Putin Propagandists Are Criminal Against Humanity, Block Them!

Example of assertion made publicly against yours truly (by DK):

A few examples of assertions made publicly against yours truly (by DK), a little bit of anti-Patrice hatred, while feeling the love for Putin. That was published, against me, on Facebook, for all to see. : “You refuse to recognize the suffering of the people in eastern Ukraine, now western Russia. You refuse to recognize truth. My inescapable conclusion: You are a Nazi. You should get some nostalgia out of this. The Bandera followers helped the German Nazis do this… Woke madness is not peaceful or productive. It’s pure stupidity. Much of the war is about Russia being mostly straight. Putin is not against gays, except when they try to influence children… Your statements are hysteria. Your hatred is in common with the Nazis in Ukraine, and you don’t have a problem with that. You shame yourself.”

The only Nazis in Ukraine are of course the thugs in Putin’s invasion force… Multiple commissions of the United Nations point to that conclusion. 

The sort of hateful nonsense directed towards me is published, quite frequently… My feelings are not hurt, I don’t feel bad at all. Quite the opposite, rather amused. I am happy to see that Putin’s own deranged servants feel that it is so important to insult me. My own family’s anti-Nazi credentials are impeccable. More than 100 Jews saved; all the family, at huge risks, fought the Nazis, in uniform of or not.

But this sort of insult, calling those who oppose the tyrant Putin “Nazis” can affect those who are weaker in culture, knowledge, history and temparement. They may believe it is smart, as Elon Musk proposed, to give Putin whatever he wants to appease him. Anybody who knows a bit of history knows one doesn’t feed an angry bear with one’s bare hands.

The likes of oligarch Elon Musk, who have not studied the situation on their own and depend, unwittingly, upon Putin’s propaganda to assess it, are vulnerable. All the more when they view themselves for geniuses. In turn, their learned arrogance caused by their own success at dominating people, makes them into dangerous propagators of oligarchic lies! (…and, to boot, Musk was financed by Obama, himself a Putin partisan, de facto, if not de jure… Obama plotted with Putin and refused to help Ukraine in 2014… differently from Trump and Biden) 

This is a serious matter, this vulnerability of the mentally weak. The situation with Putin is incredibly bad, potentially way worse than the worse Hitler ever planned. Indeed, although Hitler threatened the Jews with terrible consequences for the ludicrous reason that Hitler falsely accused the Jews to have caused a World War… before, armed with those anti-factual lies, sending 6 millions of them to gas chambers…

Even though Hitler was a barely conceivable horror, Hitler never threatened all of humanity with terrible consequences. Putin did threaten humanity with extinction, making him, arguably, worse than Hitler, and worse than any preceding tyrant.

All this is rendered possible, at least in Putin’s deranged mind, by horrible, 100% misdirected insults throughout the Internet against individuals who, as yours truly try to tell the truth. That, in turn, has a chilling effect on the truth.

A famous blogger in Australia, with millions of followers, paid by Putin several times wrote publicly to me, and I quote:”Are you out of your fucking mind?” or:”What the fuck is wrong with you?” She published daily extensive, well crafted pieces prepared by Putin propagandists. She has a devoted public. 

Such people are agents of a criminal against humanity (see below) and should be put out of commission. 

Putin attacked and invaded Ukraine (starting 8 years ago). That’s a war crime. Eight years ago the US president who implicitly presented himself as a friend of Putin, did nothing. He was not experienced enough, nor correctly educated (all he did in high school was dope) , little educated, and a self-described “navigator” (so no principles besides self-advancement). His tow successors, Trump and Biden did send weapons to Ukraine. Trump sent enough to stop Putin. However, after Biden came to power, the Democratic Congress stalled a Javelin anti-tank missile sale to Ukraine scheduled under Trump. At that point, over summer, Putin discreetly made it so that Europe, in particular Germany, could not store enough natural gas for the following winter. In other words, there is thus implied proof that Putin intended to invade the rest of Ukraine the following winter. Then Putin wrote a 5,000 words historically biased essay which eradicated Ukraine from history and made Kremlin Russia god, asserting it had the right to recover all its lost territories.

At that point, cherry on the cake, Biden shamefully dropped Afghan women in the maws of the Taliban, leaving behind 90 billion dollars of US equipment (so now there is such a thing as a Taliban air force). Hence, Biden projected abject, senile weakness.

Putin knew very well that the Europeans had begged Biden not to pull out of Bagram Air Force base, as that condemned the Afghan air force to not being able to repair its planes, hence, as the Afghan army couldn’t do without the air force, Afghanistan would fall to the savages. Europeans proposed to leave 10,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, and Bagram was the safest base of the US military, worldwide. However, like a senile old fool, Biden persisted, basically saying that it was better to lose a war than to go on with it. 

The autocrat in the Kremlin, self assured but not very smart, swallowed the whole thing, bait, hook, line, sinker and even the boat. 

So Putin attacked, but then it turned out that the Ukrainians, who had accomplished remarkable feats of war when Putin attacked them in 2014, and nobody would help them, repeated the performance. But this time the Ukrainians had thousands of Western rockets, soon to turn into more than seventeen thousands. 

Putin propaganda presented by Putinophiles as truth claims: if you talk Russian in Ukraine, you are executed. However many top Ukrainian officials, president, defense minister, etc, are native Russian speakers, and use their Russian… to address Russians! Presidents and Prime Minister are Jewish, Putin claims they are Nazis. And so on: in Putin’s world what is true is false and what’s false is true!

 

Giant Poster of Putin propaganda in Crimea after he invaded it, and organized a sham referendum. The title reads: “On March 16, we choose”…. Either a NAZI Crimea, on the left, “or “OR” (the 3 letters in between) Russian Crimea….

Putin, believing his own propaganda, as autocratic regimes always do, because they can’t be told any better, suddenly found himself facing not just Ukraine, but NATO and 50 democracies. Putin had thought that his propaganda and financing giant elite capture operations and pernicious media operations such as RT, Russia Today, would paralyze enough his adversaries for these massive weapon transfers not to happen.

Fortunately, the US and Europe had finally seen that Putin was Hitler, just worse, because Putin has 6,200 nukes. 

Invading Ukraine was a war crime, so is targeting and attacking pure civilian infrastructure (collateral damage is not a war crime, targeting civilian infrastructure either civil services or facilities, is a war crime). There is plenty of evidence of crimes against humanity committed by Putin’s Orcs (Orkhas is a term that was used a millenium before the Lord of The Rings, to qualify the horrendous Hungarian raiders into Europe, all the way to France…. said raids finished when the Hungarian army was annihilated by Otto I, Roman emperor, at the battle of Lechfeld, in 956 CE, over three days).

At least 7,343 children have been deported to Russia and another 236 are still missing since the start of its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, said Ukraine’s Office of the Ombudsman in September 2022. Russia has forcibly deported more than 1.6 million Ukrainians….

Russian troops have raped and tortured children in Ukraine, carried out a “large number” of executions and committed other war crimes, according to a United Nations investigation by legal experts.

Set up by the U.N. to probe the conduct of the war on both sides, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry reported its chilling findings in Geneva, describing a long list of abuses and atrocities. “Based on the evidence gathered by the commission, it has concluded that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine,” Erik Mose, the chairman of the three-member commission, told the U.N. Human Rights Council. War crimes, and plenty of them, thousands. Inquiries are pursued to find out the chain of command. One commander In Buch was found to have ordered war crimes in Izium, nearly 1,000 kilometers away. Was he himself under orders?

Putin’s officials are not even as smart as Hitler’s Nazis, Franco’s fascists or the Argentinian Junta: so used are Putin’s goons to commit crimes against humanity, that they have widely advertized their kidnapping and “adoptions” of Ukrainian children. That is one activity qualified of “GENOCIDE” by the United Nations [1].

I am totally against censorship of tumultuous thoughts. But censoring criminals against humanity and their agents is not censorship, it’s survival. The survival of humanity. Sometimes, to survive, one has to kill. Killing media access to Putin’s agents is only prudent.

At this point all we need is to destroy the enemies of humanity. Their propaganda is a distraction and itself a crime against reality. They should be blocked. In World War One, the erratic aristocrat Bertrand Russell was sent in prison for suggesting that Europe should be given to Germany, in the name of peace. Putting such a vile emitter out of the power of glowing with lies was an excellent decision. The nuclear Armageddon Putin threatened us all with is worse than the Kaiser’s worst… and we should act accordingly.

The USA should follow Europe in banning Putin’s right to speak… And Europe and the US should insist at the UN that the ban be enforced worldwide. Also, it took around ten days to expell Russia from the League of Nations when, allied with Hitler as the Kremlin was, it invaded Finland, in November 1939. Why is it taking so long to start a procedure to expell Russia?

Patrice Ayme

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As the Institute For the Study of War observed October 15, 2022: 

Russia continues to conduct massive, forced deportations of Ukrainians that likely amount to a deliberate ethnic cleansing campaign in addition to apparent violations of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin stated on October 14 that “several thousand” children from Kherson Oblast are “already in other regions of Russia, resting in rest homes and children’s camps.”[1] As ISW has previously reported, Russian authorities openly admitted to placing children from occupied areas of Ukraine up for adoption with Russian families in a manner that may constitute a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.[2]

Russian authorities may additionally be engaged in a wider campaign of ethnic cleansing by depopulating Ukrainian territory through deportations and repopulating Ukrainian cities with imported Russian citizens. Ethnic cleansing has not in itself been specified as a crime under international law but has been defined by the United Nations Commission of Experts on violations of humanitarian law committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia as “rendering an area ethnically homogeneous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area” and “a purposeful policy designed by one ethnic or religious group to remove by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas.”[3] According to the UN definition, ethnic cleansing may be carried out by forcible removal, among other methods.[4] These definitions of ethnic cleansing campaigns are consistent with reports of the forcible deportation and adoption of Ukrainian children, as well as reports by Ukrainian sources that reconstruction projects in Mariupol are intended to house “tens of thousands of Russians” who will move to Mariupol.[5]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-15

Does Placidity Elevate Always? Hell No! On Spinoza’s Slumber

Do Cows Have Higher Minds? Spinoza’s Philosophy Condemned For Apathy

A famous leitmotiv of Baruch de Spinoza: “Man soll die Welt nicht belachen nicht beweinen sondern begreifen”. The quote (originally in Latin) is from his Tractatus theologico-politicus. English translation: “one should neither laugh at nor lament the world, but only understand it.” That sentiment has been much lauded, by those who want to feel elevated. It’s wrong in more ways than one.

Spinoza’s idea is that one would not associate the world with negativism, or positivism, tragedy or comedy, but just, well, understand it. Thus one would avoid categorizing, prejudice, bias, etc. which reminds us to avoid the tendency to categorize and judge other people or ideas (as if there was a different way of thinking than categorizing and judging stuff). 

Instead, Spinoza calls for an openness to learning, akin to what Jane Addams called “affectionate interpretation” in “A modern Lear”, her (flawed) interpretation of the lethal plutocratic events in Chicago in 1894. There was a strike, strikers were executed in a plutocratic plot, plutocrats won. Around 30 workers were murdered by railroad agents and their allies. Conveniently Ms. Addams depicts the malefactors as in need of “affectionate interpretation”. Quick! A Nobel Prize! 

Jane Addams: “good citizens actively pursue knowledge of others—not just facts but a deeper understanding—for the possibility of caring and acting on their behalf.” Depict suspected criminal against humanity Joe Biden, telling us “I don’t think 500 billionaires are the reason we’re in trouble. The folks at the top aren’t bad guys…billionaires are actually nice guys”.  

Addams was famous for “Hull House”. Co-founder Ellen Gates Starr said of Jane Addams, “if the devil himself came riding down Halsted Street with his tail waving out behind him, [Jane Addams would say] what a beautiful curve he had in his tail.” Of course, Addams, as a good agent of plutocratic affectionate understanding, got the Nobel Peace prize in 1931 (she had also advanced “colored” people, etc…)

The idea is often attributed to HARVARD professor Santayana … probably because Hardwart is so superior. Actually Santanaya didn’t hide Spinoza’s influence on himYes, well, sometimes, the best citizens line up their U.S. Navy Dauntless dive bombers on that gigantic red sun on the yellow decks of the Akagi and Kaga plunging and waiting until the last second to drop their 1,000 pound bombs. In five minutes three large Japanese aircraft carriers from Pearl Harbor were on fire, shaken by explosions, and their elite aircrews were roasting… never to be replaced, as Japan, differently from the USA, didn’t have the plane-smart manpower, and gasoline, to train replacement aviators. 

“Affectionate interpretation” as an advanced intellectual doctrine should have stopped long before it led to Auschwitz. The moral imperative is the exact opposite, when in doubt.

Now Baruch (“Blessed” in Hebrew) Spinoza had reason to play the passion-less violin, in times when people were executed for opinion on a routine basis by fascist autocrats such as Louis XIV, the Pope, the catholic Inquisition, and countless lesser tyrants throughout Europe. So, I excuse Spinoza, then. But I don’t excuse the same benevolent attitude to the world, now. Although I do use benevolence on a routine basis, I don’t make a religion of it. Actually, I made a religion of overruling it. 

Some view this method as the way to reject dogma and insist on reason. One couldn’t be more mistaken… A proof, as usual, was the apathy with which German Jews received Hitler: they got too busy trying to understand Hitler… affectionately, for the best. Thus they became not just victims, bt his accomplices 

The quote (originally in Latin) is from his Tractatus theologico-politicus, but the general idea recurs throughout his Ethics. It’s actually not so much a “should” as it is Spinoza’s attempt to describe his own method–what he’s endeavored to do through his philosophy.

Friedrich Nietzsche picks up on Spinoza’s method in The joyful wisdom (aka, “The Gay Science”, La Gaya Scienza). He emphasizes that the issue is not to replace emotions with reason, but actually to realize that reason grows from the emotions (hence their name, hey!):

“What does Knowing Mean? Non ridere, non lugere, neque detestari, sed intelligere! says Spinoza, so simply and sublimely, as is his wont. Nevertheless, what else is this intelligere ultimately, but just the form in which the three other things become perceptible to us all at once? A result of the diverging and opposite impulses of desiring to deride, lament and execrate? Before knowledge is possible each of these impulses must first have brought forward its one-sided view of the object or event.”

Nietzsche is right, and Spinoza (whom he admired), at best, naive. Spinoza tried to deny our psychological motivation, as if intelligence was a castle in the air. Instead the deep emotions are the groundwork, the foundations, of logic. This is what Nietzsche noticed. Amusingly, René Descartes, contrarily to repute given by some cheap US author (Demasio), was not like Spinoza at all: Descartes was very aware, when constructing its magnificent advance in mathematics, of the psychological reasons to do so (I read the originals). To achieve constructive understanding was more satisfying he said, and thus he proceeded to make mathematics which could do so.

Spinoza was a great philosopher. To do so, he had to keep on polishing lenses (that killed him), refusing a belated university job. He had his reasons, that the times forced on him. He lived in a time where tyrants ruled Europe, and the world. The choice for free spirit was to be burned alive in Europe…many printers were, a century earlier, even in France:… or being eaten alive in the Pacific (no refrigeration!)

Nowadays, though, we have no excuses. The likes of Obama and the plutocratic leaders of the world dare say we need leaders, but, in truth, we need to be led by the best ideas, and that means the best cognition, no secrecy a la Xi. In that direction our moral trajectory curves.

Those trains of thought which advocate to collaborate with evil from “affectionate interpretation” should be rejected, so should Spinoza’s official lack of understanding upon how his mind worked. .

Patrice Ayme

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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

Blame Obama’s Nihilism For Syria’s Destruction

Pontificating Pseudo-Leftists Destroyed The Better Values, Including Care and Rationality, By Claiming They Were Not Worth Fighting For, Nothing Was. From This Obscene Nihilism, Of Slimy Souls, We Will All Suffer All Too Practically.

The Economist has woken up, from its Trump Derangement Syndrome, to the reality of the catastrophic moral abyss known as the Obama administration. Subtitle of The Economist: The war in Syria: The lessons from Aleppo’s tragic fate. WHEN INTERESTS TRIUMPH OVER VALUES TERRIBLE THINGS CAN HAPPEN. (Dec 17th 2016.)

The interest of whom, dear The Economist? Not just Putin’s, Assad, and the plutocratic circles in London which professionally love the Assad family’s billions. One speaks here also of the interests of prima donna Michelle Obama and the US Democratic Party elite presently still in power, and the interest of those who feed them all, the globalocracy and the worldwide plutocracy, especially the one of financial type. That interest goes beyond profiteering from those who support massacres. It goes as far as destroying the values which make civilization possible. Let me explain.

Aleppo Barrel Bombing By Assad Regime Summer 2015. What the Joint Franco-American Intervention Was Supposed To Stop

The joint French Republic USA attack on Assad after Assad killed thousands of civilians in gas attacks, would have taken out the entire Syrian Air Force, including helicopters dropping barrel bombs.

Obama’s last minute loss of nerves, and calling off the attack while French bomber pilots were already strapped in their seats, was a moral failure of Auschwitzian proportions. Of such moral failures was the road to World War Two and Auschwitz, paved. (And it did not take too many of these failures, barely more than a couple, before the insane moods had set-in, and world war was unavoidable.)

Says The Economist: “GROZNY, Dresden, Guernica: some cities have made history by being destroyed. Aleppo, once Syria’s largest metropolis, will soon join their ranks. Its 1,000-year-old Muslim heritage has turned to dust; Russian aircraft have targeted its hospitals and schools; its citizens have been shelled, bombed, starved and gassed (see article). Nobody knows how many of the tens of thousands who remain in the last Sunni Arab enclave will die crammed inside the ruins where they are sheltering. But even if they receive the safe passage they have been promised, their four-year ordeal in Aleppo has blown apart the principle that innocent people should be spared the worst ravages of war. Instead, a nasty, brutish reality has taken hold—and it threatens a more dangerous and unstable world.”

A mood that political leaders and dictators can get away with mass murder for all to see has set-in. This has happened many times in the past:  that change of moods is always necessary before great wars. Just as it did in Germany before 1914 (after massacring hundreds of thousands of Namibian Natives, the Herero and Nama, as if they were rats, or game animals, offering money for their heads, hunting them for sport). Just as it did happen worldwide in the 1930s (Japan attacked China, Italy attacked Ethiopia, US plutocrats and the Nazi dictator attacked the Spanish Republic, and all made like bandits, getting away with anything, including the biggest lies they could imagine, etc.)

Encouraged by these profitable pursuits, Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany constituted the “Axis”, in 1936, while US plutocrats helped make the Axis all it could be. The Axis was a series of diplomatic treaties. But, more importantly, the Axis was a sharing of satanic values. Shared satanic values which the leaders of the Axis believed was the best way to success. And for a while, for them, it worked. In the end, it worked only for the Deus Ex Nachina, the USA itself. (However, because that this Machiavellian strategy worked in the past for the USA is no guarantee that it will work in the future. Actually, it won’t because Kim’s nukes will soon be able to reach the USA; in WWII, nobody hostile could even get to the US mainland!)

Italy, Japan, Germany conquered, and, or came to control  huge swathes of territory, through the nastiest, most satanic ways. The success of these Plutonic values led countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, the USSR, Thailand, Iraq, etc., to join, de facto and through treaties, the Axis. And of course, this further success encouraged plutocrats to help the Axis (just as Putin’s and Tehran’s success will encourage others to join them… such as Turkey’s Sultan). It all snowballed, until the French Republic, followed by the Commonwealth, declared war. France, though, got overwhelmed through surprise, bad luck, an uncautious head of the army, reason…

And also France came down in a few days in May 1940,  because the French (and British) Air Forces had not enjoyed enough practice. The French Air Force and the RAF took a few weeks to learn the tricks the Nazis had learned and refined in air combat in the preceding four years, say, while bombing Guernica and attacking ground forces, in Spain. If you want peace, prepare for war, by practicing war.  

If you can’t beat them, join them in fighting, you will improve.

The brains of many present world politicos, such as Vladimir Putin, Assad, Xi, Kim have set-in into a more aggressive mindset. Thanks to Obama’s incompetent childishness, and holy-than-thou attitude. Maybe their epigenetics, not just their neurohormones, emotions, feeling, reconstructed memories and  ideas have installed in their heads operating systems which toy with millions killed and displaced as if it were a chess game.

A small, but telling example? China just seized an US military underwater drone, while the civilians manning an US vessel a few hundreds meters away watched in disbelief. The US made a demarche to recover their stolen robot.

Trump’s reaction: “China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters — rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act,” Mr. Trump wrote in a Twitter message. His original tweet on the subject on Saturday called the seizure an “unpresidented act,” but a replacement message corrected the spelling error. Spelling error? Assuredly, a judicious one.

Many of the best ideas have started as errors. The USA has been “unpresidented” for eight years, indeed.

“We are feeling what not having hope feels like,” Michelle Obama told Winfrey in response to a question about whether President Obama had achieved the “hope and change” he promised while campaigning in 2008. ” The self-absorbed Michelle did not mean Aleppo. She obviously meant she has to give up on that big presidential plane in 4 weeks. Hey, no more vacation in the billionaire’s palaces anymore, with the media moguls? Otherwise her husband’s presidency has been abysmal on all what can be measured: poverty (eight million more!), food stamps (13 million more!), employment rate (not the UNemployment index known as U2!), home ownership, cost of health care, cost of education, etc. The Obama presidency was pretty much a sham, organized by spoiled, ignorant children, but hundreds of thousands have now died because of it, and everything indicates that this is just the beginning:

The Economist says: “Britain’s parliament voted against taking even limited military action. As millions of people fled to Syria’s neighbours, including Lebanon and Jordan, most European countries looked the other way —or put up barriers to keep refugees out.

PARTICULAR BLAME FALLS ON BARACK OBAMA. America’s president has treated Syria as a trap to be avoided. His smug prediction that Russia would be bogged down in a “quagmire” there has proved a historic misjudgment.

Throughout his presidency, Mr Obama has sought to move the world from a system where America often acted alone to defend its values, with a few countries like Britain riding shotgun, to one where the job of protecting international norms fell to all countries—because everyone benefited from the rules.

[Or when naivety becomes criminal, murderous idiocy!]

Aleppo is a measure of how that policy has failed. As America has stepped back, the vacuum has been filled not by responsible countries that support the status quo, but by the likes of Russia and Iran which see the promotion of Western values as an insidious plot to bring about regime change in Moscow and Tehran.”

Entirely correct, The Economist. Barack Obama has proven to be very far from a progressive, or a defender of the better values (as one would expect from somebody financed by Goldman Sachs more than any other entity). Instead, Obama has proven to be a right-wing terminator of people. He let the massacre in Syria happen in slow motion.

Obama also spurned and terminated the better values as something worth defending (and thus Obama served Goldman Sachs and its ilk, lack of better values). Obama taught us all to be moral slime. To avoid “quagmires”, Obama became one himself. Obama should have given war a chance (if John Lennon had been around, he may well have concluded that!) Invertebrates never had a chance. Invertebrates like Obama.

In truth, Obama, like all pseudo-leftists, is a poser without values much beyond greed (such as the ravenous greed for power or Nobel prizes). A nihilist. Western progressive values, or the better values of humanity itself, under the pseudo-leftist doctrine, cannot be imposed, because they are viewed as imperialism itself.

This is why Obama put Putin, rather than the French Republic, in charge of Syria: because Putin, or the theocrats in Tehran, or the plutocrats in Beijing, have values which are just as valuable, Obama implicitly, yet extremely repetitively, said. (The reason for this is that the main financier of Obama’s first campaign was Goldman-Sachs: thus the superior values of Goldman-Sachs were transmitted to Obama in a superior way: greed, self-advancement, navigation, etc. Financial manipulators are dictators behind the stage friendly to those dictators who take the stage)

Politics select for self-obsessed slime. Obama has none of the higher values higher human beings are, whatsoever, but he is good at faking ennui and a loftier stance. A comedian. What is his motivation to do so? Obviously a world without redeeming values fit those who breathe greed perfectly. So Obama, by refusing to defend values, manu militari, is actually making the plutocratic mood progress, thus making those who will pay his bills in a month, richer, more powerful, and more generous.

The plutocratic ideal is fundamentally nihilist: it replaces the better angels of our nature, which humanity absolutely need to exist, with low and vicious aspects, and neurohormones, like greed, power onto others, cruelty, etc.  

And what of the little pseudo-leftists who feel that Obama is the best thing since whole wheat bread, and have been clamoring for more of the same, hundreds of thousands dead, millions of refugees full of Islamism? Many of them have elected. not to defend values, but on hating those who have them. Because hatred is a strong emotion.

Also, most of the pseudo-leftists are just ignorant, and ignorance is not just comfortable, but easy to acquire.

By refusing to act against hatred, Obama has refused to defend the better angels of our values. Instead he has left open the road to irrationality (inventing excuses for not defending said better values) and hatred itself.

Thus Obama contributed to making a much bigger war more likely. Indeed, Obama has told us that to see half a million people killed in what used to be the richest part of the Roman empire, is no concern of his. Nothing that motivates him. Half a million people dead, dictators, some nuclear armed, reinforced, and Obama congratulates himself for having avoided a “quagmire”.

Obama’s powerless UN ambassador, ironically named Power, complained to Russia that it had no decency. that Power chick does not know that, when one has the power of extermination, decency is irrelevant. She and her boss, Obama, are that ignorant. Obama did not just unpresident himself, he was never really president, just taking orders from his (plutocratic) minders. Doing so, not realizing that only military force imposes and preserves civilization, puts us,and all the better values, at risk of being ruled by the spirit of Pluto, at the hands of plutocrats. And the proof is the powerlessness of Obama’s pious declarations on what constitute decent behaviors, the exact behaviors he violated. Now the jerks are compulsively talking about Russia’s sofware prowess, after letting Putin and Assad ravage Aleppo, and Syria.

Might is not necessarily right, indeed. However, right without might, cannot be. Ever.

Civilization is fundamentally about force. The force of the highest human values reorganizing nature, including human nature, for the better, fighting adversity, and winning.

And to do that, to win, we need not just smarts as Ulysses, but also might, like Heracles.

Slime is cool, indeed, but it could not possibly invent civilization. Only entrepreneur could, and did. That’s why we have hands, big hands. Give us that world which we shall mold, for the better; the empire of humanity, this is what us humans make, and always made. The divine primate. Slime, those who will not defend the values which make us the most human, we have to wash out at sea, before their impotence exterminates us.

Patrice Ayme’

 

Does Clinton Corruption Matter?

Clinton Foundations (yes, there are two!) helped Clinton as a presidential candidate (be it just with taxpayer paid travel in the best accommodations). The Foundations were entangled with the State Department. It is 99% probable that at least five countries had full access to State Department mail, thanks to Clinton’s private server. Clinton knew the debate questions in excruciating details (proven for one debate), that’s how she beat Sanders. Ethics up, guys!

A typical answer came from a Clinton fanatic, Mike Griffith: “So what. We just need to stop Trump. Right, Patrice? I’m alright with a little corruption. I’m sure Hillary is no angel, nor her husband, nor George Bush (probably the worse of the bunch / not to mention Cheney).”  

That was part of various exchanges, where I got most of the insults in the book, hurled my way (it just wakes me up, better than my tenth cup of coffee). I replied that: You need to stop plutocracy. Good luck doing it with a genius of qui pro quo such as Hillary, who transformed $1,000 into six figures, supposedly all by her little self, when she was in her twenties, playing cattle futures. Actually she was not playing the futures, the lawyer for Tyson Foods, Arkansas’ main employer, was “playing” them for her. Specialists have evaluated her trading success as one chance in 31 trillions. It was obviously a back payment for service rendered… or expected. Did I mention the obvious? Her husband and presumed accomplice, was governor of Arkansas. Yes, corruption grows with the years, especially when one got away with it.

I am not particularly for Trump (I used to be against Trump, decades ago, but now we have much worse under our eyes, and experienced much more wicked minds). However I am aware of extremely damaging laws which attack fundamental liberties of simple people (such as Obama’s great invention to terrorize little guys who dare to travel a bit, FATCA; I will speak of FATCA in detail some other day, it is exemplary of the viciousness of so-called “Democrats”).

I am more for democracy and truth than for anything else. It is funny to see a bunch of Clinton fanatics insulting other people, or even democracy, in the rabid hope that all what Clinton propagandists, who happen to be the standard plutocratic propagandists, brandish as truth, is all true: if Trump did not exist, the USA would be OK.

Those anti-Trump haters did not notice that Trump never ran for office before. Nor did they notice that Bill Clinton ran for Congress in 1974,  That was 42 years ago. This is a Clinton world we are living in, not Trump’s. 

Carter Declared Secret War To Afghanistan On July 3, 1979. Clinton Would Pursue It, And Attack Iraq, Too. Why Do We Need Such Warlords, Deciding Of Life And Death, To Overlord US?

Now for the bigger question:

***

Does Some Corruption In The Leaders Of The Republic Matter?

The answer is that it all depends of what the alleged corruption is, who, and what for. Corruption of the spirit of the Roman Republic was alleged against the Gracchi, because they did not follow traditional procedures when passing their anti-plutocratic laws. A detailed examination of the circumstances show that complaint was unfounded, considering what was at stake: the Gracchi tried desperately to stop the plutocratization of the Roman Republic. They had good reason to believe the plutocrats were playing dirty, because they were. Ultimately, the Gracchi laws passed, the Gracchi were assassinated, and the anti-plutocracy laws were not enforced.

Similarly, corruption was alleged against Caesar. It was both true, and irrelevant: Caesar was going to leave at the head of the greatest army Rome ever had, to subdue Persia, just as Alexander had done before, swing through the Caucasus, and subdue Germany from behind. Had Caesar succeeded, the Roman Republic could have survived, and taken the world over. However, the plutocrats who assassinated Caesar feared a triumph of the Republic more than anything else. So they killed a departing Caesar.

What we have now in the USA is an extremely dangerous form of corruption:

***

Corporate Fascism Serves Its Servants Well:

How did Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, get to power? With the help from major US corporations and their leading plutocrats. This is what the official history books do not want you to suspect.

Under Obama, extending a movement well launched by the Clintons’ repeal of the Banking Act of 1933, corporate fascism has been allowed to run rampant.

The present US system is the most corrupt in the history of the world, if measured by size alone (just like we are the richest people who ever lived, as measured by GDP and my own AWE).

Obama has advantaged what one should call the Obama corporations. All the Obama corporations pay little, or no taxes: Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, GE, etc. Obama corporations have the full might and so-called “justice” of the United States of America behind them. What, who pays for that? The little guys, worldwide.

“Friends” such as Mike Griffith, above, have scoffed:”Why to give up power?” The reason to not gather too much power on the few is equality (at least of opportunity), without which there is no democracy. And if there is less democracy, there is less mental power, thus less power, even less economic and social power, period. As Obama corporations are advantaged, little guys, including the engineers and scientists who make the system innovative, suffer, shrivel, and disappear. Obama may think, in his naivety, that Elon Musk is a great scientist, and needs billions of state aid, but Musk is actually nothing important for innovation. The guys who design electronic chips are much more important. And such people are decimated by the system Obama and the pro-plutocratic Supreme Court have set-up. They are reduced to bankruptcy.The corruption in the present regime extends all the way down the justice system. Federal judges can take decisions in favor of giant corporations, and even refuse to make them pay what a jury has decided they should pay. Then underhanded pressure make the lawyers of the little guys go away, and the Judge accepts a job in one of said corporations I saw the situation from distance zero; obviously I am going to give no names, you are not just talking about ruin here, but much more definitive solutions. Speaking of that, at distance zero too, I was told of direct death threats in the realm of a joint private-public employment. This entanglement of deadly corruption started with racist president Wilson, through the likes of Prescott Bush, Brown, Brother Harriman, Dulles Brothers, and all the plutos higher in the chain of command. We are now in generation five or so. Obamacare was written by Sen. Baucus a fifth generation Pluto, etc… The Clinton are low level puppets of that monstrosity. However top notch lawyers know they set up systems to kill thousands (legally, through mock drug charges).

***

When The Big Guy Is Free To Terrorize the Little Guy, You Get Persia, Not Athenian Greece:

When the Macedonian (that is Macedonian plutocracy) led army defeated Achaemenid  Persia, the Macedonians and their Greek contingents were stunned by the advanced Persian civilization. The freeway system was stunning (in the gigantic empire, news took just a week). The buildings of Babylon, with its suspended gardens, or of Persepolis, with its gigantic palaces, were stunning. The Persians were highly sophisticated. Laws were intricate, administration superb.

So why was Persia not more advanced than Greece, but a retard, instead?

Liberty, Equity, Equality. Greece was not perfect that way, far from it. But it was much better. So innovation was Greek, just as it had been Sumerian, Egyptian and Cretan earlier. And for the same reason.

In Persia, oligarchies were enabled to gather overwhelming power. They were headed by “Satraps”. Thus the little guys got crushed.

All together, the little minds of the little guys gather more mind than the few minds of a few Satraps.

The Clintons and Obama (let alone the crazed like a fox G.W. Bush) want us to live little lives, when they live big, harnessing the state. But you would have had to experience a keen interest in history since the day before yesterday to know this. But you did not. Because like Obama, you had only passion for the Chicago Cubs and the like (Obama tweets about this sort of brain-dead material all the time). Having passion for nothing is not worth it, and it creates dead minds, fit for slaves.

So yes, Clinton corruption matters.

And this time, it is not just about the USA, or the West, or even civilization. It’s about the planet.

Yes, I know, they accuse Trump. Trump was not in power, guys.

The Clintons were.

Patrice Ayme’

Uncritical Islam: Lethal Homophobia

A known American born Islamist kills more than 50 people at a gay night club in Orlando, Florida. President Obama said: “We know enough to say this was an act of terror and an act of hate... The FBI is appropriately investigating this as an act of terrorism. We will go wherever the facts lead us … What is clear is he was a person filled with hatred… Today marks the most deadly shooting in American history…”

(As a friend pointed out indignantly:’what about the Indians? Didn’t they shoot more Indians?‘ Well, OK, we are rewriting history, just here.) Yes, dear Barry, he was full of hatred, and who, what, filled up his hateful mind with hatred? Islamist sacred texts quoted below. They could not be more explicit. Although there are just a few below, there are millions more, out there.

Was Omar Saddiqi Mateen, the mass killer born in New York City of  Afghan parents, inspired by “sacred texts” which order the killing of homosexuals? Is blindly clamoring for respect to such “sacred texts” tantamount to incitement for their enactment? An Iranian professional “Muslim scholar”, Farrokh Sekaleshfar, preached in Orlando, shortly before the tragic attack, that homosexuals should be killed “out of compassion”. One should “get rid” of them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBlwxqqAprQ

How come aliens preachers are allowed to preach hatred in America or Europe? Why can’t they all be blocked, prevented to enter, like the horrendous terrorists they are? Is a warrant for the arrest of the preacher be made? For murder, as it should be? Just before the President spoke, Trump tweeted: “Is President Obama going to finally mention the words radical Islamic terrorism? If he doesn’t he should immediately resign in disgrace!”

OK, here is the original, most basic Islamist text, the Qur’an. I am going to give an extensive quote within Sura 7 (the Seventh Chapter of the Qur’an). The original in Arabic can be read at Surah Al A’Araf (“The Heights”). Notice that the Qur’an gets its orders here from the Bible, Old Testament:

“80. And (remember) Lout (Lot), when he said to his people: “Do you commit the worst sin such as none preceding you has committed in the ‘Alamin (mankind and jinns)? “Verily, you practice your lusts on men instead of women. Nay, but you are a people transgressing beyond bounds (by committing great sins).”

81. And the answer of his people was only that they said: “Drive them out of your town, these are indeed men who want to be pure (from sins)!”
82. Then We saved him and his family, except his wife; she was of those who remained behind (in the torment).
83. And We rained down on them a rain (of stones). Then see what was the end of the Mujrimun (criminals, polytheists, sinners, etc.).
84. And to (the people of) Madyan (Midian), (We sent) their brother Shu’aib. He said: “O my people! Worship Allah! You have no other Ilah (God) but Him. [La ilaha ill-Allah (none has the right to be worshiped but Allah)].” Verily, a clear proof (sign) from your Lord has come unto you; so give full measure and full weight and wrong not men in their things, and do not mischief on the earth after it has been set in order, that will be better for you, if you are believers.”

Want To Have Fun? Please Read Extensively The Sacred Texts Of Islam

Muslim scholars have interpreted the “rain of stones” on the town to mean that homosexuals should be stoned: no other reason is given for the people’s destruction. (That story is repeated in surahs 27 and 29).

Quran (4:16) – “If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both. If they repent and amend, Leave them alone.”

The Qur’an is an extremely short book: around 80,000 words. So it is completed by other Sacred Texts, the Hadith and the Sira (alleged sayings and acts of the founders of Islam).

The hard side of Islam then appears in its full glory. An astounding array of punishment is rolled out. For example, Ali, cousin, son-in-law of the Prophet, and Fourth Caliph, condemn those who renounced Islam, the apostates, to be burned alive. For a full panoply of lethal punishment and why, please read Sunnah.c0m.  

Abu Dawud (4462) – The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, “Whoever you find doing the action of the people of Loot, execute the one who does it and the one to whom it is done.”

Abu Dawud (4448) – “If a man who is not married is seized committing sodomy, he will be stoned to death.” (Note the implicit approval of sodomizing one’s wife).

Bukhari (72:774) – “The Prophet cursed effeminate men (those men who are in the similitude (assume the manners of women) and those women who assume the manners of men, and he said, ‘Turn them out of your houses .’ The Prophet turned out such-and-such man, and ‘Umar turned out such-and-such woman.”

al-Tirmidhi, Sunan 1:152 – [Muhammad said] “Whoever is found conducting himself in the manner of the people of Lot, kill the doer and the receiver.”

Reliance of the Traveller, p17.2 – “May Allah curse him who does what Lot’s people did.” This is also repeated in three other places.

For more on the relationship between homosexuality and Islam, see the Religion of Peace.

Interestingly, the Qur’an promises “fresh and beautiful boys”, not just the well-known 72 virgins, when martyrs get to paradise. An orgy of virgins and “perpetual youth” Quran (56:17) (otherwise known as “boys” Quran (52:24)) is promised to those who died for Allah. Quran (76:19) bluntly states: “And immortal boys will circulate among them, when you see them you will count them as scattered pearls.”

(Female virgins are also compared to pearls. See Qur’an 56; 23.) Islamist positions about sex are rather confusing to the untrained mind. Adnan Oktar’s evolution hating group is making highly successful propaganda, thanks to a mix of luxury, massive sex appeal, and flaunting the superiority of women in some activities:

Paradoxically, the “Kittens” Above Are Part Of One Of the Most Radical, Best Financed Islamist Groups In the World

Nobody can say that the Qur’an, with its hidden, but elaborate chronology, and its absolutely crucial abrogation principle, is not a subtle book. That, no doubt, is part of its appeal: it is difficult for those who have not studied Islam in-depth to resist the sophistry of Muslim Scholars defending it with lies.

The most fundamental appeal of Islam remains the opportunity it provides for the most fascinating, exciting, captivating, obsessive, old-fashion activity: men killing men, for whatever reason they can brandish. Thus it is that the Qur’an, who promises homosexuality in paradise, uses it to kill on Earth.

Idiots from the pseudo-left will claim that the preceding was a hateful Islamophobic discourse. Instead, they will accuse guns, forgetting that war weapons are completely unlawful in Europe, and that did not preclude massacres in London, Madrid, Paris, Brussels, etc. Besides, pressure cookers were used in Boston by two Islamist immigrant brothers. Islam, as quoted above, is obviously the problem.

Nor are guns the solution. The California group “Eagles of Death Metal” was scheduled to play at several festivals in France this summer. It was playing at the Bataclan in Paris on November 13, when an attack ordered by the Islamist pseudo-state, organized from Brussels and integrating at least four pseudo-refugees as bombers, made thousands of victims in the French capital (dead, wounded, and bereaved). The leader of the group claim that the Bataclan attack would not have happen had the French carried concealed firearms as Floridians do.

The Orlando attack proved that thesis (also espoused by Trump) erroneous. When the Islamist fanatic, long known for his hatred of gays, entered the  gay nightclub in Orlando, he was confronted by an armed security guard who was an off-duty police officer (thus thoroughly trained in the usage of firearms). Gunfire was exchanged. The armed and dangerous Qur’an reader and implementor then entered the night club and proceeded to wound and kill more than 100 people.

Why? Because an attacker will have bigger weapons, bigger body armor, and, most important in war, the advantage of surprise.

This is well known in France. France has known terrorism since ever, and the times before that. Vercingetorix, at least. So the French were not amused by the leader of Eagles of Death Metal ignorant and deleterious gun propaganda. Little desirous of having the public exposed to this sort of irrational lethal propaganda, all festivals in France subsequently cancelled all the shows of Eagles of Death Metal.

Justin Trudeau, the semi-ignorant youth who is the commander-in-chief of Canada, just broke the fast of Ramadan in public for all to see. Well, it means that Trudeau agrees with the despicable death threats against categories of people quoted above. A secular chief of government should stay secular and not take part into any religious celebrations… except for those having to do with the secular republic interpreted as a religion.

Obama himself evoked “God” extensively at the end of his speech on the Islamist massacre in Orlando. That, of course, is a mistake: the Islamists evoke the exact same “God”, and Muhammad’s fundamental argument was, precisely that Christians and Jews did not worship “God” correctly. The Bible orders to kill homosexuals, and this where the Islamists found their mission, even though they love ‘beautiful fresh boys who are like pearls’… Thus Obama is engaging in a theological debate with fanatics, and will not win. He could, and should, have rephrased all he said in a secular way. When he does not, he approves the Bible, thus the New Testament, hence the Old Testament, hence the stoning of homosexuals. Or then he wants to rewrite what Islam says (as I do), but then, once again, that not what he is doing.

You want to fight Islamism? Crush it wherever it shows up militarily.French warplanes have conducted strikes in Libya since 2015 (and have now been joined by the Americans). The Libyans, helped by French and American special forces, blessed be their names, are making the difference in Sirte, Libya, where 6,000 ISIL mercenaries are besieged (the Islamist State recently held 200 kilometers of coastline there, before suffering grievous losses). That’s an excellent thing, and I congratulate presidents Hollande and Obama to act as they should. The Kurds, Iraqis, Iranians, and Putin are also doing pretty well.

However, once the Islamist forces are smashed, the real job will start. One will have to attack the Qur’an, the Hadith and the pseudo-leftists who claim to adore them… without having ever read it more than ten minutes. Enough with lethal and devastating irrationality. Real philosophy is on the ground, and fights. Not forgetting that anti-plutocratic philosopher Demosthenes was defeated, and killed by Macedonian goons operating on the orders of Macedonian tyrants. That opened the world to 2,200 years of tyranny. Some wars have to be won, whatever the cost. And several of them are unfolding now.

To hell with gods, where they belong, as they are in the image of yesterday’s all too imperfect people. Superstitions, religious or not, will be tolerated if, and only if, they are compatible with the Republic. If not, they have been, and should be, eradicated.

Patrice Ayme’

How Civilizations Go Down. Why There Is Hope

Gloom and doom go only that far. A number of commenters, or authors such as Machiavelli, entertained pretty abysmal considerations on humanity and its future.

In the case of Machiavelli, pessimism was understandable: he rode two horses condemned to decline and fall, namely the Republic of Florence (which was turning into a plutocracy), and Caesare Borgia, Cardinal at 18 years of age, who later resigned his church position in an attempt to seize power in Italy, a place where Spain had invaded the south (freed centuries prior, by the Franks, from the Muslims), France was trying to hold onto Naples (but lost because the Spanish general in command was too good). Most of the peninsula was covered by forts and domains which had feuded for centuries.

Nowadays, we have grounds to be optimistic. I will explain why below. However with a caveat: history is now flowing extremely fast, as we are approaching a technological and computational, thus theoretical singularity.

We Already Have A Better Understanding Of What Brought Rome Down The First Time, We Can No Doubt Avoid It, The Second Time, With Even More Understanding

There are three reasons why civilizations collapse: invasion, ecological collapse, plutocracy.

I use all the time analogies with Rome’s Decline and Fall, yet on a much grander scale than Edward Gibbon. I root firmly the Decline and Fall as starting in 200 BCE, with the rise of plutocracy. There are a lot of deep analogies between what happened then, and what is happening now.

Yet we also enjoy major differences with Rome. To avoid Rome’s fate, we have to cultivate these differences. (And our gaze turns towards the European Union.)

Rome was a quarter of humanity, and Roma was ALL the civilized, and Republican influence zone. Yes, China, India, Persia, and well before Egypt, were civilized. But only the only drowned and expired Sumerian cities could pretend to have a high Republican index: Sumer invented the bicameral system still in use today. Persia did not, China did not, and, as far as I know, neither did India.

But Rome, like the top Greek cities, was a Republic. However, most Greek cities crashed and burned within a century or so. Rome built a huge empire, and lasted so long, it’s not clear it ever stopped. Although it declined, and fell, it got up again, as the Franks engineered and observed. Thus Rome founded the present political system

Persia was advanced enough to seriously bother Greeks and Romans, it was only or equal civilizational level for a fleeting moment under Darius, and in the late Sixth Century (thus, 1,000 year later). (This is my own observation/theory, sure to rile up some out there!)

All the neighborhood of Rome was vastly inferior. Although the Celts were superior in ocean going ships and metallurgy, and even captured Rome in the Fourth Century BCE, their abominable religion was quite a drag.  Actually, it was such a drag, the Celts embraced Greco-Roman civilization even before Julius Caesar showed up with his ten legions.

The Persian religion, Zoroastrianism was very advanced, arguably more so than Christianism (which copied many of its elements, in particular the obsession with truth and the logos, thanks god). The Middle East got tied down by the instauration of “hydraulic dictatorships” all over. The Persian/Iranian/Mesopotamian ensemble was a vast military mess which never recovered imperially, thus politically, from the People of the Seas invasions.

Now the situation is quite different.

First, the USA is a EUROPEAN COLONY.Rome was not a colony; it was initially occupied by Etruscans, themselves one of the People of the Sea. But, at the same time, the Etruscans civilized Rome. Rome also got civilized by the “Magna Grecia”, the Great Greece of Southern Italy, stating in Nea Polis (Naples).

Second, the mother ship, Europe, gave birth to a gigantic empire. It’s not just that European colonies control the Americas and Australia. France, the USA and Britain Exclusive Economic Zones, EEZs, covers much of the world’s exploitable oceanic depths.

Although weakened by its own crazies (Prussia/Germany/Nazis, Mussolini, Franco, Lenin/Stalin and their subordinates), plus major American plutocratic maneuvering, and in a bad state presently, Europe not quite done yet. After all the good guys (French Republic and British pseudo-monarchy) won. Now the French Republican systems, and monarchies to the same effect, cover Europe. Germany is sister republic to France, in particular.

Third, the Roman Republican system spread way beyond Europe and her colonies. China and India, and most of the rest of the UN have actually adopted (and adapted) many of WESTERN civilization’s better sides. However, China is still a dictatorship, and (partly) India a mess.

Another difference with Rome starts with a similarity: Rome got in a huge ecological crisis, starting around 100 CE. The Romans could not understand what was happening. They said:”The world is getting old”. Well, what was happening is that Romans had exhausted the soils, and the mines. However we know what they did not: tremendous technological progress can enable to change exploitation regimes.

Thus, the fourth difference with Rome; a huge CO2, GHG, Climate Crisis is incoming, but everybody knows about it, and fixes are in sight. A crisis is an opportunity as the Chinese would say.

Hope? People have to learn from history, and that means, the real history. Hyper maneuvering by USA plutocracy happened in much of the Twentieth Century, and is still ongoing right now. People can’t understand that, as long as they don’t realize that, without American plutocracy, Hitler just won’t have happened. At least, not happened as catastrophically as he did.

But there is hope that people, thanks to the Internet, realize that they have been manipulated in both what they know, and what they can hope to achieve. In particular, Direct Democracy is in the best position to succeed ever. The Athenian Republic found difficult to achieve Direct Democracy, because it did not have the Internet. The average Athenian voter was one day’s travel away from the voting booth. Nowadays, the average voter has her, or his hand on the voting device, namely the smartphone. No more excuses.

Objections can be raised. The preceding was a partial answer to several commenters on this site, John, Aaron, GlouconX, Eugen… The latter jumped on Machiavelli to object to Direct Democracy; however, Machiavelli was not just an author and philosopher. Like Plato, and especially Aristotle, he was a vested ACTOR of the disasters he described, and thus deeply biased, all the way to the greatest depths of the human soul. People who have interest to be stupid, will be stupid. Be it only to forget the fools leading us by the nose. Direct democracy is the answer to stupidity.

However, there is snow outside and further comments will be delayed until enough snow will have been mastered by the imperialistic author of these lines. Hey, it may be the last snow ever, let’s enjoy a cold El Nino, while it lasts! Non-Linearity is ready to ambush us. Let’s build memories while we can, be it just to be melancholic later… being of many minds is what intelligence is about.

Patrice Ayme’  

Solstice Song

So this is the Solstice,

And what have we done,

We, the civilization of Humanity,

The only one there is,

Our Earth, her Moon, our biosphere,

Once more around the Sun: another year over, a new one just begun.

In this dark universe, we have brought our lights, our lonely lights,

Gentler than all others, peering through the night,

Dark Universe, Enlightening Humanity. Light of Moon, Enlightenment of Thinking, Throwing Light On A Fragile Future That Better Be Human

To our Moon, we may owe our life, the Enlightenment of Humanity, the snows of temperate climate, which helped.

Merry Christmas, Roman Saturnials, Celtic Yule,

Our northern ancestors celebrated that birth of the year, ever since they created edible plants, and took care of them,

Eons ago,

Well before their words could come to us.

I hope you have fun,

The far and the dear one, the old and the young,

A very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year,

Let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fear,

To use your minds as much as,

This civilization needs to keep on going,

Minimizing pain, maximixing love.

And so this is Christmas,

Verily We are the Anointed Ones.

For weak and for strong, for rich poor alike

The world is so wrong, yet so right.

No doubt a heavy, confusing, exhilarating,

Cross for us to bear,

No need to go the gym,

Exercising our minds is plenty.

And so happy Christmas,

For black and for white, for yellow and red ones,

Let’s stop all the fighting, which brought nothing good

And start those Jihads we really need,

Smartly discarding those we don’t.

A Happy New Year, let’s hope it’s a good one

Without any fear, to assume what we are,

Anointed to pursue,

Thought in the universe.

We hope you have fun

The near and the dear one, the old and the young,

A very Merry Christmas, a happy new year, let’s hope it’s a good one.

Those wars we don’t need are over, if you want it,

New wars have begun, which we really need,

Just to save our biosphere, our sanity, our civilization.

Merry Christmas:

It’s not a question of never more wars over the horizon,

It’s a question of how we fight, and why.

Humanity never rests,

Thinking is a debate,

Debate is combat,

Humanity means ever more dashing,

Incomprehensible, yet enlightening thoughts,

Where gods never threaded before,

Made obvious for all to see.

Humanity means ever more science, and fiction,

Humanity means going to Mars,

And well beyond, Plus Oultre, as Charles V put it,

Humanity means going thermonuclear,

Humanity means never aging,

Humanity means ever anew,

Thinking through everything.

Humanity means never any return of the same,

Humanity means there is no horizon,

But for the next one,

And the one after that.

Humanity means love for us shall lead us,

Ever after.

So enjoy,

Enjoy your Earth and her Moon, ever rotating around their Sun.

Life has been an ever-changing journey,

Ever since it started to evolve, more than four billion years ago,

Ever faster,

Ever more potent,

The greatest change is upon us now,

Life, thought,

Will blossom across the galaxy,

They have to, just to survive,

And we are in charge,

So happy Solstice,

We are going to need ever more happiness,

To conquer all,

Starting with ourselves.

Patrice Ayme’

Homo Naledi, Or What Does “Human” Mean?

What is it, to be human? Philosophers, prophets, priests, legislators, dictators and the sheep have been pondering the notion, since there are civilizations, and they wonder. Science, that is, facts, can increasingly contribute to the conversation. And it is taking surprising twists and turns, all the way into the bowels of the Earth.

Paleoanthropologist Lee Berger pleaded on social networks to find “tiny and small, specialised cavers and spelunkers with excellent archaeological, palaeontological and excavation skills”. Was the excavation of a mysterious hominin in the Rising Star Cave in South Africa more circus than science?  “Underground astronauts” had to squeeze through a long, narrow chute less than 25 centimeters wide, to drop 30 meters into a fossil-filled cavern.

At This Point, Homo Naledi Is A Striking Mystery In Many Ways

1550 fossils representing more than 15 individuals of a strange new kind of hominin, named Homo Naledi were found in a nearly impossible to reach cavity. The fossils are still undated: there is no stratigraphy in a cave 100 meters in, past two siphons. However, they confirm spectacularly what we already knew:

1. There were, many profoundly different ways to be human. (We already knew this from the existence of Homo Florensis, who is very far from Homo Sapiens in physiology, but not achievements: he came with lots of sophisticated tiny weapons.)
2. The Eurafricasian supercontinent enjoyed many areas covered with extremely diverse species of hominins. Homo Sapiens Sapiens is the fruit of a huge amount of group selection among vastly different possibilities on how to be human.

Although the fossils are still undated, making it hard to know where they sit in the human family tree, and, in particular, if they are ancestors to us, they already reveal a profoundly different way to be a member of our genus Homo. More than 60 researchers agree on the picture of “a relatively tall, skinny hominid with long legs, humanlike feet, with a core and shoulder that is primitive,” Berger says.

Paleoanthropologist T. Kivell of the University of Kent (UK) found that bones in the wrist were shaped like those in modern humans, suggesting that the palm at the base of the thumb was quite stiff,  allowing forces to spread over a larger area of the hand than in more primitive hominins—a trait associated to tool use. However, H. Naledi had a weird long thumb and long, curving fingers, associated to climbing trees.

Hand Homo Naledi: Climbing Is What Humans Do

The foot is so modern, it may have been capable of not just walking, but running.

And what were those Naledis doing, so deep inside the cave? Datation is crucial. 300,000 years, or three millions? Were the Homo Naledi there for burial, caught there by a catastrophe, or carried there by other humans more recently? We don’t know. Only one owl and a few rodents accompanied the 1500 human fossils.

All we know is the big picture: that humans were all over, all over Eurafricasia, and all over all possibilities of what humanity could be.

Patrice Ayme’

Ancient vs modern ethics: a comparison

Ethics As The Enlightenment Of The Dark Side

Morality is about the behaviors (“mores”; from “mos” genitive, “moris”; one’s disposition, manners, customs) which have long been viewed as best to the group. Thus morality is the software which (is viewed as) enabling group survival best. The word “morality” was coined by Cicero, and duplicated the etymology of the term used by the Greeks for the same purpose: “ethics”.

Ethics is the most important field for our times, as the power (kratos) of Sapiens is reaching some sort of singularity, from creating transgender people to wrecking the climate, let alone soon making quantum computers (and thus Artificial Consciousness).

All humans come equipped with an intrinsic, default ethics: human ethology, selected by millions, tenths of millions of years, of biological evolution. It’s the divinity inside. Still, culture enables it.

Our lives are influenced by, and, to a large extent made of, how we act. However, “life” is more general than just “acts”. It’s also all what was, and is experienced, felt, all what is imagined, dreamed for, and desired. Thus, our actions are often predicted by our inclinations. Indeed, one should go back to the Ancient Greek notion that philosophy and ethics are all about how we live. More than simply how we act.

Socrates is widely viewed as the father of, all too much of philosophy. All too much, indeed, because Socrates made a huge mistake. Socrates believed that lack of goodness was just about ignorance. Well, true, ignorance can cause a lot of evil. But was Stalin just ignorant? Ignorance is not what defined Stalin. Malevolence is more like it. Malevolent enough to crush Hitler, among other feats.

Hence malevolence does not need ignorance. It often does better without it. Had he been smarter, Hitler could have killed much more people: ignorance curtailed his achievements.

Evil is its own divinity, its own fundamental cause. Socrates, who valued knowledge so much, completely ignored the Dark Side. And that ignorance was, indeed, evil.

Ignoring the Dark Side is a mistake that neither Christianism nor Islamism committed… Perhaps to excess (as they both seem to laud it: both the Bible and the Qur’an have “verses of the Sword”, which, in both religions, required to kill “unbelievers”; see Luke 19; 27, and Sura 5 verse 9).

In any case, the Dark Side is real, and not very surprising in a species which reach supremacy by eating other animals. Ethics always ignored it at its own risk. As Socrates found out when he had to die, for his naivety in ignoring the Dark Side. Of his own students!

There are more comments to be made about the essay below:

1.  Kant’s silly metaphysics of the “moral imperative“, up in the air, yet brought to ground as obscene submission to authority, helped to bring Nazism… In view of not just the blatant evidence, but according to what the Nazis themselves pretended (Nietzsche seemed to have guessed Kantian “morality” would lead to this unfathomable disasters, hence his wild attacks against what he condemned as German herd mentality).
2. Not only did Nazism sink nearly all pretense to ethical authority that most of German inspired philosophy could have, but it revealed ethical problems similar to the famous Melian Dialogue, but writ much larger, and even more ominous.
3. The discovery of ethology, and in particular human ethology, (ought to have) changed the entire field of ethics. No serious philosopher can pretend otherwise. And this brings us right back to the contemplation of the Dark Side, one of the two pillars human supremacy rests on, as if Atlas on two legs.

Patrice Ayme’

How to Be a Stoic

Ethics — as a branch of philosophy — means a very different thing today than it did once. And that, perhaps, is a mistake. There is an excellent article over at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, by John-Stewart Gordon, discussing the topic, that is very much worth checking out. Here are the highlights.

The first, and arguably most important, thing to understand about how the Greco-Romans conceived of ethics is that they regarded it as the study of how to live a happy life, not (as in the modern sense) the study of which actions are right or wrong. Gordon mentions the example of “justice,” which the ancients saw as a character trait (a virtue), not as the idea of people having rights.

Accordingly, it is interesting to note that the words “ethics” and “morality” have revealing roots: the first one comes from the Greek êthos, a word related to our idea of character…

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