sacred” book full of hatred and explicit orders to kill, with Charlie Manson’s  rambling, viciously aggressive discourses? Philosophers want to know. All right, I am unfair to Charlie Manson, who was not convicted for giving explicit orders to kill. The general mood Manson created was viewed as responsible enough, of the murders which happened.

The French president, last week, in stroke of Enlightenment, declared that the present war was not a clash of civilization:

“We are not committed to a war of civilizations, because these assassins don’t represent any civilization,” Hollande said. “We are in a war against terrorism, jihadism, which threatens the whole world.”

A religion was indeed never a civilization. At least in the West (be it only because, in the West, there were always several religions, Judaism one of them, in spite of centuries of frantic mass murdering by Christian fanatics.)

“Christian Civilization” never existed: the law used in Europe, except in the most savage parts and times, was actually ROMAN LAW (or Frankish/Salian law… which had been written by Roman lawyers, in Latin). Saint Louis wanted to kill Jews and Unbelievers (!), but he recognized that was against the law, he wrote. Roman Law itself was pretty much independent from Roman Superstition (aka Roman Religion). When Roman emperor Justinian ordered a refurbishment of Roman Law around 540 CE, he explicitly ordered to separate the religious/superstitious aspects from SECULAR LAW.

So, indeed, “We are in a war against terrorism, Jihadism, which threatens the whole world.”

Yes, and please remind me who wrote, and where is written, the theory of Jihadism? And why is that theory of Jihadism, that those who kill as ordered by Allah go directly to Paradise, still preached? You want safety? Make it unlawful. Or, more precisely, just apply existing laws against hate crimes. And then punish it so hard, that it will stop.

Patrice Ayme’