Heroism Needed To Survive The New Revelations

Human life is brutish and short, and that tends to make our wisdom brutish and short. However, a way to improve our lot is to attain better and fuller wisdom: even if we can’t make the world better, we can make the wisdom better, and bask in it, content to have achieved something important for us, thinking beings… Not forgetting that human beings have always been combat animals, fighting not just each other, but nature itself, the human condition, etc… and also fighting plain old mental inertia. The end result has been progress, and it has been considerable: in general, our ancestors would readily exchange their lives for ours. 

So a martial spirit is integral to the human condition in full… not as important as love itself, surely, because love is how we get started and instructed originally… But still, human life is not possible without combat, and the mentality to go with it, evolved by Homo over millions of years. Even evil is part of the slightly monstrous human condition, as it plays the role of limiting human impact in such a way that the ecology survives… because, without ecology, there is no human species. 

Humanity is now engaged in the greatest conflict ever. Not just the conflict of democracy and infamy (as with Russia attacking Ukraine). But also the conflict of humanity with terrestrial ecology (the CO2 crisis being only one aspect). This is not the time for whining, but the time for Mars in the service of hopeful intelligence. The time for heroism has come.

Europe has been fearing the reckoning that the time for the ultimate war, the war against mental inertia, had come. With mental inertia disguised as pacifism or brain dead ecology, there is no hope.

Mental inertia is one of the greatest factors of the psychology driving history: Russian autocracy built the world’s largest empire, over seven centuries, and this efficent, relentless brutality, is deeply embodied in Russian culture and psyche. When Lenin killed the Tsar, he killed the monarch, to take his place, with the exact same dictatorial mentality disguised as the exact opposite of what it was, a majority (which is what “Bolshevism” means). 

Similarly, but more recently, mass German culture has long made obedience to masters its prime directive (same as Kremlin based Russia since 1300).

Ces deux-la sont faits pour s’entendre…

So Germany needs masters to obey and in the modern era, thanks to who have been effectively double agents such as Schroder or Merkel, Germany has found in Putin a new master…. And said master copies the trick which Lenin, Trodsky and Stalin used, claiming to defend the world against “Western” abuse. (Ironically, Lenin and Stalin, while conquering Ukraine, killing millions, also made it into a republic, to soothe the survivors, and Ukraine became a co-founder of the United Nations.) 

This German mindset, of finding a master to please comes in part from lack of self-awareness. Germany is unaware that German war criminality of the racist type arises from this desire to please dictators. Eighteenth Century Prussia, which, partly thanks to British help, ended conquering Germany, lived off the racist mood it used against Slavs and Jews. Prussia was led by militaristic dictators.It’s the so-called “Prussian General Staff” which attacked the world on August 1, 1914… An attack which was itself a war crime, naturally followed by atrocities in neutral Belgium.   

More than 40 democracies have realized that the attack by the nuclear dictator of the Kremlin, who threatened to turn the world to “radioactive ashes”, is an existential threat to themselves… even more so than German Nazism, and this is why they have reacted so strongly (even Sweden and Switzerland who discreetly collaborated with Hitler when the going was good). This is why these 40 democracies are military allies of Ukraine (whereas in the first year of the Second World War, Hitler had powerful lallies such as Japan, Italy, and… Russia… France and Britain (and their empires) pretty much fought alone (Poland had been defeated by Hitler and Stalin, who turned around to attack Finland).

The present conflict is then the greatest world war ever in the number of participating countries… Those who don’t see it as a world war, don’t know how to count. If the US had given France in 19139, or 1940, the sort of support it is giving to Ukraine, the Nazis would hev been promptly defeated, instead of killing so many and ravaging so much.

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Nazism is the abbreviation for National-Socialism. The real Nazi Party was neither national, nor socialist: it killed around ten million German speaking people, which does not strike me as efficient nationalism, and, far from being “socialsit” was mostly the toy, and tool, of various plutocrats (some in the US, some in Russia, some even in Italy as Hitler himself complained to Rommel… using the word “plutocrat”… adding that he detested having to sit with them and exchanged pleasantries).

Now in some ways Nazism succeeded to bring an ephemeral good life to most Germans, as long as they had peculiar “racial” credentials. That was paid by a moral apocalypse, borrowing money and the future, and also by stealing various minorities and opponents.

Putinism has also made life superficially better for many Russians, yet, as in Nazi Germany, that was paid by augmenting inequality and corruption, expelling intellectuals, rejecting an ever smarter socioeconomy, destroying critical thinking, establishing dictatorship, and borrowing from the future by creating a commodity dependent economy.

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This has become a small planet, and democracy can’t share it with nuclear armed dictatorships. Whether nuclear armed tyrants can share the planet with each other is irrelevant. In this world war, most democracies, nearly all the most advanced ones, are fighting for their survival in Ukraine, and they know it. 

This is indeed the time of the great revelations (apocalypses in Greek). Only heroism will carry us through. The era when heroism is necessary has come.

Ukraine is showing the way.

Слава Україні!, Sláva Ukrayíni!
Patrice Ayme

Caesar was assassinated just before he was going to leave with Rome’s best army ever, by a long shot, to solve the Persian and German problems, in one giant scythe move, mostly from behind. Augustus and his successors did not solve the German problem, so Rome was invaded by Germans. The Franks would solve the German problem over three centuries (~500-800 CE) through a direct assault… Shortly afterwards, by the Tenth Century, the Saxons became the most ardent defenders of Romanitas, and saved Europe from the savage Hungarians…… The Persian problem later became an Islamist problem, when the Arabs, armed with a war like religion, Islam in its Sunni, then Shiah versions, conquered Persia… To some extent that problem has not been solved yet. Caesar died in part because he was seriously too heroic, going into the Senate unarmed, and with Marcus Antoninus (who was held in conversation at the door by one of the co-conspirators… Caesar and MA were redoutable hand to hand fighters).

If Israel Is The Elected People Why Vote Again? (Thus,) Does the Biblical God Want To Kill The Jews?

Israeli philosopher Omri Boehm asks in the New York Times: “Did Israel Just Stop Trying to Be a Democracy”?

I generally do not comment much on Israel. My reasons are deep, tenebrous, far inside the vigorous flames of the circles of hell at the center of my philosophical system, sustaining the whole thing, just as the sun-like molten iron heart of Earth supports the heavenly biosphere… Just as the Dark Side supports the Enlightenment, as the Yin and Yang define each other…

But, as the New York Times itself decides to show some guts, so must I… I will not be outdone by commoners! (A very extended version of my published comment is below; it was approved by just 2 people, whereas comments in the Israel Uber Alles style, were approved by more than 100… Serious Jews are into introspection…)

Satrapies (subordinated plutocracies) were small in the West immense in the east. In any case, the Achaemenid (“Persian”) empire was extremely multiethnic… And extremely advanced: news came from all over the empire to Persepolis in one week with an efficient road network, and a pony express… (The real extent of the empire was even greater than that, going all the way to Ethiopia, and Oman was part of it…)

Dr, Boehm writes:”Last week, Israel’s government pushed through Parliament a new law calling Israel the “nation-state of the Jewish people.” That statement may sound like a truism — and in some respects it is one — but the implications of it officially being made are monumental.

In 1948, the Declaration of Independence, the text that marks the founding of Israel, created a Jewish state that would ensure “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.” Since then, the question of how Israel could be both Jewish and democratic has been the object of fierce controversy.

The effort to guarantee equal rights for non-Jews has at times seemed like trying to square a circle. Last week, Israel gave up on even trying.

… implicit nod to Palestinian self-determination was driven by an overriding concern for Jewish interests, not Arab rights. In May 1948, there were about 600,000 Jews and some 1.2 million Arabs living within Palestine’s borders. With Jews in the minority, the Jewishness of a democratic Israel could only be ensured if Palestinians had a chance at self-determination. In other words, Israel’s foundational twin pledge (to be both Jewish and democratic) was hypocritical…

The system’s original contradictions are now being laid bare. Of the more than 8.2 million people living in Israel’s recognized borders today, roughly 73 percent are Jewish and 22 percent are Arab. But of the 11.8 million people who live in Israel and the West Bank, roughly 56 percent are Jewish and 40 percent are Arab. And as the prospect of a viable two-state solution has receded, so has Israel’s promise that it would provide full equality to non-Jews.

In keeping with this evolution, last week’s nation-state law says that, “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”

***

This picture symbolizes the problem. The two mosques visible (gold Dome of the Rock, etc.) were built on TOP of the Jewish Temple. OK, it may be better than latrines. But when we read that Muhammad, after his death, flew to Jerusalem on a winged horse… a heady mix of Judaism and Hellenism (remember Pegasus?)… one finds itself confronted to a fable for little children having turned lethal, for real… The Star of David is nearly two millennia older than Islam….

The theory that ethnicity commands citizenship was made most famous by the Nazis. However tribalism above anything else is one of the oldest, most primitive, and deleterious, not to say savage, lethal and criminal, ideologies. All great empires triumphed, because they rejected it, wholesale. This is what made them great. For example, the Achaemenid empire, which extended from Greece to India and Ethiopia to Central Asia, was extremely multiethnic. The Greco-Roman empire was extremely multiethnic (and so is its descendant empire, “The West”). China and India were multiethnic.

Multiethnicity is not the end all, be all: it doesn’t prevent intellectual fascism, nor, of course, the political type of fascism, as the Persians obdurately demonstrated in the last three millennia…. However, it is conducive to it…

A multiethnic empire is forced to admit that there are higher principles than origins and appearances.

Those higher principles are well-known: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.

These principles are secular, they don’t depend upon the common superstition that the tribe at hand was chosen by “god” to be tops! Or the elected people”, or even the definition of “man” (as happened in many tribes).

The “Elected People” theory backfired spectacularly in the confrontation between the Jews and their mental offspring. First in the Fourth Century, Roman emperor Theodosius I legislated that the Christians were the Elected People, and “heretics” (“those who made a choice”) were to be burned. Finally the “Elected People” theory, reinforced by the Christo-Darwinist mindset led to apply the “selection of the fittest” to Judaism: the Nazis insisted that they were the “Elected People”, elected by their own will, not a “god” scared of shrimps and hogs who insisted on sexual mutilations…

The irony, then, is that the Jewish god is of an inferior sort, scared of hogs and shrimps. Hence the Jewish god favors superstition heavily: doesn’t it favor its “elected people”?  Actually it’s no favor to believe in all the stupidities in the Bible: it makes those who believe in them incredibly dumb. One may argue that they are made dumb on details. No. They are made dumb on the principle that dumbness has to be the ultimate ruler.

Thus, paradoxically, the Jewish god, who defines Israel, is its worse enemy. How did that occur? The vicious tribal fascism and exterminationism found in the Bible was a great help in the dog eat dog world which followed the simultaneous collapse of all the civilizations of the Middle Earth around 1117 BCE and, or, from the “conspiracy of the Sea People” (Pharaoh dixit)… Although versions of desiccated Egypt survived, and Greece would revive, mightier than ever, within three centuries.

The vicious exterminationism found in the Bible provided a justification for the methods Israel had to use, simply to exist. Before the Muslims crow:’We told you so!’, let me point out the original, literal version of Islam has exactly the same problem… And just as with Israel, that was the key to its early success. It’s no coincidence, but causation: in the grander scheme of thing, Islam is just a variant of Judaism, endowed with a similar ultra-violence (the Qur’an quotes approvingly Lot in the Bible on how to treat homosexuals:”with a rain of stones”; the Bible is the constant context of all of Islam, the “Messenger of god” Muhammad’s fundamental theme being that Jews and Christians didn’t abide correctly by the unvarnished Bible).

All this ultra-violence and ultra-discrimination? All the way to the ovens.

***

So why am I (nevertheless) pro-Israel? (But one should push my patience too far…) It’s not just a question of the enemy of my enemy being my friend. (Moreover, it’s not clear who is friend, who is enemy!) It’s not just a question of historical justice: Judaism is more than twice older than Islam. When the Islamists established mosques on top of THE temple of the Jews, they were symbolically put their feet on Israel’s face.

The Roman emperor Hadrian had kicked the Jews out of Jerusalem after the second Judaic War (135 CE). However, the decision, applauded by the fanatical Saint Augustine after 400 CE, didn’t have to be definitive: Roman emperor Julian had ordered the reconstruction of the Great Temple in 362 CE. Julian in the surviving Fragment of a Letter to a (Pagan) Priest: “I myself…intended to restore it [the Jerusalem Temple], in honor of the god whose name has been associated with it.” (Works, vol. 2., pp. 297–339.) Sixth-century historian Lydus quotes him, “I raise with the utmost zeal the Temple of the Highest God.”

Some may scoff:’Who cares about a Roman emperor?’ Well, our present regimes are descendants from Rome… As our law is, in its fundamental nature, Roman (extended to women and children). Moreover, morality (the mores) is entangled with law: what we consider legal is moral, and reciprocally.

In the best of possible world, the Middle East would free itself from the Biblical god: Arabic speaking peoples would harness the know-how of the Hebrew speaking people… But the complexity arises when one realizes that (some, many) Israelis, or, at least, Israeli companies, are so smart, precisely because their lives depend upon their smarts. The Dark Side, violence requires, enables and invigorates, higher mental functions. Such is the darkest of the dark.

Abominable are the flowers of infamy, yet beautifully mighty!

***

Conclusion? Tribalists are worse than fascists, or racists: they are followers of principles which reduce mental diversity, thus intelligence. Hence, in the end, tribalists are those whom much higher principles, which they are busy denying, subjugate. Israel may thrive right now by going solo in the world of decency and common sense. But solo is solo, and that’s dangerous, as all dead solo climbers, my friends, can testify.

Patrice Ayme

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Note: The NYT decided the following comment was to be lauded (and it was approved by 100 times more readers than mine!). I reproduce it as it is, complete with its atrocious orthography (the New York Times has to live according to its picks:

pirranha299

PhiladelphiaJuly 26

Times Pick

Why is Israel, a country the relative size of a postage stamp, the Worlds one and only Jewish state always singled out for opprobrium no matter what it does.  The Arabs have 28 plus countries. Is it too much to ask that they can have a law that makes it official that its a Jewish State? Can’t Jews have one little state of their own?

Israel is a Democracy..This law does not change that.  It has a vibrant press, minority represention in its democratically elected legislature, and an independent judicial system that acts as check on the executive and legislative branches. As is typical, If Israel is not perfect the anti-Semites and Anti-zionists will take one element they disagree with and conglate it to portray all of Israel as “a Nazi state” and demonize it as a threat to World peace. Of course they say nothing when the true dictatorships demonize Israel, point out Israel’s flaws as existential threats to “their Palestinian brothers” while ignoring  their own brethrens terrorism, racism, and militirism.

Israel as the only Jewish State will always be outvoted by the far more numerous Arab and Muslim States. The author cites ” Israel’s right wing government” in a pejorative sense. If it can be categorized that way it’s because the People democratically voted it in. If it fails it can be voted out. Thats democracy.

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The answer to this sort of logic is that we have seen it before, with Sparta. There was only one Spartan state. Sparta enslaved another city-state: Messene, to its west, a unique case in Greece. It didn’t finish well for Sparta… Although Sparta was an independent state for more than a millenium (longer than Israel), it ultimately disappeared. Athens didn’t: in the middle Middle Ages, Paris was considered to be the “imperial translation” of Athens: many of the best principles of Athens were taken over by Paris, a rebirth of Athens. Sparta though was dead, and stayed dead… Except if Israel takes itself as the new Sparta? Well, Sparta didn’t have the equivalent of Orthodox Jews: they would have been put to death immediately…

 

Syria, Garden Of Torturous Delights

What is going on in Syria? A zoo of human passions, and traditional patterns of history. A war is going on. There are simple wars, and complex ones. Syria’s war started simple, one dictator against his subjects, and it is now very complex, having become the war of all against all.

Big Bombs: Western Coalition Air Strike, Syria, 2015. The Islamist State Buries Underground

Initially the calm and secular Syrian society came of age, and a consensus was reached: the hereditary dictator got to go. However, the dictator, a trained doctor, son of tough and crafty tyrant, did not want to go, and those attached to him, all the way to Western Europe, in particular the City of London, did not want to go. Chess, Go, and other games people play have rules. War does not. War’s limit as those of the human spirit.

Don’t believe me? Remember then the Obama’s administration “signature strikes”: killing gatherings because terrorists also gather. On the face of it, the theory was as barbarian as anything in known history. Even Genghis Khan’s forces would massacre, but only after a fair warning: ”Surrender, or we will massacre you!” Even the Nazis, who did worse in secret, on a much larger scale, did not dare claim to be as vicious, for all to see.

Thus, definitively, progress is not a quiet, long stream. Instead it can go in full reverse.

Actors in Syria are now many: much of the Western world is involved, including Russia. Yet the motivations of Canada, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, US, Britain, France, Assad, etc.., are all different.

So what does Assad, initial master of that game, want? Initially, dictator Assad wanted just to stay in power, as all dictators do. But then, his strategy to free the Qur’an fundamentalists worked. He helped them, be it only by purchasing “their” oil, just like Turkey did (and sent back weapons, in the case of Erdogan; some people writing this in Turkey, got five years in jail, just for writing this…).

However, Assad is head of the Alawites. Alawites have their own Muslim religion. As the Qur’an promises to kill apostates and unbelievers, worshipping Mahomet and his god differently from one’s neighbor, is a grave, potentially lethal, fateful tragedy. Romeo and Juliet is nothing in comparison. The end result was that the Alawites were badly treated until the French showed up. Under the French, they quickly reached the highest spheres. Alawites have been reluctant to leave them ever since, especially considering that it’s not just a question of social status, but of survival.

Assad was able to get away with his savage repression of pacifist, secular civilians. Then he was able to get away with his manipulations of Islamists, freeing them and endowing them with enough power to become a justification to his brutal, homicidal rule.

Then a new mood surfaced: why not to just eradicate Non-Alawites?

How do I know (correctly guess) that such is the main motivation of Assad now? Too many strikes on schools and hospitals rather than enemy soldiers. That’s called reading between the facts.

So Assad is a monster, in the line of perfectly respectable historical monsters: just as Alexander the Great, or Little Father of the People Stalin, Assad sounds perfectly reasonable. Not to say that the “West” is not also an accomplice. In other words, it’s not just Putin who is a collaborator of genocide (Putin did save Palmyra, so he is not all bad… Far from it, on this subject).

And of course, Assad does not stand alone anymore than Hitler (or the Kaiser) did: when Cameron, France and the US stood ready to strike Assad, British MPs, copiously paid by the sort of fake prosperity the likes of Assad and his family bring to England, voted against striking him, blocking PM Cameron. Thus giving the pusillanimous Obama such cold feet, he had in turn to betray the French…

As we may see next, the mood of the so-called “West” is divided on the subject of striking monsters in a timely manner. In Syria as in many other places. Under the pretext of loud anti-”colonialism”, genocide is authorized… As it is perfectly compatible with the plutocratic doctrine, that evil should rule. Thus anti-”colonialism” is a fig leaf to hide the most significant naughty bits, namely free reins for torturous delights, hidden by tortuous denials.

Genocide of the mostly Sunni population of Syria is a delight many secretly savor. Too bad for the collateral damage.

Patrice Ayme’

MINIMIZING EVIL As the Greatest Good

Do the ends justify the means, or the means, the ends? Neither. A completely different answer awaits. We have to change our considerations of complex issues from unsophisticated, uncouth, flying blind, to something much more subtle, inspired by the turn towards more subtle analysis that physics itself had to take, in the last three centuries (just post-Newton).

“Maximization of agency towards greater good”… is the only good. Why?

Because the world is fast, and getting faster, exponentially. We are confronted to an increasingly violent shoot storm. Philosophy is not just a consolation anymore. Philosophy has become the only pragmatic way out of a gathering multidimensional cataclysm.

Yes, it is also an excretion storm. Humanity is excreting, all over the planet, creating lethal imbalances all over. Contemplate the Great Barrier Reef, in Australia, one of the world’s greatest biological structures. 2,300 kilometers long, 350,000 square kilometers in area. Yet, it is suddenly threatened by utter destruction. Why? Australian agriculture, all these plants, eaten by all these hungry vegetarians, out there. (In full truth, sugarcane is the primary culprit.)

Crown of Thorns, 35 Centimeters Across: Science Always Beats Fiction!

Yes, of course, the spikes will make you bleed, and they are venomous.

Massive production of plants requires a lot of phosphates, and other fertilizers. The latter gets into the sea. One thing leads to another. And then the babies of a killer starfish, the Crown of Thorn starfish, survive at roughly 100 times their natural rate. And the ladies Crown of Thorns are rather prolific: they produce up to twenty million eggs each. What is the Crown of Thorns prefered diet? Live coral. Crown of Thorns have already eaten their way through roughly half the Great Barrier Reef.

It is a science fiction situation, it requires a science fiction solution (philosophy will tell you as much). There are too many killer starfishes already. One needs killer robots. They are been developed: the starfish terminators have eyes, and they recognize Crown of Thorns with 99.9% precision, and inject them with bile, to which the Crown of Thorns is highly allergic.

Autonomous killer robots at sea: what could go wrong? Are sharks next? Of course! Not to terminate the species, but to make the swimmers safe (we could reprogram for plutocrats, some will insinuate…). Proper usage of philosophical evil optimization theory shows that, only this way, is evil minimized.

So welcome, killers robots!

Take another example: lack of awareness, and the evil Clintons, helped by the Bush of Oblahblah, let the financial plutocracy grow completely out of control. The silly ones will give money, clothing, even food, and feel emphatic, happy about themselves, and their pacific tendencies. Does the Will to Peace generate peace? A philosophical question. And the answer is awful: when a bushel of wheat goes from the American Middle  West to Africa, it is bought and sold virtually, by the financial traitors… No less than 2,000 times! Then they live in plush mansions. Of course those traitors are culprit. But so are those who let them thrive, namely all those ready to vote for crooks (names starting with “C”).

Shoot storm? Yes, not just animal waste and dirt that is flying, but outright bullets. To wit: extremely violent wars out of nowhere. Contemplate Rwanda, Somalia, the Islamist State. Worse could be around the corner: a (nuclear) war of India with Pakistan, quickly generalizing, is imaginable.

Science fiction, some will sneer, from the bottom of their feel-good ignorance.

But 2015 was considerably warmer than 2014, which was, itself, the warmest year, ever, by a long shot. Greenland is melting, fast. A collapse of ice shields in Antarctica, little talked about, looks imminent (at least to me).

Science fiction, some will scoff, and turn around, to study nothing. Yet, look at the Zika virus, propped by global warming. The USA is scrambling to study it. It did not exist six months ago, as a problem for WHO. Now it’s a total panic. Brazil just attributed 4,000 cases of microcephaly to that virus carried by mosquitoes. Four countries advised women not to get pregnant, more will follow. Tomorrow.

Genetic engineering may be a way to stop Zika. Otherwise, massive usage of poisons (which

already started). This sort of question are all highly philosophical, they are always choices between an evil, and the other.

In Libya, the West, led by France, destroyed a bloody despotic regime, practicing mass murder, but then, the West dropped the ball. On the philosophical ground of non-intervention, and Obama “leading from way behind” France, the West let the Natives argue between themselves to find out how they would organize this country, which is more than 4,000 years old.

That was a serious debate: Libyans have had some outstanding issues, of civilizational grade, for millennia (so do Algeria, Tunisia, even Morocco). One of these issues is whether the 3,500 years old alphabet could, or even ought, to be used, in parts where it still exists, rather than the youngish alphabet brought by the invading Arab armies, armed with their “Submission” (= Islam).

However, profiting from the chaos, the Islamist State moved in. And now it’s moving ever more, as the West is destroying it in the Orient.Now France wants to attack and destroy the Islamist State in Libya. Is this philosophically correct? (I think so, can’t wait!)

Philosophical questions are everywhere, and they are not just fascinating, but they have to drive policy. The situation is much more acute than when Seneca was advising emperor Nero, or when emperor Marcus Aurelius was playing stoic philosopher.

To all these questions, only one context in which to frame the answers: relativity. Relativity of knowledge, relativity of evil, relativity of consequences, relativity of action.

So yes, “maximization of agency towards greater good” is where it’s at. Not just where ethics ought to be at, but where action should be.

(Massimo P. and his friends have what seems to me roughly the same approach to goodness of “maximizing agency“; see: “From ancient to modern From ancient to modern Stoicism — part I“. It’s pretty clear that it was always the overriding principle of my approach to philosophy. I thank Massimo in passing for giving me the occasion of planting my claws and fangs into something juicy, in other word, making my thoughts more, well, effective by providing a debating ground.)

Can we find some inspiration in science? Yes, of course. Look at physics: energy is not of the essence. The essence is the potential, not the absolute energy. It is the potential which sits on the right hand side of the De Broglie-Schrodinger equation. Thus it’s the potential which acts (contemplate the Bohm-Aharanov effect).

Physics is dominated by the principle of least action (found by Maupertuis, during the Enlightenment). Least action of evil, such is modern stoicism. Keeping in mind that inaction is itself a form of action.

Notice that the old problem of the “ends which justify the means” has been completely reformulated in a much larger physical and philosophical universe. The entire, immense power of modern logic, mathematics and physics can then be brought to bear. It is not a question of carrying the equations over: equations constitute only logical foam. What is deeper than the equations, what really gets the logic going, is the context they represent.

For example, a way to formulate Quantum Physics, related to the Least Action Principle, is to consider the “sum over histories”… Well, just as human history itself. Causalities, entangled, are all over histories.

Ethics has got more complicated, but, in this vastly richer landscape, minimal energy, minimal evil solutions abound.

This is not just the great age of science, it’s the greatest age of philosophy. In the age of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, the empire was in danger, from forces, in and out. Now civilization itself is in question, and even worse, the biosphere itself is threatened. It’s an ecology most propitious to a blossoming of philosophy. The greatest questions ever, await the greatest answers.

And much inspiration has to come from science, whose main job is not just to find the facts, but sophisticated logics to give them meaning. Today’s most sophisticated logics and mathematics are far ahead of the best known yesterday.

We want goodness? Let’s maximize agency towards goodness. The Principle of Least Evil, in other words.

Patrice Ayme’

Euroskepticism’s Awakens Not

I have said it many times before, I will say it many times again: the Europe Union was set-up to avoid war. This is what Euroskeptics who claim to love Europe should be reminded of. Especially the British.

Of course there won’t be war, or even disagreements, between the French republic, and Britain. There is not the problem. The problem is in Eastern Europe.

A popular Polish magazine published a cover portraying five leading EU politicians – led by the German chancellor, Frau Angela Merkel – in Nazi uniforms beneath the headline “These People Want to Control Poland Again”.

Nice Uniforms. Poland & Hitler Became Allies In 1934. Poland Turned to France ONLY in 1939, After Spain Fell, and So Did Britain Agree to Follow France Against Hitler, After Poland Did, In 1939. Too Late.

The image on the front of the weekly Wprost showed Merkel, the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, (Socialist, SPD) European parliament president Martin Schulz, EU commissioner Günther Oettinger, and Guy Verhofstadt, the former Belgian prime minister, leaning over a map, from a wartime photograph of Adolf Hitler and his generals. (By now there should be more pictures of Merkel in Nazi uniform than of Kanzler Adolf Hitler himself!)

Germany is paying vast amounts of money to support the sustained and astounding expansion of the Polish economy since 2008. Some Germans of influence are starting to grumble (and they should).

Verhofstadt, who leads the liberal Alde group in the European Parliament, called the image  “outrageous”, adding that the EU was a “community of values” and that it was “the duty of all of us – commissioners, chancellors or not, to raise our voice when a government is endangering these principles and attacking democratic institutions”.

The Germans Schulz and Oettinger, have been critical of the conservative, severely Catholic Law and Justice (PiS) party, in power since October. It strengthened government control over the constitutional court, civil service and Polish public radio and television. Other Europeans are not amused. This problem arose with Austria’s flirting with the extreme right and Hungary’s Orban before. Both became non-sequiturs (Orban took measures many other European states adopted since, so Orban is not that bad).

The Francophone Martin Schulz described the Polish government’s actions as a “dangerous Putinisation of European politics”, while Oettinger proposed that Poland should be put under rule of law supervision, a (new) legislation designed to deal with “systemic threats” to EU values.

Meanwhile the war against Islam goes on (yes, because that’s what it is, sorry to break the news…). The Islamists attacked in Istanbul, Djakarta, Ouagadougou. There, in the Burkina Fasso capital, two famous Swiss humanitarians were killed by the local subsidiary of Al Qaeda (the USA announced in the past, erroneously it turns out, that they had killed its leader, who had made an attack on an Algerian refinery… Among other things).

This shows, once again, that humanitarianism, while not being exactly nothing, is clearly minor relative to militarism: humanitarianism is possible only when an empire has been set-up. Humanitarianism is possible only when a modicum of law already rules.

The Islamist State lost 20% of its territory in Syria in a year. The Islamist State is losing ground to Kurdish forces. However the Islamist State still controls 60% of Syrian oil production.

The price of a woman on the slave market of the Islamist State was 150 Euros. Holy Islamist script sanctifies slavery, alleluia. Meanwhile, the price of oil is the lowest in 12 years.

If we want humanitarianism in Europe, we need an empire first. A republican, democratic empire. Extreme, aggressive localization, fragmentation, nationalism, closing of the borders, competitive devaluations a la Friedman-Krugman, can only lead to war.

The latest Star War movie, episode VII, “The Force Awakens” does not hit on that idea. Instead it represents a “New Order” rising to destroy “The Republic”. This was indeed the situation between the “New Order” of the Nazis and the Italian fascists, against the FRENCH REPUBLIC, in the 1930s. But, at the time, the fascists had the help of a deus ex machine, the Anglo-Saxon plutocracy. It’s only the latter, and the influence it exerted on the British and American governments, making their behaviors at best ambiguous (Britain, Belgium), if not downright treacherous (USA).

Many Euroskeptics affect to present the meek and weak and inchoating European Union Federal structures as a “New Order” full of strength and evil. But the exact opposite is true.

When the Huns in the Fourth Century and the Mongols, a millennium later, bore onto Europe, it is the division, confusion, multiplicity and weakness of the European political structures which made their assaults possible.

Earlier the German invasions into the Roman empire (fascist, but peaceful and rich inside) had also be made possible by confusion and weakness. Especially military weakness. The latter was made possible by a lack of means consecutive to plutocratization (the hyper rich refused to pay taxes, hoping that, somehow, weaker official armies would still be able to weaken the enemy enough to make their own private armies able to control the situation…).

We are in a similar situation: a raid with a 15,000 men armored thrust by the French, and, or the Americans, would get rid of the Islamist State capital of Raqqa.

But, of course, the real problem is Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Why should the West tolerate those outrageous deviants? Because we are led by deviants ourselves. Lesser deviants, maybe, but still deviant.

So what of this Star Wars’ The Force Awakens’? Well, I did not fall asleep, thanks to the special effects, which are better than ever (as they should). But, contrarily to the rave reviews I read, the story was boring, an already swallowed, now regurgitated food, we had been served before. Contrarily to the (much decried) “prequels” it did not break any philosophical new ground. The Islamist State writes much better, much more innovative scripts, which dig much deeper in the human condition.

What should France and Germany do? Keep on unifying with each other, and forget the noise of those out to distract them from the imperial task at hand…

Patrice Ayme’

 

 

No Assimilation: Racism & Destruction

We have to be guided by history. The present ecological, plutocratic, immigration and Islamist crises (in order of importance) are informed by history. However neither our delusional “leaders” nor the herds they guide know enough history to inform decisively the present crises. Verily, history is the best teacher.

The Ancient Greeks and Romans were also guided by history, but we are in a much more advantageous position than they were: history in Greco-Roman times was at most 1,000 year old. Now the history we know of, much of it from increasingly detailed archeological work, is more than 10,000 years old.

An example: detailed archeology, recently done, revealed that the Late Roman empire was much richer than previously believed. There was no evidence of economic decay, far from it. So the catastrophes which struck it in the Sixth Century were of a different nature than Gibbon’s “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”.

Small Surviving Portion of Diocletian Baths (Circa 300 CE). Christian Hated Bathing, So They Destroyed Baths.

The Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Franks were stuck by the story of Troy, which was the limit of what they thought they knew for sure (modern archeology has not decisively determined the exact events of Troy’s adventures: it’s a work in progress). But they did not really know the truth: soon thereafter the “Greek Dark Ages” nearly obliterated history.

Something was learned though: the Franks (barely) avoided the total collapse which had struck the Greeks 15 centuries earlier. The Franks (like the Romans before them) claimed they descended from Troy. Whether that’s true or not, what they meant is that they knew how to avoid catastrophe.

And they did.

How did the Franks do it? By NOT doing what the Romans had done. Or, more exactly, by doing civilization in the spirit of Ancient Republican Rome, not the degenerated  self-obsessed imperial fascism of emperor Commodus and his successors.

I am a bit unfair to the successors here: Commodus perpetuated a mood actually launched by Augustus himself: Augustus, differently from his great uncle, Julius Caesar, had not understood the necessity to expand the empire. Augustus explicitly advised his successors to NOT conquer Germany. The advice was respected, and therein all the problems of Rome.

Had the Romans made a determined effort to conquer Germany, they would have had to reinstitute the Republic in full. If the Republic had been reconstituted, in full, Roman governance would have been much smarter, and capable of solving the problems thrown at Rome.

Thus, when speaking of war, and whining about it, the herd forgets that democracies make war best (as the Athenians demonstrated at Marathon, when they charged irresistibly the immense multitude of fascist imperial Persian storm troopers).

Thus, to push things a bit, to make war better, one has to make democracy better. Thus the army was an important factor of de-segregation in the USA.

Speaking of segregation, that was the problem which killed Rome the most. The Romans had basically renounced ASSIMILATING the Germans. Germans were viewed as hopeless, yet too strong, barbarians.

The analogy with what is going on today is total. The Germans came in with their own legal systems, their own Sharias. The Romans respected that. So states within the state grew (a bit as has been observed in France and especially Belgium, where at least one city should be de-Islamized).

And why were the Germans so strong? Because the state had grown weak, from not taxing the hyper-rich enough. Just like now. Lack of taxation of the hyper-rich has made Europe weak. Military weak. Germany is going to send 650 soldiers in Mali, to relieve the French Army there (which then will be able to attack the Islamist State). One is talking about pathetically small numbers here, for a country as large as today’s Germany. Meanwhile the French don’t have enough air refueling capacity to bomb as much as they could (Germany there is speaking to provide air refueling for the French Air Force).

When the Roman state decomposed in the “Occident”, very small numbers of warriors were involved, roughly equivalent to those the Islamist State and its various faction have.

Verdict: one has to forcefully assimilate, and make the Republic stronger, as needed to do so. Both phenomena are entangled.

And don’t try to assimilate Islam instead: that was tried before. Not just with Islam, but Christianism itself: to convert Germans to the empire, the Roman leaders (Constantine and his successors) used Christianism. Christianism is a sort of superstitious republicanism claiming all men are equal, under fascist god, etc…  Well, it did not work: Christianism devoured civilization, and did so, in particular, in the Orient. The Orient was suddenly destroyed, within a generation by the wars, and the weakness, physical, intellectual and moral, which fanatical Christianism brought. In particular it brought Islam (just read the Qur’an, Muhammad himself explains it very well!)

I am perfectly aware that the ignorant view assimilation as racism. This mentality was launched by a herd of European pseudo-philosophers who loved fascism (either Kaiser, see the deluded Bertrand Russell, Mussolini, Hitler or Stalin style). Loving fascism provided them with perks, including from American pluto-imperialism (which was delighted to see proper critique replaced by non-sense).

That assimilation was racism has been the main driving force to create racism and segregation in French society (against the very people those who denounced assimilation pretended to protect!) Same, and worse in Belgium, a state representing well the sort of degeneracy which affected Rome. Actually Belgium’s only justification, as I have explained many times, was to weaken France, by cutting off from it the fiercest part of Gaul (“Gallia”; reference on that: Julius Caesar). It’s working splendidly: France nearly lost the two world wars against fascist Germany thanks to the existence of Belgium as a mentally, and militarily tiny independent kingdom.

(For those who do not understand the preceding paragraph: all the recent terrorism in France was planned in Belgium, by pseudo, unassimilated “Belgians”, who were simply barbarians educated by the Sharia.)

Hollande seems to be taking his war against the Islamist State seriously; that’s a political U-turn: just as Rome needed to conquer Germany, the empire needs to reconquer the Orient . Because, indeed, before it got subjugated by Islam, with the results presently observed, the Orient was to Rome, and before that to the Macedonio-Greeks, and, even before, to the Zoroastrians (I don’t expect the admirers of the late Edward Said to understand any of this).

Philosophy has to guide. Philosophy which knows history, and thought about it, that is. But force is to observe that most so-called philosophers of the Twentieth Century knew no history, or then so little, that they could use it to justify their madness (this is an attack against Michel Foucault, Althusser, etc.). Simone de Beauvoir, who knew enough history to teach it to all of France under the fascist Vichy regime, was rightly infuriated by Foucault’s distortions of history. Now all these obnoxious, and cruel, self-obsessed dwarves are viewed as pinnacles of wisdom. No wonder our politicians went mad. Now they have to quit the Fourth Century Roman political line they have been repeating.

And be happy! Or the strength will not be found. One has to learn to be happy through the worst. Especially when it’s only bad news affecting others.

Patrice Ayme’   

Save Kobani, Remember Ibn Khaldun

Before the Syrian civil war, 400,000 people lived in, and around the Kurdish city of Kobani. The region is now mostly under Islamic State, aka “Caliphate”, ISIL, Daech, control. Hundreds of villages around have been evacuated. The Turkish border is along the city, just to the north. An estimated 180,000 from the region fled to Turkey in recent weeks. But many civilians are still stuck inside Kobani.

Defenders have only light weapons. The Islamists used bigger and better weapons, such as infantry hiding behind and around modern tanks.

Turkish tanks have been staying just outside, but have not intervened yet.

Erdogan, the new Turkish president (and strongman of Turkey) knows that its Western Allies, in Europe and NATO, wants him to order its tanks to roll inside Syria, and kill the Islamists.

Kurds inside Turkey have been furious against Erdogan’s inaction and demonstrated violently. More than a dozen died, just in one night. The Kurds know that Ankara fears and dislikes them: naturally Armenia and Kurdistan, nations which are several times older than Ottoman Turkey, ought to be made into free states recognized by the United Nations. Ankara, in that way, is similar to Putin’s Kremlin.

Thus Erdogan, all too happy to find an excuse to let a lot of Kurds die, does not want to intervene, he says, as long as its Western Allies do not formally establish a “No Fly” zone over Northern Syria. He claims to be afraid that Assad’s Air Force will intervene (Turkey has only heavy F16s not necessarily capable against more recent Russian fighters).

Hypocritically the USA claims that Erdogan is an hypocrite, because he should have noticed there is a de facto “No Fly” zone over Northern Syria. But, of course, Erdogan wins that one: he wants a FORMAL declaration, just to MAKE SURE.

For Erdogan to decide to use his army to help the Kurds is a huge decision, smacking of a near contradiction. For Washington, “No Fly” is just a signature on an order.

Erdogan is also peeved that he is asked to send ground forces officially and massively, into combat, while its Allies crow that they would not do such a thing, on a matter of principle (although the Western Allies do officially have “advisers” on the ground).

The question is this: If the USA and company are proud of refusing to fight on the ground, claiming that’s Politically Correct, why would they expect Turkey to do any differently?

The latest airstrikes were spectacular, they looked like mini nukes. And they may well work. And Kobani, were many Kurdish civilians are apparently still stuck, maybe saved. And it better be (although Erdogan announced it will fall, and so did some of its Allies).

However, moral superiority is where winning a war is at.

Moral superiority starts with moral coherence. So don’t ask the Turkish army to do the dirty work, while claiming urbi et orbi, that it is not Politically Correct, to do said dirty work.

The Tunisian born historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406 CE), comes to the rescue here, to explain what is going on. Khaldun was from an upper class political and judicial Arab family who had just been expelled from Andalusia by the Reconquista.

This to say that his cultural background was rich, as is often the case with superior thinkers.

Ibn Khaldun explained his way, and correctly the growth of plutocracy (he nearly said what I said). He also disserted at length on the nature of (some) empires.

Basically Khaldun said empires were about peace (this is certainly true for the large empires which lasted long. Here is an example: before the Goths stormed the core of the Greco-Roman empire, around 250 CE, the region had known 300 years of Pax Romana).

Thus, says Ibn Khaldun, the empire becomes so peaceful inside, that it is forced to recruit barbarians, outside, to defend it. Certainly, the Greco-Roman empire switched to that model after Princeps Augustus decided he was best defended by devoted, and very well paid, German troops.

Ibn Khaldun no doubt had the vivid example of the Muslim plutocrats in Spain calling to the rescue savages from Africa such as the Almoravides; I mentioned in “Walls Of Common Lies” that the ferocity of the Almoravides explains much of the bad moods that arose later in Europe, against, well, Islamists.

Ibn Khaldun thought that the high point of a civilization entails a period of decay (from the growth of a luxury economy, something I rephrase as the growth of plutocracy). The next cohesive group that conquers the diminishing civilization comes from the barbarians who were asked to defend it.

Then Khaldun says the barbarians then become refined, repeating the cycle; this is no doubt the story of the Muslim empire.

However, Khaldun’s cycles do not apply to Europe. Yes, indeed, the Franks became more refined: some Roman lawyers wrote in Latin a law for the Franks, a Lex Sallica, and Roman generals (starting with Constantine), incorporated them as the elite of the Roman army.

Yet, the Franks did not repeat the cycle… As they have clung to power ever since: all the present Western regimes descend from the Frankish empire (except for Russia’s Putin, and it shows; right, he is not really Western).

How did the Franks not repeat the cycle? By staying sufficiently barbarian; by cutting regularly, by force, the growth of plutocracy (hence the French passion for revolution). Equality under inheritance and near-equality in gender (and thus near equality in the inheritance of women… Although not as much as in Sparta), led to constant wars among factions, and wealthy, powerful families, thus preventing the growth of full blown plutocracy (that took nearly a millennium to blossom… And was soon under threat of multiple revolutions).

By the Fourth Century, the Franks fought their wars by themselves, and for themselves (although the French used a majority of German and Polish forces in the ill fated attack on Moscow in 1812, and then again, more successfully, massive amounts of African troops in the Twentieth Century against Prussian racist fascism… Including my own dad).

What Ibn Khaldun did not say was that the peace inside a vast empire is not just a benefit (as it sure was in Rome, or China, or India). Torpor inside was also a plutocratic trick to put to sleep an increasingly subjugated population.

When the West asks Turkey to send ground troops while refusing to send its own, it is therefore engaged in a plutocratic trick so old, that Ibn Khaldun already had described it, black on white, more than 6 centuries ago. It’s already bad enough that the Kurds are asked to fight with inferior weapons.

There is nothing wrong, but everything good, to fight the Islamists to death. And if it causes dormant cells and sympathizers to engage in terrorism, so much the better: being terrorized of irking terrorists is exactly how terrorism works.

And if fighting plutocrats in the Middle Earth makes Western youth impatient to fight those plutocrats who rule at home, that will be an even more striking progress.

Wanting to crush infamy, is an absolute good. Infamous is the belief that it does not matter what happens to children who live a few hours away. Protecting children is an absolute good. Protecting children, even other people’s children, carries  primordial moral weight.

Patrice Ayme’

Obama Right On Syria

Might does not make right, but right needs might.

My frienemies at the New York Times thought smart to pose as superior moral characters with two front pages editorials today on Syria, both entitled “Wrong On Syria”. They lambasted president Obama for doing what I told him to do (at last someone who listens to me!). What did I tell him to do? Bomb (the bad guys in) Syria. First I wanted to do in Assad the Plutocrat, but I admit that the Caliphate is an even juicier objective.

Once upon a time a Frankish-Mongol army entered Damascus (that was not long after the same characters, with Armenian and Georgian help, had destroyed the Caliphate in Baghdad). History does not just repeat itself, its very rich.

Civilization has to be defended. Obama has understood this. Annual spending, in constant dollars, by the Department of Energy and the Atomic Energy Commission on nuclear weapons research, development, testing and production:

Morality & Justice Without Force Are Not To Be

[It’s all right that you be wrong, as long as I can flatten you.]

One does not want to make the Roman mistake of edifying what came to known as the “Limes”… The limit of the empire, a succession of walls, forts, garrisons, and legions, all around the Empire. Thus, when the bad guys broke through the limes, there was nothing to stop them: the interior of the Empire was essentially defenseless. Very rich, and very defenseless. When the Goths rampaged through Roman Asia, the Balkans, and Greece, in the middle of the Third Century, it took years to send a Roman army after them (they immediately fled).

On December 31, 406 CE, the Rhine froze so thoroughly and suddenly, that entire German nations galloped across. Among them, the Vandals. By then, thanks to an austerity program, the Roman army was actually the Frankish army. The Franks, who had beaten the Germans several times in years prior, in Bavaria, were taken by complete surprise, thanks to this freak weather event. After a torrent of German nations (reminiscent of the “torrent of German tanks” of May 1940) pierced through the Alsatian plain, there was nothing to stop them. The Vandals charged through Gaul, and then Spain. They soon invaded rich and completely defenseless Africa, which had known peace, the famed Pax Romana, for 5 centuries.

Italy, and Rome, never recovered from this.

History exists, to inform us. Syria and Mesopotamia used to be part of the Roman empire, so Obama can argue we are back home.

Even earlier in history, recent, 2014 genetic studies show that Mesopotamian, Fertile Crescent farming came to Europe under the form of the farmers who knew how to do it. This result was obtained by genetic analysis of Greeks… who are therefore, at least, partly, Iraqis.

So the West ought to relax: the Middle Earth is where it’s coming from. Russia is eleven time zones across, but Mesopotamia is just a time zone away from Paris and London. It’s the suburbs. Time to take care of them, by subjugating the awful systems of ideas that festered there (without naming it, of course, some of the critique of Obama at the UN could be viewed as pointed straight towards the Qur’an, which contains therein an evil system of thought, in no way less Satanic than the one in the Bible, as the Cathars no doubt noticed).

The New York Times editorials stupidly argued that Obama and Hollande had no right to bomb Iraq, and needed a UN Security Council authorization. That’s doubly dumb: first, common sense, human rights, the teaching of history, can override the UNSC. Although India just successfully sent a probe to Mars, the UN, and is predecessor, the SDN, were fundamentally French ideas which were finally implemented by the USA in 1944 (San Francisco, Bretton Woods).

Secondly, of course, Iraq is a sovereign nation. So if the legitimate government of Iraq wants France and the USA to bomb the bad guys on its territory, that is its sovereign prerogative. And that’s exactly what happened.

OK, the situation is extremely messy: there are bad guys all over. But that does not mean goodness ought to sit on its hands. That was the mistake made in 1936, when the rogue African army of general Franco attacked the Spanish Republic. France announced loudly she would intervene, and then backed-off, while the Nazis and Italian fascists got emboldened. In the end, Franco and his professional killers assassinated millions of Spaniards, and the Nazis and fascists got trained in all sorts of ways. Meanwhile, the Western democracies got used to the idea that it was better to do nothing.

This time, the show of force is a lesson to the world. Obama said at the UN that force was the only language the killers understood. Yes, right. And one of these killers is Putin. The Kremlin dictator stands warned: if he wants war too much, he will get it.

Using extreme violence is not the best outcome for superior morality, but it is sometimes the one and only optimal outcome, as far as civilization is concerned. This is such a case. The New York Times can pose all it wants, it’s as wrong as it was in 2003, justifying the invasion of Iraq.

Patrice Ayme’

Show Strength To Negotiate With Iraq, Putin

Putin is doing what the Kaiser did, a century ago, and for roughly the same reasons: trying one’s luck with war is better than suffering destitution. Like the Kaiser, a century ago, Putin hopes to win, because the democracies are weak, in weapons and resolve. What could go wrong?

Ah, yes, this is less haughty a subject than the first female mathematician, to be given a Fields Medal. Moreover, she is Iranian. She studies practical things, like counting “simple” geodesics on hyperbolic surfaces, depending upon their length. (I am not joking when I say this sort of research is practical: another of the 2014 Field medalist research has already been applied, to… surveillance; Fields Medals were attributed this year to understandable mathematics… Instead of the sort of crazy math I view with a jaundiced eye, as it depends upon infinity all too much.)

Mathematician Mirzakhani In Isfahan

… In Isfahan with her parents. Isfahan is one of the world’s most beautiful cities. The artful architecture above is typical. Visiting such places, one can only be awed by the splendor of the human spirit, and feel compelled to contribute.

Now back to the dismal subject of the Twenty-first Century, out of control Czar. This is a serious problem.

Yet, here we talk about what makes all these fun and game possible, namely the pursuit of civilization. It depends upon crazy people and insane ideas, been kept in check.

The Kaiser was afraid of the Socialists inside the Parliament (Reichstag) that Bismarck had set-up. The Parliament’s power was fictitious. The Socialists wanted to make it real. Such was the inside pressure.

The outside pressure was an admission, by the heads of the military, the Kaiser himself, and his chancellor, top deputies, advisers: democracies were superior to the authoritarian, exploitative regime they profited from. Those German oligarchs recognized that the economic, political, and financial alliance between France, a democracy, and democratizing Russia, was increasing in economic, and thus military power, in a way that the German plutocracy could not match.

It would have been too much against their mentalities to do the right thing, and try to do what the Romanov Czar was doing in Russia: democratizing. Instead they decided to “work on the press”, and prepare the Germans for the world war they had decided to gamble everything on. That was December 11, 1912. (For a 2004 perspective of mine on that, see “To Make War, All You Need Is Love.”)

On June 1, 1914, Colonel House, the adviser of President Wilson of the USA, saw the Kaiser, and proposed him an alliance, against the “racially inferior” French. In exchange, the Kaiser would limit his battle fleet built-up (which upset the unable-to-keep-up British).

Of these little facts, these devils that truly propel history, conventional historians never speak: that is how they earn their keep. Well esteemed professors, their fate is little better than that of mice, scurrying for crumbs below the masters’ tables.

Putin is losing in Eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainian military has regained much territory, and cut off Donetsk, a city of more than a million, from the Russian military. Defeat is not what Putin wants, he wants an unending war, but one which he wins. Putin is proposing to his captive Russian public opinion, to send a “humanitarian mission” inside Ukraine. In other words, he is preparing a naked invasion.

What can the West do?

Go back to basics. Putin decided to attack Ukraine, after he saw that Western plutocrats, his natural allies, had enough control of the West to prevent a justified strike against that major satanic creature, Assad, son of Assad. That was shown by the defection of the British first. The Assad family has major plutocratic connections in London. Then, while French pilots were already strapped in their seats, Obama called off the attack.

If Assad, a dictatorial monster who started a huge civil war against pacific civilians who just wanted him to go, could get away with a poison gas attack inside Damascus that killed more than 1,500 civilians, obviously, Putin could get away with anything.

Putin wanted the Black Sea oil. That it belonged to Ukraine was a detail, now that Obama and the UK had demonstrated that Western civilization was in recess, and plutocracy reigned. Putin could do what he does best: grabbing what he needs. Like the Kaiser, he could see that gas and oil is all what held his empire together (most of the ex-Soviet “republics” have shown signs of exaggerated affection towards the European Union).

If the Kaiser and his generals had been persuaded that they would lose the war, they would have not started it: after the French nearly annihilated the German army at the Battle of the Marne, Von Molkte, who had done more to start that war than anyone else, was so deeply depressed, that he could not do anything anymore (he was secretly replaced). His mood had completely changed from the one six weeks earlier, when he mobilized the entire German army, catching the world by surprise.

So, if we want peace, we have to persuade Putin he will lose, should he pursue his policy of invasion and annexation. The best way to do this is to intervene in the situation of the Yazidi, an ancient, non-Muslim group hard pressed by the ISIS in Iraq.

This may seem a surprising position for someone who was vociferously against the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

However this is now. The ISIS, outwardly Islamist, and full of Jihadists, is getting lots of its backbone from the old army of Saddam Hussein. A demonstration of military power to help the Yazidi could, and ought, to be turned into a negotiation with some of the officers of that old army, and those who regret aspects of the Iraqi state that worked better under Saddam.

In other words: strike, but then negotiate.

There was never any serious negotiation with the secular Iraqi state, in the nearly quarter of century the USA has made war to it (in the hope of some USA plutocrats to grab its oil). Even the Neocons will have to admit that this time has come.

Of course, this is all very dirty, it’s how the sausage of civilization is made. But, if good people do not make it, to the best of their abilities, evil will be in charge.

And then, in the worst possible case, all intellectual pursuits will collapse, as happened after the Roman state streaked out of control, burned and crashed. Next time would be worse.

Patrice Ayme’

WAR CAN BE GOOD. Never So Political Correctness.

War can be many things. It’s fundamental to humanity in all ways, bad or good, smart of dumb, but always at the core. We make war, as we make ideas. We adulate celebrities, precisely because we are ready to adulate war chiefs. The astronomical genius Kepler declared, and waged, his “war on Mars”. It lasted 30 year . Kepler won: Mars followed an ellipse, not a circle, or some weird oval.

That war can be many things, some of them good, many necessary was understood by prophets such as Jesus, and Muhammad (or the much earlier and deeply influential Zoroaster). The Qur’an advocates “Jihad”, a war-like effort, as a core duty of the faithful. Some situations, those prophets said, are best dealt with the sword (for the record I do not approve of using the sword against “unbelievers” as Jesus and Muhammad seems to have advocated; instead I propose to smother unbelievers with ideas… of course, we don’t have the same notion of unbeliever).

Real war can sometimes be, not just justified, or justifiable, but the one and only solution: only heavy bombing persuaded the Nazis of the error of their ways, nothing else could have. War against those who want to wage nasty war for no good reason whatsoever is always justified. In front of ultimate evil, turning the other cheek won’t help the good, just quite the opposite: it will help the worst.

War Is The Essence Of Plutocracy

Dean Mitchell: “I have to disagree. The history of war shows us that there is always a vested interest in war that has nothing at all to do with justice. Justified war seems like madness to me.”

Nathan Daniel Curry: “…To turn the other cheek requires a very deep metaphysics to make any sense. The problem is why war repeats. The reason is our societal models. Patriarchy does not work. Only a triune society can intuit the complexity of human nature and hear the sense of lack that breed the myopia that leads to helpless people lashing out in cruel and pitiful ways. The truth is they are not helpless. It is the ego that preaches that doctrine.”

Hearing this argument, Florent Boyer smiled: “What about the Amazons?” Indeed, the Amazons! They really existed. Women princess warriors buried with weapons. So much for the patriarchy thing.

My Arrows Pierce Sexist Males

[470 BCE Greek vase representing an Amazon. Notice the pants, the skirt, the shield, and the arrows’ quiver.]

And so forth. With all due respect, all the objections above remind me of someone protesting a thunderstorm by pointing out that it damages leaves, except that smart insects can crawl and hangs below the other side. All true, indeed, but irrelevant to a family whose roof is been taken apart by a tornado.

Stopping war is not about calling Hitler “my friend”, and sending him love letters as the Mahatma Gandhi did. Stopping war is done by launching efficient systems of thoughts and mood.

The Franks shadowed the retreating Huns after helping to get them out of Orleans. A few weeks later, with the standard Roman legions headed by Aetius, and the Visigoths, the Franks crushed the Huns. 375 years later, or so, the Franks penetrated the three concentric rings that defended the Avars in Hungary, and destroyed them.

The Mongols of Genghis Khan, who descended directly from the Huns and Avars, remembered all this. So, after reaching the Adriatic in present day Croatia in the Thirteenth Century, they reminded each other that their weapons had proven of little use against the Franks (who had invented tactics the Mongols adopted). It was decided to stop the Mongol advance, and stay in the steppe.

That’s how one stops war. Through terror. Through past shock, future awe.

This master idea, that “Justified war seems like madness to us” was held by Central European Jews when confronted to Hitler. They clang to it with the intelligence of barnacles lashed by waves.

As I have observed, seconded by Hannah Arendt, that those “Jewish Councils” collaborators of Adolf Hitler. This deliberate, willing collaboration only incited the Nazis to go further. Instead, the Jewish Councils ought to have screamed bloody murder, and screamed for help from the French Republic. That would have made it easier for the French to declare war unilaterally on Hitler, without waiting for British agreement.

Those who believe there are no justifiable war, are not just mad, they are, with all due respect, the sort of people who enabled Adolf Hitler. And the like. And there are really a lot of Hitler-like leaders out there.

As I explained in the Will To Extermination, man is all about exterminating man. Complaining about war, is complaining about man. Instead of begging not to take part in war, ask what war is worth fighting, and which one to avoid.

In this light, Nathan’s eternal return of a state of war, sounds like the eternal return of man. That war repeats is not a problem. The problem is that the problems that made war the only solution, keep on repeating. Fortunately, change is in the wings. When the ocean starts rising 10 centimeters a year, and a billion people catch the fancy that they are not fishes, and would rather live somewhere else, while energy supplies get constricted, the military is going to be busy. The false debate of whether war is just in the mind, will vanish.

Especially as countries that have purchased pieces of other countries, try to impose their sovereignty.

Dean Mitchell: “I understand that position, Patrice, but the problem with Hitler was wholly contrived. Sniff out the danger when it is obviously there instead of encouraging it and there is no need for millions to die.

War is never an “only solution” except as a profiteering racket. Men go to war to act as pawns of the puppet masters.”

Patrice Ayme: Sniff out danger? Whatever, Dean, whatever. It did not happen like that. Hitler was not a the monster out of the depths, who surfaced like Godzilla, taking over the world. Quite the opposite. Hitler was the master tool of a massive conspiracy that involved Soviets, American, English, and even German overlords.

To this day, that conspiracy has not been “sniffed”. Mention it to the average Joe, and the reaction will be hostile: the notion disrupts the established order of thought.

The Devil is in the details, camping on one’s own good will, and self-admiration, is not a solution.

War is a solution, but it is rarely tried first.

The best example is France, from 1919 to 1939. France knew that the Germanoid superiority monsters, having got away with their demented crimes in World War ONE, would try again. The help of the British aristocracy (Lord Russel, Keynes are some of these famous double agents, on the intellectual side), and American plutocrats completely blocked the French Republic (Hitler got colossal financing from Henry Ford as early as 1920; while the entire government of the USA expropriated Germany before redistributing the proceeds to some of the most evil men in the USA… who found German henchmen to serve them, such as Schacht).

The French republic tried to stop Hitler and his fascist mentors for 20 years. Finally, on September 1, 1939, France gave Hitler with a 48 hours ultimatum to get out of Poland. On September 3, around 11 am, Great Britain and then France, declared war to Germany.

Yes, the Nazis were right, they did not want that world war (not yet! They were not ready). Yes, France started it. But it was a matter of survival.

Dean Mitchell: “Remove Hitler and the likelihood was that there would have been no war.”

Patrice Ayme: Once again, France tried her best. But France had in her way London, Wall Street, and even mighty German-American Jewish (!) plutocrats as the Warburgs. Yes, the Warburgs collaborated with Hitler, not, as the “Jewish Councils”, with the rat-like wishful desire of survival, but out of sheer greed for money and power.

The French secret services tried to break the Warburgs as early as 1934, while the French government tried to persuade Washington D.C. to stop the USA’s plutocrats support of Hitler. All that did was to make Washington hate Paris.

Dowd, historian at the University of Chicago and then USA ambassador in Berlin agreed 100% with the French. His best friend was Francois-Poncet, the French ambassador. Both used to amble the close by Tiergarten, the Berlin zoo, to escape Nazi eavesdropping, while fearing assassination.

Furious that Dowd could NOT get along the Nazi government, and his dire warning about those thugs, Roosevelt removed Dowd in 1937, and replace him by a pro-Nazi: Roosevelt was into helping his plutocratic class. In London Roosevelt put the outrageously pro-Nazi Kennedy as ambassador. And so on.

Hitler annexed 3 countries, invaded a fourth. Finally, Britain found its spine. At that point, France could only attack. What did the USA (plutocrats) do? Provide crucial military support to Hitler.

All of this has been occulted in official history.

But, yes, there are just wars, even if they killed 70 million, 4% of humanity. The Secession War, according to the latest, best estimates killed 3% of the USA. That, too, was a just war.

Bismarck said: ”Real philanthropy consists all too often into knowing to shed blood”. Bismarck, who was a great man in many ways, launched a lot of wars, and an empire, all quite successful, from his point of view, and yet bound to cause catastrophe because all too many Germans ended up confusing war and philanthropy. (Just as the present USA confuse plutocracy and philanthropy.)

So there is clearly a risk to overdo it. War can be an eternal return of the same, just worst: after two millennia of intense military activity, France has not recovered, by a long shot, the borders that Gallia (“Gaul”) had when the Romans started to invade it (Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Northern Italy… The natural borders, in other words, used to be in it, when the Romans were made to pay ransom to the Celts).

But then, again, when the Prussians attacked in August 1914, they committed war crimes and atrocities on a deliberate, industrial basis, as ordered from above, as soon as the first few days of the conflict. Surrendering to them, at that point was surrendering to barbarity (that was naturally the notion advocated by Lord Russell, a highest British noble, and thus a relative, spiritually speaking, of the Prussian aristocrats; the Kaiser was a descendant of Queen Victoria).

So it’s not just that “war is a continuation of politics by other means” (Carl Von Clausewitz’s Vom Kriege (On War) published posthumously in 1832). It’s not just that Bismarck’s more radical expression was correct. Let me go all the way, all the evolutionary way:

War is the continuation of life by the means of death, it’s what humans do. Forgetting this, is forgetting not just what humanity does, but what humanity is.

As I explained before, the unique position of humans as the apex creature for millions of years, has made it so. War is how man is regulated. Just as there is the law of the jungle, there is the law of man, and its name is war.

To ignore this, and switch to the “politically correct” mode, where wishful thinking is the absolute good, facetiously brings, even more war. The Nazis said so much about themselves that they were and wanted to be, “immer correct” (always correct), that they forgot the big picture.

That sea, now rising by nearly two centimeters a year in Bangladesh, means war. Those who ignore it, are collaborating with the coming war, the greatest humanity will have ever brought.

And those who want to mitigate the coming disturbance, need to be armed with the correct theory of war, instead of just making war to reality, armed with comfortably numb illusions.

Patrice Ayme’

Note On Amazons: Advanced technology, namely the bow and the horse, made women into as capable warriors as men. Women ride better than men, and they can be just as precise, if not more so. Some empires that brought the Amazon phenomenon were distinguished by multi-decadal war expeditions by their men folk (up to a documented 28 years in one case), so the women had to do everything, including procreating with alien warriors.