Democracy Against Fascism. So Boost Defenses: This Is World War Three.

This is a world war of democracy against fascism, it has to be taken with the utmost seriousness. Islamist Iran has chosen to help the Kremlin, and should be treated accordingly. Iran should be fought, and Israel should be aware that Iran is training in Ukraine. Silly Iranian drones produced in great quantity with tech grabbed all around the world, are having devastating effects. Not just in killing civilians, but in draining stocks of Ukrainian air defenses (which are refurbished S300 from the USSR, mostly).

Europe should not turn over-confident that Ukraine will win. Rifts may be appearing, because Germany is more willing to finance the US military-industrial complex… by purchasing US made systems rather than financing existing European ones which are similar or even better [1]. 

China is staying out of full involvement in Ukraine, but not out of sympathy for democracy. China is presently helping Russia a lot, for example, by buying hydrocarbons to Russia. Some experts claim that Russia would collapse in three weeks without Chinese help. An historical reminder: without Russian oil, Nazi Germany could not have fought, at all, in 1940. The Nazi tanks and planes would have stayed nailed to the ground. (Nazi Germany developped massive production from secret US Standard Oil process only later, and only later did Nazi Germany gain access to Rumanian oil fields, also in consequence of the defeat of France… Even then, Germany was not producing enough fuel, and thus, later in the war, German pilots could not be trained for little more than basic flying… This means that the alliance between the Nazis and Russia was crucial in 1939 to 1941… crucial to Nazu aggression…)

China is careful in not sending weapons to Russia that we know of, because it knows that it would lose if hostilities culminated into all out nuclear war. (In an all-out nuclear war with Russia, Western forces would direct nuclear fire not against cities, but against Russian nuclear forces. By precaution, they would also have to annihilate Chinese nuclear forces.) 

Fortunately, differently from what happened in WW1 and WW2, most democracies are reacting accordingly. Most democracies have understood that this is the war of one man against the world… So 143 countries voted against that man in the United Nations in October 2022.

Fifty (50) democracies are giving weapons or military help to Ukraine, including Sweden and Switzerland. The case of those two is interesting: Sweden and Switzerland, especially Sweden, helped the Nazis with their “neutrality” in World War 2 (Swiss help consisted in financial arrangements and crucial industrial production, for example the production of ball-bearings for Nazi war machinery… Until, by “accident”, the US Air Force bombed said factories…).

This time, confronted to this latest imperial fascist aggression, the USA is leading in the fight. This is a vast difference, with the years 1914-1917 and 1938-1940, when, very opportunisitically, cynically, and inhumanly, a treachorous USA let France and Britain fight for survival against fascism.

(The reason for the US not helping European democracies, for so many long years, when those were under fascist attack was that, as far as US plutocrats and the US Deep State were concerned, the colossal European empires stood in the way to the even more hummongous US empire to come. By weakening, damaging or even killing, France, Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands, the world promised to become  anew wilderness in which, helped by the US Cavalry, US capitalists could roam… A reproduction of how the US Wesr was won, … and exactly as it happened… This is why the US helped characters such as Mao and Ho Chi Minh, or even Khomeiny, and Muslim Fundamentalism, during that crucial juncture… Well done, Machiavellian style…)

In the present crisis, just as in World War One and World War Two, there is only one way out, the total defeat of fascism. Even more so, because, for the first time ever, a superpower used nuclear blackmail… On all concerned (the case of Japan in 1945 was different: the Japanese army had committed huge massacres, and was actually not blackmailed, but came to its leaders came to their senses, accepting surrender, within 12 hours of learning of the bombing of Nagasaki). 

Trying to mitigate and navigate around dictators is short sighted, especially when nuclear weapons are involved. Dictators, or at least the spirit which animate them, per their reigns, are intrinsically deranged and nilihilistic: they tend to prefer to die, rather than not to achieve their cruel goals.

In the invasion of Ukraine, nuclear weapons are involved, because of “nuclear blackmail”, an expression Putin himself used (accusing others to do it, but that’s the usual trick of the perpetrator accusing the victim of victimizing the aggressor..)

European unilateral disarmament of the last few decades, and will not to impose peace and order, in the name of an unreal view of human nature, has been a catalyst for the growth of fascist dictatorships, all over the world.

In particular, Xi’s China and the Kremlin have not been blocked in Africa, Europe’s own backyard, as they should have been…

All possible weapons have to be sent to Ukraine, and Europe has to scramble to arm itself (especially with anti-missile forces). Not defending democracy is the same as welcoming fascism. Not preparing for war is lethal to peace. Not preparing for nuclear war is lethal to civilization. Disarming when facing a nuclear tyranny is preparing for a worst so bad, only the grimmest science fiction, the sort with cannibalism, has imagined it.

And all this because idiots imagined that wolves could be persuaded to eat salad, through the sheer power of example… and didn’t want to be bothered when told that was unrealistic. In other words, sheer idiocy.

The world “idiot” came from the Greek. idiotes… literally “private person”  as opposed to one taking part in public affairs, politics. “Idiot” came then to be used patronizingly for “ignorant person,” from idios “one’s own”… and then passed in Latin and later French medieval usage. In other words, idiots are individuals so preoccupied by their personal, inner world, that the world escapes them. This is what happened when self-glorifying “pacifists” took over… And decided to buy all manufacturing in China and gas in Russia… while retiring at age 60 (as is the case in France).

Similar idiocy is deployed in the climate crisis. The French Prime Minister actually declared that energy consumption in France will have to get lowered by 10% next year (because of the war in Ukraine, supposedly, coincidentaly with Macron closing or neglecting nuclear reactors to the point that half of them are stopped for maintenance and two have been dismantled). In either case, strategic idiocy… a form of hubris

No US soldier was injured during the shooting of that movie. London on fire, 1940. Where was US help? A few month before, Roosevelt had sent his right hand man, 4 star Admiral Leahey as ambassador to Vichy, recognizing this way the Hitlerian friendly junta of Petain and other traitors…

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[1] The French Mamba made of Aster 15 and 30 missiles in a Thales and MDMA collaboration, is as good and probably better than its US equivalent the Patriot system (Italian, French and UK navies use Asters for air defense). However Germany prefers to ingratiate itself with the US military-industrial complex… And that’s ironical, not to say foolhardy, especially considering how negative Germany was about Trump (and Biden is like Trump, just more polite, as a German minister in Merkel’s government pointed out… even Trump asked Germany to boost defense spending, and that must mean not just buying more US equipment, but building a European military-industrial complex…).

Perverse History, Perverse Civilization.

Civilizations, like people, have moods, and act accordingly. Kremlin Russia’s successfully vile and hyper violent history has brought us minds like Putin’s, vile, hyper violent, claiming there are only “sovereigns” and “colonies”.

In 2016, Putin asked students if they knew where Russia ended. A boy rose and stood:”Russia ends at the Behring Straight, Mr. President!” “Wrong,” replied Putin. Putin corrected the miscreant:”Russia never ends!” 

President Vladimir V. Putin views himself as carrying on the task of the Russian czars. Sprawling back in an armchair, spread like an octopus, basking in chuckling self-satisfaction, Mr. Putin started a televised meeting with young entrepreneurs in Moscow on Thursday June 9, 2022, by reflecting on Peter the Great’s 18th-century conquest of the Baltic coast, describing that land as rightfully Russian.

“He wasn’t taking anything away — he was returning it,” Mr. Putin said of that territory, before hinting that he was doing the same thing in his war in Ukraine. “He was returning it and strengthening it. Well, apparently, it has also fallen to us to return and to strengthen.” And he laughted. A scared old 5 feet 5 inch, anti-western, backward looking, regressive poisoning weasel, compares himself to the young and unafraid Peter the Great, a 6 feet 8 inch, forward looking, fanatically pro-western, forward-thinking progressive fighting to death the religious establishment and all old ways, who succeeded to change Russia from the past into the future.

The Baltic nations, then, are next to be “returned”. Thus, like Ukraine in Putin’s estimation, those Baltic nations are not nations at all, but confiscated Russian territories… Just like Ukraine, which Putin has insisted, is not a country, but a piece of Russia ruled by Nazis. According to Putin it seems as if Eurasia should have just one country, to which everything has to be “returned”.

That reasoning was rejected, even by Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. That, arguably infernal, trio knew well that the Moscow led empire could survive only if the nations that the Czars had conquered were given a lot of autonomy. So Ukraine joined the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a “republic”… And, as a “republic” was one of the 40 founding members of the UN. 

Contrast this with Putin’s position, expressed June 9: “It’s impossible — do you understand? — impossible to build a fence around a country like Russia. And we do not intend to build that fence,” Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, were talking about an union of republics, thus recognizing a measure of democracy, individuality and autonomy. Putin is just talking about “Russia”. And “Russia” has “no fences”, it’s coming to a neighborhood near you. Putin: “Because there is no in-between, no intermediate state: either a country is sovereign, or it is a colony, no matter what the colonies are called.“

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And what does “Russian” mean? In a nutshell, around 12 centuries ago, Novgorod hired Swedish warriors to rule itself, and those warlords promptly went down and conquered what became Ukraine, an exceptionally wealthy land, for agriculture and minerals. Rus was thus created, and then expanded eastward. However, by the 1200s, the centrifugal forces which had affected Novgorod 4 centuries earlier made themselves manifest again: Rus was too extended, too wealthy, too diverse… Unfortunately at that point of disunion, the invading Mongols show up, asking for submission, in the footsteps of their ancestors the Huns. 

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Putin in presidential transcript, June 9, 2022: We visited the exhibition dedicated to the 350th birth anniversary of Peter the Great. Almost nothing has changed. It is a remarkable thing. You come to this realisation, this understanding.

Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years. On the face of it, he was at war with Sweden taking something away from it… He was not taking away anything, he was returning. This is how it was. The areas around Lake Ladoga, where St Petersburg was founded. When he founded the new capital, none of the European countries recognised this territory as part of Russia; everyone recognised it as part of Sweden. However, from time immemorial, the Slavs lived there along with the Finno-Ugric peoples, and this territory was under Russia’s control. The same is true of the western direction, Narva and his first campaigns. Why would he go there? He was returning and reinforcing, that is what he was doing.

Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as well. And if we operate on the premise that these basic values constitute the basis of our existence, we will certainly succeed in achieving our goals.

… Narva is in Estonia… I sent the following to the New York Times which had claimed the door was shutting with Russia, and it was sad. It was censored, showing, once again the complicity between new York oligarchy and Russian oligarchy:

Moscow’s autocratic run, launched with Ivan I “Moneybags” started with a cynical collaboration with the Golden (Mongol) Horde, as tax collector for all Russias. It was highly successful, creating the world’s largest empire, colonizing many nations and religions.

However, overall and in the fullness of time, democracy has proven more adept to create the civilization we need to exist. Now, though, tyrants can muster greater powers than ever before. And the planet has become very small: rockets can go around in an hour or so. A final confrontation looms, as Biden correctly pointed out, many times.

Just today Putin declared that Peter The Great was “returning” the Baltic nations to Russia in the 1700s, not conquering them… and that he, Putin, was doing the same. 

As many a tyrant through history, and Kremlin rulers for seven centuries, Putin is distracting his oppressed population with a foreign war which enables him to declare all his opponents, “traitors”, “Nazis”, “criminals”, etc. Nothing new here… Except for one thing Putin has been leveraging: nuclear weapons. This is the first time in history a tyrant can, and threatens to destroy the world, if he does not succeed to conquer. 

A sad moment, for sure. But also a moment that cannot be denied.

We are confronted to the choice of submitting to the will of one man, his vision of humanity, or utter destruction. It is crucial that this one man doesn’t get his way: other tyrants, starting with Xi, would follow his path. It is not a question of imposing democracy, but surviving this.

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Putin wants to do the same as Peter: getting back what was Russian all along… Notice that, right now, Russia occupies Prussia, something even Peter the Great didn’t do.

How did Russians become the way they are? Because tyranny has ruled Russia, and Kremlin led tyranny has been so highly successful… as a tyranny and land gobbler The enormous physical size of Russia has created imperviousness to other influences, which have been kept at a distance. The mood created by the tyrant in Moscow ruled without a rival, or even an awareness. Russia’s enormous geography made it isolated, and propicious to intellectual and mental fascism. It was all so suffocating that Peter the Great, who wanted to modernize Russia, created a new capital far from Moscow and its Kremlin, a kind of fortress full of churches.

In the rest of Europe, the situation has been different: diversity ruled, very different ways of thinking and even emoting have been entangled. As Blaise Pascal put it in the 1600s: Vérité en deçà des Pyrénées, erreur au delà. Truth before the  Pyrénées, error beyond them.  When Pascal wrote this, France and Spain, separated by the  Pyrénées, were in the middle of a war which lasted more than 2 centuries, creating the Netherlands and finishing with the Duke of Anjou, Louis XIV’s second-eldest grandson, becoming Philip V of Spain in 1700. Louis XIV had ejected 10% of the population of France, the Protestants who kept on protesting at a distance, creating elites in other countries who hated French autocracy. That in turn caused the next monster war, the war of The Succession of Spain, which brought enormous losses of French territory, and immense misery, especially in France (although the grandson stayed in place, and the present king of Spain is a descendant…)

In non-Russian Europe, it has become impossible to be unaware of opposite points of view and how maddening the differences could get… About nothing much. The Franco-English war, the so-called “100 years war” which lasted nearly 5 centuries (1300s until 1815), originated as a civil war, French plutocrats against French plutocrats… They called themselves aristocrats, power of the best, but they were not good for the majority of the population.

Now Europeans, outside of Russia, understand that differences enrich, and otherwise do not matter that much, and one shouldn’t go to war about them. Indeed the price for not understanding Vive La Difference is atrocious wars. And their consequences (100 millions killed by the so-called Spanish flu of 1918)… At least differences do not matter between Europeans… and their cultural descendants… and, in some ways, ascendants, the Americans. I said ascendants, because Europe learned quite a few things from the Americas, not just tomatoes, potatoes, and rubber… But also the Nature God and various ecological, or martial ways. 

Russians also learned a lot, and maybe too much, fighting the Mongols, Tartars, Tatars, and other bellicose nomad nations. Nomads have to be bellicose, but, ultimately, once the nomads have been pushed away, aggressivity from a civilization becomes perverse.

It is traditional among the woke and other pseudo-progressives to criticize European imperialism… But careful studies show that the reality was more about empires of the weak proposing deals that the Natives could not refuse, either because they were dead from Euro-African pandemics, or because said deals were irresistible. This is what I have long believed and it is now found in an academic book  “Empires of the Weak: The Real Story of European Expansion and the Creation of the New World Order”.

Actually, one should consider that the greater degree of democracy of Europe facilitated directly (nicer power) and indirectly (ideological, scientific, technological) European domination.

Although some of these aspects also applied to Russia (for example Behring was a German officer employed by the Czar), the bottom line in Kremlin Russia stayed the mood set up by Prince Alexander Nevsky and his grandson Ivan Danilovich Kalita. The mood was not to stand for progressive principle and democracy, but instead for power at any cost. Alexander was installed as the Grand Prince of Vladimir (i.e., the supreme Russian ruler) in 1252… by the Mongols. Alexander, made previously Prince of Kyiv by the Mongols, faithfully supported Mongol rule within his domains. In 1259 Alexander led an army to the northern city of Novgorod, an independent republic (at the origin of Rus), and forced Novgorod to pay tribute it had previously refused to pay to the Golden Horde.

Some will say that Alexander had no choice, that the ends justified the means. Maybe or probably. But the fact remains that, with Russian civilization in balance, Nevsky and his grandson Ivan I collaborated with evil. A traditional mentality was founded, of reverence to an evil leader, often wholeheartedly supported by many Russian intellectuals. And that mood was made sacrosanct: Alexander Nevsky was canonized in 1557 CE. These observations have not escaped Ukrainians, and they are starting to remove statues of Alexander Nevsky and various famous “Ruscist” (Russian + fascist) writers.

The situation with imperial Russia is completely different, and deeply perverse from the rest of Europe, because aggression was used as a method of extermination, relentlessly, for centuries, against fellow MASTER CIVILIZATIONS (Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, etc.).

As Putin put it on June 9 2022: ” I promise that I will try to respond to all your proposals and ideas. It is easier for me to do this than for you. I just give instructions; you need to come up with ideas, while I just need to listen to you and give instructions. (Laughter.)”

Return it all! It’s all mine! We Russians own all of this, Peter said so! I have no ideas, just instructions!

This is why the Kremlin dictatorship has to be crushed: the model of one smart idiot giving instructions to everybody, according to a perverse vision of history he erroneously claims to share with Peter the Great (who tortured and killed his one surviving son… one of many people Peter was very familiar with and had to kill in very torturous ways… Some of them he argued with as they were dying, broken by him)… has to be crushed. 

Maybe Peter had to do all this killing and fighting: surely he couldn’t let the Swedes won at Poltava… But Putin did not have to cause mayhem. Comparing himself with Peter the Great, a two meter tall giant, Putin, in his shortness of vision, forgets that Peter had many excuses, excuses which Putin does not have, and three centuries have extinguished the context in which Peter thrived… with a real Swedish invasion and before that, extremely obdurate Christian fanatics, the “Old Believers“, organizing conspiracies, plots, and coup after coup… who had to be broken at the wheel just so the country could live. Instead, Putin is allied to the present day version of the Old Believers…

With its gigantic territory and interesting civilization, Russia has a lot to offer… especially while the planet warms up. But, as it strays into nuclear plated fascism, democracy can’t make any quarters… Should we falter in our defense of democracy it would surely be our ride to hell!

It goes without saying that similar charges can be made against the English American colony’s descendant regime, for somewhat similar reasons. Many of our essays have adressed this.

Perversity brought domination of the beholders. But now this is not a sure thing anymore. Times have changed: they are more subtle. It is time to understand this, what role perversity played, and why, and thus how to transmogrify it.

Patrice Ayme

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P/S: The core of the present essay, found in italics above, was censored by the New York Times propaganda machine as a comment to an article on June 9, 2022, written by a Russian, who claimed it was so sad that the door was closing between the US and Russia. Never mind that it is Russia which is slamming the door to democracy, while Putin is playing Charlie Chaplin in the Great Dictator, with the twist of threatening to blow up the planet… It stays troubling that the newspaper of record in the USA keeps on rejecting isegoria and parrheisia…

Must Win World War Of Plutocracy Against Democracy

The nuclear tyranny in Moscow is the sort of regime civilization cannot share the planet with: to conquer land it fancied, Putin threatened “any country which intervened with consequences you have never seen in your history” . 

To surrender to the threat of the usage of nuclear weapons from one’s opponent after first resisting a war of conquest, is worse than surrendering to any previous tyranny in history. Indeed no tyranny in history had the means to destroy humanity, nor expressed the explicit desire to do so as Putin and his accomplices did.

What is democracy? The attempt by civilization to set people free from oligarchy (the rule of the few). What is plutocracy? Literally, hell-power. Oligarchies aren’t sustainable, without  calling upon evil power, because people are not made to be slaves, and they increasingly resist (inside the dictatorship, or outside).

Historical dictators are in general proof of this turn to hell-power: their methods get worse with time,  until they get destroyed.

Civilization was rendered possible by power, but, without democracy, that power can exponentiate in the hands of a few, who then, absolutely corrupted by power, will use ever more evil methods until they become so stupid, they are finally destroyed.

Nuclear energy and other new powerful tech made oligarchs more powerful than ever, and the plutocratic culmination it brings to the planet is so dangerous that civilization will not be able to survive it.

Only democracy makes civilization sustainable. Giving Putin a reward, any reward, for his evil ways invites future dictators to be even worse with threats of nuclear war. 

Because Putin threatened civilization explicitly with annihilation is the ultimate crime. This is why he and his mentality must be destroyed. Nuclear war will not be avoided by doing what those who threaten it want democracies to do. Our survival requires punishment.

Star Fish nuclear explosion at 11 pm, fifteen seconds after detonation over Johnson Island as seen from Maui at on top of the volcano, at 3,000 meter elevation, 1200 kilometers away. The nuke was exploded 400kms above ground, in space, instantaneously shutting down much electronics in Hawaii from E-M blast..

Patrice Ayme

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P/S: A shorter version of the comment above replied to a NYT editorial calling to surrender Ukraine to Putin. My comment, mostly what is above, was carefully censored. Now traitor president Macron of France, apparently a small greedy mind, called to once again for the victory of Putin (not as something that he wishes, but as something that he, and his German sidekick, Chancellor Olaf Scholtz see as ineluctable… while pointing out, in complete contradiction, that Putin should not be humiliated (if Putin can’t be defeated, how could he be humiliated?) I was deeply irritated by the NYT censorship, so I sent another comment, which was published immediately… I will show this one next, because it encapsulate the problem.

Affordable Care Act Neither Affordable Nor Caring.

Inflation is measured in contrived ways, mostly to undercount it where it really hurts. Hence the housing and educational crises in the USA (and also in Europe: when France, and the rest of Europe, “deindustrialize”, this is caused, in part by the collapse of the educational system relative to Asia).

In the USA, healthcare inflation is gigantic. Somebody commenting Paul Krugman in the New York Times noticed:

Joe Arena from Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey wrote:

“For the love of God, healthcare prices have been going up above and beyond the rate of inflation (5-6% per year), and a family insurance plan that cost $7,000 annually (just in premiums, excl. out of pocket) in 2000 now costs over $20,000 in 2021. Has anyone’s wages tripled in that span? Nope. How is there not more anger over this? Even from corporate America, who has to pay employer sponsored insurance…I would have expected a major call from them to solve the issue yet nothing. Why isn’t this discussed more???“

I replied and Paul published my comment right away (!):

Healthcare price inflation is not discussed anymore, because Obamacare is venerated, and the official name of Obamacare is the “Affordable Care Act”. Those who do not understand that healthcare has become “Affordable” would be suspect, because they would systematically pretend to not understand  that Obamacare saved the US. Fortunately, most “Democrats” see that Obama has made healthcare “Affordable”, and thus without inflation. 

The real reality is completely different: the problem of basic healthcare in the USA is that it is all too much for profit, whereas it should be viewed 100% as a human right. Thus US healthcare costs 50% more than in comparable countries in Europe. Those 50% are pure profit for the few and the greediest. Once Obamacare was passed, US life expectancy went down. My brother in law died from a heart attack in a parking lot, because the first hospital he drove to refused to treat him at 2am. They had implanted a stent a few weeks before, but he was very poor. He died on his way to a less greedy hospital in cold Anchorage. 

Obamacare, or then Obama’s policies, were a disaster for US life expectancy. I am a registered Democrat but not one who lies to me and others. That the average Dem leader refuses to admit the truth shows they are not… democrats. They are DINOs, Democrats In Name Only, laughing loud all their way to the bank.

The problem with democracy in the US in particular, and the West in general has been that it will only progress if ideas progress, and that requires perceiving real reality.

I keep falling across philosophers singing the praises of Aristotle. Aristotle himself was aware of the problem of reality: he sent students to make an inventory of living species (there was a lot of confusion from myths and fossils). However in practical philosophy, politics, Aristotle was sure of himself: the universe was organized by a supreme being, the great fascist in the sky.

Aristotle said the Macedonian king Philip II of Macedon was good. It was a false problem to believe Philip was bad. Then Aristotle had to flee Athens to save his life.
Later Aristotle’s friend Antipater became the installer of tyranny in Athens, and ordered the execution of Demosthenes. Demosthenes said: “The easiest thing in the world is self-deceit; for every man believes what he wishes, though the reality is often different.”[Third Olynthiac, section 19 (349 BCE). ]
Demosthenes: “Whatever shall be to the advantage of all, may that prevail!”
Speech against Philip II of Macedon (351 BCE)
Why do we insist upon listening to Aristotle, as he contributed, perhaps more than anybody else, including Antipater, or even Philip, in destroying democracy? Aristotle had the power, the mental power to tell his friends, Philip, Alexander, Antipater, Craterus, how advantageous democracy was.
Aristotle probably could have persuaded them: Alexander was notoriously ambivalent about what to do with democracy and freedom, and did not want to use force against Athens.
However, Aristotle was much less in doubt: he called Demosthenes a politician. In truth Demosthenes was an advocate of democracy, and Aristotle a good friend to his best friends, the Macedonian tyrants, many of whom he had taught himself in person.

One of his friend, a fellow who was not too bright, was sent to arrest Demosthenes, who had taken refuge on an island off invaded Athens. The friend had been mandated by the fascist Macedonians who occupied Athens. The not so bright fellow conversed with the philosopher, who, knowing he faced torture before execution, thanks to the executor of Aristotle’s will, Antipater, was carrying poison. Demosthenes took the poison. Aristotle had been dead a couple of years, by then, but this was his greatest victory, the victory of monarchy over democracy.

Telling the truth to power, the possible truth to power, is the essence of democracy. But talking is not enough. But talking is not enough. One needs a society opened to listening. The case of the Affordable Care Act is typical: if one is for progress in the US, one is not supposed to criticize it, if one does not want to be called terrible names, and then cancelled.

Democracy is not just an institutional system. It has to be more than that. It has to be a mood connected to the open society. And what that society has to be the most open to is intelligent, tolerant debate.

Patrice Ayme

Capital, Civilization, War, Fascism, And Democracy

Capital is intrinsic to civilization: capital makes civilization possible, and, in turn, civilization feeds capital. Capital started with mates, family, friends, territory, flint, obsidian, furs, grains, dogs, etc. Our ancestors, twenty million years ago, already worked to amass capital. Cities could be defined as concentration of lodgings greater than sustainable before the Neolithic (the new stone, when herding and agriculture appeared in the most advanced populations).

The entity with the greatest capital has always been, in the last 5,000 years, the mightiest government, presently the USA. Followed by the People Republic of China. Communists often talk as if they opposed capital, but their leaders often muster more capital than their allegedly more capitalist opponents. It’s Stalin’s greater capital in… tanks which overwhelmed that other (and lesser!) capitalist, Adolf Hitler. Hitler recognized no German anticipated or even could comprehend, that Stalin had a capital of 35,000 tanks. That Franklin Delano Roosevelt had decided that the USA would have 24 Fleet Aircraft carriers was another major capitalist event, with long term consequences, as Japan would bitterly find out. Recently Biden, following Trump, having discovered that most electronic semiconductor integrated circuits were made in Asia, a minute flight time from thousands of Xi’s rockets, decided that it would be a good idea to make those in the good old USA (Trump had already obtained that Apple Inc. would make chips, and in the USA). 

However, war is also intrinsic to civilization, and may well be the fundamental reason why cities got built.

Even when not warring with nomads, civilizations compete: barred from the International Space Station (ISS), China just launched the core module of its own second space station. This sort of competition is of course excellent, and we are very grateful to “Communist” China for producing so much excellent science and technology. The USA would probably scoff at the Moon, but for China’s announced drive to establish itself there (the government of the CCP has not formally said so, but the top Chinese engineers let it be known).

In the past. Civilizations, besides each other, had another problem: nomads. In any case, they had to arm themselves. But it turns out too much of a good thing is not good for progress. 

Exponentials Everywhere:

“Capital” comes from “caput”, the head. Civilization, gathering large populations of people in cities, was made possible from, and necessary because of, the exponentiation of population.

The exponentiating population happened because of exponentiation of food production, thanks in turn to mass agriculture made possible by mass irrigation and other massive structures, which provided with many riches. Those, in turn were defended against scavenging nomads by mass armies (the nomads themselves often doubled as traders, who were indispensable, as they provided with otherwise inaccessible, indispensable goods from far away regions: obsidian, currency shells, metals, furs are examples).

It’s not just Quantum Physics, hence the world, which is entangled, but also all most significant human civilizational notions. Notice that I did not bother with explicitly mentioning religions above, as they are tentacular subsets of fascism.

Armies in turn are organized through command and control, to act as giant bodies with just one head. Naturally power runs in families and the children of commanders end up in command. Thus hierarchies of families ended on top of society. Religions they invented with fascist gods explained that the universe was organized according to fascist principles, very naturally, with a few jealous bloodthirsty maniacs on top. The large populations of civilization insured that they would stay on top of innovation, in particular with the best weapons, and would generally not be conquered by nomads (although there were exceptions, in particular the exposure of China to various invaders, the propensity of various Central Asian nomads to invade, such as the Huns-Avars-Mongols, and of course Islam, a particularly invasive ideology which the Turkish leadership found particularly profitable to adopt).

The gods and their servants adjudicated a morality where most found themselves in abject submission, because their very existence was a sin. Watch Incas sacrificing children: the massive usage of fascism to implement civilization was, and is, a worldwide phenomenon. It is not having an Eurasiatic bias to say this. Human sacrifices and slavery were ubiquitous in Africa, up to the Eighteenth Century. The Incas built a vast empire without the wheel, powerful draft animals, copper, bronze or iron working, coinage or a writing system. But they had fascism. The Inca empire could not have done without fascism.

Thus, fascism arose naturally, as a way to achieve civilization. But fascism is not natural to the human species. Human life may have been brutish and short, but it was not under fascism: human life had to be free for other humans, evolution did not anticipate the human condition to be anything, but a dialogue with nature. Hence, the human neurology of most of the population suffered: most humans did not live in conditions optimal for a full blossoming of their mental systems.

This implies that, if one could somehow tame fascism, one could create a mass society that would be smarter and more motivated to act progressively, rather than being passive, depressed and dumb.

Indeed, Rome, Athens, and quite a few other Greek city-states, found a way to mitigate fascism. They invented Demos-Kratia, People-Power. People voted directly, instead of being submitted to superiors. Laws were decided after direct debate insured by isegoria (everybody can address assemblies) and parrhesia (right of candor). 

Paradoxically that democratic revolution started for military reasons. Civilizations and their agricultural system need to be defended. That’s done with armies. Around 650 BCE, the Greek city-state of Argos on the Peloponnesian peninsula found a new military system. It replaced cavalry by hoplites. Hoplites were heavily armed foot soldiers with lances, swords, and shields. Warriors would protect each other with their shields. Hoplite formations, to be effective, needed extensive drilling, and the equipment was expensive. Thus hoplite armies were made of upper middle class citizens with plenty of time to practice. Cavalry had been even more expensive, only aristocrats could afford it. The switch from cavalry to hoplites enabled city-states to field much larger armies. Intact, disciplined hoplite formations could resist the charges of cavaliers. Thus hoplite upper middle class armies defeated aristocracies and took power. Around 550 BC, during the de facto quasi-Republican rule of king Servius Tullius, a universal levy of eligible (that is upper middle class) adult male citizens was instituted as Rome deliberately copied the Greek heavy armor hoplite army. (Two centuries later, fighting the obdurate mountain people, the Samnites, Rome abandoned the Greek phalanx by instituting smaller infantry units; the next big reform would be Marius, around 100 BCE, switching to a professional army… with catastrophic results; I like Marius, and he had no choice… still it was a catastrophe.)  

Democracy spearheaded by citizen-soldiers hoplite armies was enormously successful on the battlefield. The ancient Greeks suggested that was because citizen-soldiers fought for themselves instead of for a master. But there is more: Demos-Kratia was a better method, a scientific method to establish better truth, hence deeper motivation. Demos-Kratia is empowering in another way as people are free to be free.

However, Athens was conquered by the Macedonian tyrant Antipater in 322 BCE. Antipater had the resources of the entire Macedonian empire, all the way to India, and Athens had still not fully recovered from the Peloponnesian war (which had been fought against the Spartan Alliance, led by enslaving Sparta and financed by the Medes, the Persian empire). Antipater then transformed Athens into a plutocracy (only the wealthiest could vote)… Athens would not be really free for 23 centuries thereafter.

Whereas Athens confronted enormous and fanatical enemies, the Roman Republic’s democracy had a different fate. What happened to Rome is more troubling for us. The Republic kept its hubris in check, most of the time, growing slowly, cautiously, and mostly reactively (defending itself with gusto after being attacked, most of the time… or at least that’s how Roman historians present it… But there is a logic to it: clearly, Rome did not go on a rampage until after counter-striking the Carthaginian coalition). Rome never had to surrender. Her one crazy king, Tarquinius Superbus, was thrown out and defeated. “Sumptuary” laws and redistribution to the Ager Publicus limited the wealth and power of families strictly.

However, the horrendous war against Hannibal killed a lot of the best, brightest, most courageous and morally upright in the Roman elite. Those who had rented space in the fortified cities while Hannibal roamed the countryside dominated the post-war period. That was immediately followed by the Roman version of globalization. Indeed pushing back and defeating Carthage and its allies, left the Republic in control of most of the Mediterranean. Instead of imposing Roman law all over, the Republic opted for local self-management, making often alliances with local elites close to those Rome had just defeated. That sounded a good idea at the time.

So Rome left in place many local laws. That legal localization enabled many of the wealthiest Roman of the topmost classes (Senatorial and Equestrian) to evade the Roman barriers to exponential wealth: they just made their fortunes overseas, and then quickly came back and bought plenty of land illegally, managed by armies of imported slaves. This violence led to increasingly brutal plutocrats paying politicians (especially tribunes). Rome degenerated in a way similar to what is happening now, with holders of capital so wealthy they could also hold public opinion in their claws. Wealth got so great the wealthiest created a legion, and then entire armies. Civil war resulted. Optimates (=plutocrats; Sulla, Cicero) against Populares (Gracchi, Marius, Caesar). In the end an alliance was formed between the most powerful army and the plutocracy, led by Octavian/Augustus.

After this triumph of plutocracy, there was no looking back: the Roman power structure invented Catholicism, which became the state religion in the Fourth Century… Under the penalty of death (basically). 

One may wonder why plutocracy increasingly triumphed after (say) the Third Punic war. That’s because the Third Punic War was a triumph of plutocracy. The Roman optimates (the plutocrats) did not like the power and increased democracy of Carthage. It was a very bad example, just when aristocrats such as the Gracchi and their friends and allies decided that the Roman equity-equality Republican system was broken, and had to be refurbished. Such a situation of aristocrats leading a People’s revolution had been seen before: king Sergius Tullius had instituted the basic Republican structures Rome needed. The Optimates prevailed (Carthago delenda est; Carthage is to be destroyed), and visited a holocaust on Carthage, an acto fmass evil. Now when one has committed one act of mass evil, it is easy to do the next.

Another Sergius Tullius could have turned things around. And one came: Julius Caesar. But he was assassinated when he had barely started his work… whereas Sergius Tullius was assassinated by Tarquinius after he had made his main reform, that of the army. In particular, Rome kept a professional army… Even when said army was insufficient in power, numbers and enthusiasm, to repeal the barbarians. Thus Rome, population sixty million or more, fell to hordes of at most 50,000 warriors. Why? Because the plutocrats in power in Rome feared, first of all, a popular army of We The People (as Rome had for its first five centuries or so).

And when Rome “fell”, Roman plutocracy did not really fall. Rome did not really fall, because it took centuries, and a queen such as Brunehilde, writing in perfect Latin in 600 CE to impose Roman law to millions of “Franks” can well be viewed as a Roman head of state… As Charlemagne would be proclaimed, two centuries after her. Rome did not really fall also because Roman plutocrats made alliances with the invading Germans, Alans (Iran) and Huns (Mongolia)…A good Fourth Century Roman potentate preferred a good alliance with the invaders, rather than befriending “We The People” (an example is Aetius, the last great Roman commander in the West before the horrendous reconquista under Justinian).

So I am saying that what is called WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic) started with Rome and the best Greek city-states. And that was so true that it was not forgotten: by the Fifth Century, the Franks made educational reforms leveraging the church, and that was passed into stiff laws before the birth of Charlemagne. Also many of the Frankish reforms (shown by Lex Salica) were pro-equity and equality (equal mandatory inheritance among children, women not forgotten)… The outlawing of slavery (657 CE, queen Bathilde) was more of the (Democratic) drive towards equality…. And technological progress. Chinese emperors tried to cancel slavery a few times, but it did not stick. When Europeans visited China as soon as the Thirteenth Century, they were struck by the massive usage of human muscle power instead of mechanical advantage, for example to carry the trunks of giant trees.

Thus starting under the Franks, progressive traits of the early Roman Republic were recovered. The effort was not accidental, but conscious and deliberate: a great hope was what was then called the “Christian Republic”. Most of the historical documents may have had disappeared by then, but the essential was left, namely the collective memory of a more democratic past.

So why have the full democratic practices of 25 centuries ago not been recovered yet?

Indeed, we are still victims of the ideology which caused the fall of the Roman Republic, being told that we cannot have democracy. Instead we have representative oligarchy, a few hundred individuals enjoying extravagant powers.

One reason is an enormous inertia of moods and ideas. That can be better understood by looking at China, where the mood of “mandate from heavens” to designate the imperial system was established more than 22 centuries ago… and continues to this day. More basically, the elites in power have had interest to reinstitute as much fascism as they could get away with. For example, after eight centuries of (theoretically and formally) electing kings of the Franks, the king of the Franks decided he was king of France, and his job was hereditary (and a mandate not from We The People, but from the god; Charlemagne was already furious when the Pope pulled that trick on him… Charles wanted to be elected by the army, not god…).

Democracy, if and when one can make it work, is mightier than fascism… And this is because it is ethologically correct. Fascism is also ethologically correct but if, and only if, one is in combat. Thus fascist regimes are implicitly telling the people they subjugate that they are at war, and combat is engaged. 

The consequence of democracy is exponentiating intelligence. The consequence of fascism and its generalizations, oligarchism and “representative” pseudo-democracy, is the degenerescence into stupidity.

Our civilization is in an extremely delicate situation. It has to pilot several raging exponentials, just right, and they are technologically and scientifically dependent. If a civilization collapsed 10,000 years ago, the consequences were insignificant in the fullness of time. However, the destruction of civilization in the present circumstances could well condemn humanity, or what’s left of it, being unable to regain ever again the present level of wisdom and understanding. Cannibalism, though, would have a great future…

Patrice Ayme

Life Is A Riot

 

THAT LITTLE RIOT… NOTHING. BUT THAT BIDEN IS WORSE THAN TRUMP, A BIGGIE.

So Trump was dis-impeached, the plan of preventing the President to run again failed. At least that way. The Demoncratic forces will have to find another way… Meanwhile the Biden presidency is proceeding… Along the lines set by Trump. This is very interesting in several ways: basic Machiavellianism at work, and also the global plutocratic forces having perhaps learned something important: China is not the Third Reich, Trump had got an important point there. Also Biden flew a B52 escorted by Saudi F15s: an other important message, this time to china’s would-be ally, Iran.

That little riot, around and inside the US Capitol, incompetently managed by the Capitol police, was not a coup… And Trump’s free speech to go out and fight has little to do with that major police failure… The Federal government had proposed to help, days prior, and the capitol police declined because of “bad optics“.

What was a sort of passive aggressive coup was that the so-called “Democrats” impeaching Trump quite a bit for more than 4 years, by accusing him of being a Russian agent. The opponents of the so-called “Democrats” will remember this continual impeachment (which drowned reality in an ocean of lies). What was much more of a coup was that those who conspired to invade Iraq, in violation of international law, were never tried… or not even suspected by the sheeple, thank to plutocratic propaganda!

Democracies have riots, it goes with the concept of the People Power (Demos-Kratia). Debate itself is the core concept of democracy, and “debate” means beating up completely. Agreed, in a civilization functioning optimally, it is best that individuals do not get hurt physically, or even psychologically… But the later is unavoidable: the Socratic method, as related by Plato, could be very harsh.

Progress means turmoil. The best way to generate better, that is newer, ideas is emotions, even passions, thus turmoil. Idea making means trouble making…

And thus trouble making should be cracked down upon only when clearly it violates the law.

And free speech ought to be rarely in violation of the law. When free speech goes too far, one should go the British route, the way the French used to do it, and have the police give a “warning”. And circumstances are crucial. Say somebody writes on the Internet:”Kill all whites!”. That’s different from a teacher teaching children with:”Kill all whites!”

Is that a coup? Or a comedy organized by a self-declared “Nordic Shaman” (pictured, with horns)

So that little riot was not a coup. In a coup, even a self-coup, the army is involved. When ignorant Trumpists marched on the Capitol, it is not them, the rioters, who got tacit approval of the army. Quite the opposite. The Capitol Police had declined the help offered by the National Guard. I have been in a country during a coup, that’s something else entirely. Or look at Myanmar/Burma last week for what a coup is. I have ALSO been in street riotting (many times, and not on the side of law enforcement). The Capitol Police was incredibly incompetent. Since 1871, no riot ever breached a serious public building in Paris… with much more numerous, powerful and determined demonstrations (including one where more than 100 individuals got killed). The lack of nerves of the US elite calling that little riot a coup is part of the “Manifest Destiny” problem, a kind of hypersensitivity of the elite for any inconvenience coming its way. The fact the present president is held, in cogent circles, as a criminal against humanity is not “whataboutism”. Only those who don’t mind killing millions of foreigners say such a thing. It never happened in the history of the US, and rarely in the history of the world. Do you have any idea of the monstrosity visited upon Iraq? Is it un-American to notice it? Why?

One can be wrong by deliberately ignoring right.US citizens do not know the US attacked Afghanistan secretly on July 3, 1979, to provoke a Soviet reaction in 1980… Under DEMOCRATIC saint Jimmy Carter. US citizens should learn this, it is a moral imperative, because the initiation of massive war by the USA in the Middle East, in several alliances with ultra violent Muslim Fundamentalists, killed at least 5 millions… and the mood of secrecy and viciousness presiding over this assault is still NOT suspected, let alone examined. One needs to learn about the fact US leaders engage in secret wars: it is a coup against humanity and a war crime. Because they could get away with that, US leaders could get away with various crushings of rights, within the US.

So where are we at? Biden, so far, is leaving the meat, the core, the essence of the Trump era… in place. All the changes, so far, are cosmetic. The border has become porous: in a few weeks, the invasion situation (3,000/day, it is said) will become obvious, and Biden will say:”Sorry, but we have to do something!”. Same story, basically with the pipeline. Magically, the economy is not free of fossil fuels. As long as Canada is allowed to sell its tar sand poison, it will be transported… Doing it with a pipe in as lesser evil. And the Paris Accord will not change a thing: if anything it encourages those increasing the most their pollution (China, India, Poland)… to do even more so. Not that they are culprit, really, it’s the absence of new technology which is the cause of the problem, and that’s where the real fix is (aside from taxing the most polluting activities).

In any case, something real progressives ought to keep in mind:

COVERT ACTION MAGAZINE.COMBiden’s Key Role in the Crime of the Century: The 2003 U.S. Invasion of Iraq – CovertAction Magazine

Biden has much to do, if he wants history to forgive him for inciting and helping to invade Iraq (among other global plutocracy friendly conspiracies he was a principal of). We have to wish him luck, but we will verify, step by step…

And the way? NASA’s Perseverance, the Plutonium powered robotic rover cum helicopter successfully landed on Mars. A magnificent success including entering the atmosphere at 11 kilometers per second, around 400 times per unit of mass the kinetic energy of the fastest bullet, followed by a deceleration of ten gs (ten times Earth’s gravity), then braking with a hypersonic parachute, followed by braking with rockets, and finally a “sky crane”… There is no way forward but with much more and much better tech.

In 1976, the two US Viking landers found biological activity in Martian soil. The results were disbelieved (that’s OK)… But then its was not tried to repeat the experiments… And that’s not OK. Indeed the experiments are so far unexplained. The original head of the Viking project now believes life was detected.

Some will scoff about the interest of finding life on Mars. But biology on Mars, if it exists, is sure to advance our understanding of biology on Earth. Science is like that: any experiment helps, positive or negative. Even the very humanly costly COVID experiment… helps. Helps whom, what? The essence of humanity, to go where no monkey has gone before…

Life is a riot…

Patrice Ayme

NO ISEGORIA, NO PARRHESIA: Why The US Election Was Fraudulent

The recent US elections were deeply fraudulent in a way which should worry even the left (and the rumor has it that Chinese president Xi, a dedicated socialist, was upset by the way the billionaires treated the elected US president, Trump). To see the problem one has to understand on which pillars democracy has to stand. In the run-up to the 2020 US election, the ownership or dominance of all the US media (including pseudo-public media) by the US plutocracy caused the following:

1) There was no isegoria. 2) There was no parrhesia. 3) Global Deep Plutocracy owns all the media, thus most minds, and the parrots know nothing else. 4) Early voting happened before even the first debate. Many people changed their minds, they had already voted. Even worse, in California, anonymity of voting was forsaken, as there were no double envelopes, when voting by mail. Rabid partisans are conditioned to claim none of this is of any consequence: that, per se, is an even deeper sort of fraud, the inability to understand the concepts of freedom and equity.

Those who do not know isegoria and parrhesia, those pillars of democracy, are condemned to read until the end of this article… As a civic duty.

In the last 15 years, many US states used voting machines leaving no paper trace (Georgia just switched back to leaving a paper trace, so can make, and is making, a recount, because the presidential vote was so close, it’s the law). That the elections were fraudulent in spirit is beyond a challenge: when I voted, my identification was not asked. That was in California, the most populous US state. I could have been anybody voting in my supposed name. An extension of this idea is “vote harvesting”… votes considered as some harvest workers can pick up. So a “Democrat” goes to a place and pick up the vote of someone else, for example in a nursing home. That “vote harvesting” enabled “Democrats” to capture most Congressional seats of Orange County in 2018 (a traditionally “Republican place). All this is done by volunteers right now, and many are complete fanatics at this point. “Democrats” applaud frantically, not considering for an instant that fascist methods, once established, have been successfully used by the right: consider the history of Italy and Germany after 1918… Swings and dubious methods on the left helped justify the right to do exactly the same in retaliation. The left attempted to seize the government, the Freikorps reacted by killing the left: Rosa Luxemburg led to Hitler. Just as the right wing (claiming to be left wing) crackdown on Trump by billionaires will lead Xi, or Putin to crackdown against their own opposition, real or potential, using similar methods.

Vote harvesting should be allowed only if done by government officials following strict regulations, and under oath that they would not influence the votes they “harvest”. Public observers should be required for all and any vote counting. Mail-in voting should not be allowed until debates are completed. Future elections at play! And voting machines should never be connected to the Internet!

What is ISEGORIA?

It is an abbreviation from the Greek, meaning same (iso) right to address an assembly (agora). Basically it means all and any citizen has a right to talk to any assembly (without being considered to be disrupting the peace).

What are modern “assemblies”? Any social networks and all and any media (how the transition from private to public is made is often easy to determine: any organization getting public help, or public shareholding, is public, not private; that means in particular “private” universities are actually public; also any organization viewed of “public utility”).

When Main Stream Media, what I call plutocratic media, blocks comments, it is violating isegoria. There should be a governmental organization, the department of isegoria, related to the TRUTH & RECONCILIATION BRANCH of government, but also under legislative and judicial advisory, in charge of receiving complaints and administrating punishment.

What is PARRHESIA?

It is what the French call “Franc Parler”… The ability to speak… frankly, candidly. The Franks were known to say it as it was… because they feared nothing, except for the sky to fall on their heads as the old Gallic proverb has it… Foucault: “It consists in saying – without dissimulation or reserve or rhetorical ornaments that could codify it and hide it – the truth. The saying it all (“le tout dire”)  is at that moment: saying the truth without hiding anything, without hiding it in any way at all”.

Today I talked with my plumber. He is afraid that his wife, a nurse, would catch COVID. So I gave him the last good news from the RNA vaccines of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed… The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines. He took a secretive look and told me: “This has got to stay between us. Don’t tell anyone I said this. The Democrats could never have done it. We have these vaccines thanks to Trump.“

The one on the left owes much to the one on the right. Diogenes was the ultimate representative of parrhesia: he spoke truth to power. When Alexander (“The Great”) asked him what he could do for him, Diogenes replied that he could stop casting a shadow (something which had both a literal, and metaphorical sense). prehistoric women, though had parrhesia, because it turns out that, from South America to Eurasia, prehistoric women were BIG GAME hunters… Thus knew how to use poisoned arrows. In other words, they packed heat, and could dress whichever way they liked, and talked as they wished.

So my plumber is afraid to say what he thinks, although he is big, strong and fully grown. Even if the truth is as simple and obvious as observing Trump promised nearly four billion dollars to Pfizer and Moderna for producing 50 million doses of a COVID vaccine by the end of the year 2020 (the help from Operation Warp Speed to Moderna was more than two billion dollars).

In other news, recently the punks who rule the streets nowadays the “caravans of criminals” (Oakland PD dixit) have got in the habit of burning people alive. Hey why not, who is going to inquire?

The NYT asks rhetorically, in its colossal stupidity: “Who Would Firebomb a Homeless Encampment? California’s fire threat is colliding with its homelessness crisis.” Well, the answer is very simple: those the NYT has falsely claimed were discriminated against, and those who pull the strings, and should not be discouraged anymore to engage in their criminal activities, according to the NYT. I am not saying that discrimination does not exist, or that there is no systemic discrimination. Far from it. I am saying, instead, that it is the criminals who ask to defund the police: they have to profit most. And so really down and out people are burned alive, while criminals feel on top of the world.

Actually a dear friend of mine, who had lived in his truck for 45 years, has just been burned to death… inside his truck. More about this some other time (I’m a bit shocked). When a country is led by criminals, criminality prowls the streets…

This should not last though: Kamala Harris wants to become president, and she knows what she needs to do to get there. Being the way she is: pretty tough… with the weak and disposable…

Without isegoria and parrhesia, the powerful, the world’s wealthiest families, who won all the world’s media, mold minds as they wish. There is then no democracy, because minds molded by the most powerful have no power of their own. The Global Deep Plutocracy correctly viewed Trump as an existential threat. But Trump was just a vehicle for one idea: down with the GDP cult.

And Trump won, by the way. Asked today by a (selected, tame) reporter about joining the Paris (pseudo) Climate Accord (about all countries polluting as they wished, except Europe and US will have to give money) Joe Biden said: “This… like other things… WILL REQUIRE NEGOTIATIONS“. Joe has become a follower of Trump. Good. And Trump himself was a follower of the revolt against the GDP. And that will go on. Hopefully…

Patrice Ayme

 

NO ISEGORIA, NO PARRHESIA, NO DEMOCRACY.

The US presidential elections, and most elections in the “democracies”, have long been flawed, as democratic processes, for reasons which are generally not explained with the psychological and historical depth they require.

In a nutshell, one cannot have democracy without ISEGORIA… Isegoria is the right of all to address equally the public space. Classical media and social networks are subsets of the public space.

Isegoria is violated by the monopoly power the plutocracy, as a class, exerts on the media, by its literal ownership of it. One also needs another concept, PARRHESIA… “to speak candidly or to ask forgiveness for so speaking“. Oligarchic ownership or control of media works in the interest of the oligarchy, not in the interest of truth, and especially not of truth pertaining to We The People. Hence the importance of so-called “social media”… an attempt to bring back isegoria and parrheisia… and the only one possible… at this crucial stage of civilization.

The lack of isegoria and parrhesia were long used by the Global Deep Plutocracy to increase its power, and now more than ever. Not a good harbinger of a rosy future.

The media owning plutocratic class was able to steer the debate about the suitability of Joe Biden as President by avoiding all the subjects which could have hindered him seriously, and, first of all his role in engineering wars, and the supremacy of the financial plutocracy. This was achieved by denying isegoria in a way which should be illegal (but is not).

An example: I sent dozens of comments to the New York Times mentioning the role of Biden in the invasion of Iraq (I have been a subscriber of the NYT for decades). All my comments were all censored, because no US citizen should be exposed to such reality, the connection of Biden with the destruction of Iraq. Now this sort of steering of public opinion should be completely unlawful. This is not a question of Biden versus Trump, but of propaganda versus reality. By hiding Biden’s role in unjust war and unjust financial architecture, it is the latter which are been hidden… If Biden had not been around, the establishment would have found an alter ego.

Besides the question of guilt (of Biden) there is the question of character (of Biden). Why did Biden get involved in the death of millions of people, and what does it say about his proclivities? And why is the US citizenry averting its eyes, especially the self-declared “progressives” from the subject?

Exposed to a situation where war could be a solution, why should not Biden jump on it, when he was involved in wars of choice for no good reason but pleasing his hyper wealthy friends and sponsors?

The answer, that news outlets can do with the public as they please, because they are private, is philosophically incorrect. Monopolies are not private, they are imposed on the public. Overall, less than a dozen legal persons control national US news feed. They can mind mold all, and did!

The New York Times is the “newspaper of report” in the USA, it has plenty of prerogatives, including being the biggest information source in the USA. So when the New York Times decided Stalin was cuddly and Hitler did not kill Jews, so it was, and the US public came to esteem both fascist dictators… enough to refuse to get involved in a timely manner.

The US public was taught to become intolerant of those who, like the French, wanted to do something about Stalin and Hitler. The USA refused to provide help to France and Britain in a timely manner, even when the two representative democracies declared war to Hitler. This US attitude came to be called “isolationism“… But it was not that, it was isolationism from hurting fascism… While US plutocrats were amking crucial deals with fascist regimes all over the world, for example, providing them with fuel And that impudently called “isolationism” had been cognitively imposed by the New York Times and its ilk… because, first of all, Wall Street had organized Germany (in the 1920s and 1930s), and the assets it was invested in were doing great there.

Think of it: if the US President had declared that the USA would provide help as needed by the French Republic, Hitler’s own military would have staged a coup against him. We know this, because said military informed the US and UK authorities as early as 1937. But then both the US and the UK were happy that the French Republic was the only determined enemy of the Nazis. France had everything to lose, the US, everything to gain, and Britain was confused (Britain stopped being confused after Madrid fell to the Nazis, with Franco and Mussolini in tow)…

To this day, none of this is over the cognition horizon, let alone debate in the social space. However, it had major social implications, worldwide… then in the 1940s, but also now in the Twenty-first Century. Because it shows how much the ruling oligarchy can rule the cognition space. For example, this is why the energy crisis causing climate change has not been solved: ruling media deliberately steered the debate into fake considerations…

***

This holocaust in Iraq was rendered possible by a lack of isegoria. Biden’s Policy At Work In Iraq (Fallujah): US soldiers exterminating the natives, just another three millions to go… But let simple minds keep on saying Trump is monster, that will keep their little minds in tip top shape… While they submit to their masters and mind modelers of the Global Deep Plutocracy. Biden-Bush’s henchmen in Iraq did the preliminary work for enabling FRACKING in the USA. Yes, reality is complex, but the sheeple is simple. So the sheeple cannot handle conspiracies, which can only be rejected by its simple mind.

The Global Deep Plutocracy hates Trump: Trump damaged their “Free Trade”, which is neither free, nor a trade, and their grip on the world, and minds which leaves no space for democracy. If EVIL-POWER (Plutocracy) has all the power, DEMOS-KRATIA (Democracy) has none. It’s very simple. That’s why those who did not learn to lie to themselves in academia, understand that plutocracy, the self-declared “elite”, is incompatible with democracy: they are simple, not contrived minds. And this is why those whose salaries are paid by the plutocrats (employees of the top universities) do not. Academia is a prostitute (that means that academia is for sale… and was actually bought, and is now owned). Why do you think that the wealthiest prostitutes (Harvard, etc.) are the most esteemed? Since when is thinking coincident with wealth?

***

THE FORMS OF SPEECH DEMOCRACY CANNOT DO WITHOUT:

There are several completely different, yet related concepts in speaking publicly: free speech, rhetoric, isegoria, parrhesia. One should not confuse isegoria with parrhesia… The former is the right to address assemblies equally, the second is closely related to what the French call “franc-parler“… To speak frankly. Without franc-parler, there cannot be parrhesia. Parrhesia is the royal road to higher philosophy.

Isegoria is an abbreviation for: all having the SAME speech capability in any PUBLIC PLACE. It is a different notion from free, sincere, open speech… Parrhesia. Democracy is pretty much impossible without having both. Michel Foucault gives a good description of the latter (Berkeley, 1983)

Etymologically, “parrhesiazesthai” means “to say everything — from “pan” (everything) and “rhema” (that which is said). The one who uses parrhesia, the parrhesiastes, is someone who says everything he has in mind: he does not hide anything, but opens his heart and mind completely to other people through his discourse. In parrhesia, the speaker is supposed to give a complete and exact account of what he has in mind so that the audience is able to comprehend exactly what the speaker thinks. The word “parrhesia” then, refers to a type of relationship between the speaker and what he says. For in parrhesia, the speaker makes it manifestly clear and obvious that what he says is his own opinion. And he does this by avoiding any kind of rhetorical form which would veil what he thinks. Instead, the parrhesiastes uses the most direct words and forms of expression he can find. Whereas rhetoric provides the speaker with technical devices to help him prevail upon the minds of his audience (regardless of the rhetorician’s own opinion concerning what he says), in parrhesia, the parrhesiastes acts on other people’s mind by showing them as directly as possible what he actually believes.

https://foucault.info/parrhesia/foucault.DT1.wordParrhesia.en/

Real philosophers are inclined to practice parrhesia… And it is frequently used against those who practice it, by using rhetoric, to some extent its adversary… we saw a bit of that in the Trump against Global Deep Plutocracy duel. Trump practiced parrhesia, and it was used against him, thanks to lack of isegoria and colossally vicious, misleading and disinforming rhetoric.

Patrice Ayme

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Standing Up To Dictatorship: How Democracies Thrive

Standing up to “China” is not a risk, it’s a solution. What has been most significantly happening is that the global plutocracy, this metastatic cancer of global democracy, has instrumentalized the Chinese dictatorship in recent decades [1]. Producing cheaply in China enabled Western plutocrats and various lesser capitalists to evade Western taxation, and actually Western workers, their unions and their guilds. Also the plutocrats, by producing in China were able to evade our laws, our socioeconomic environment, which they exploited without quiproquo, and even evade our civilization.

In China even extremely respected doctors may disappear, as if they were mosquitoes: lest they may steal from the glory of virus-man Xi. Doctor Ai Fen, head of emergency at the Wuhan hospital, no less, told the New York Times, in a detailed interview, that she knew about the new SARS virus in early December 2019, and that it made her shiver. She has been disappeared, nobody but tinpot dictator Xi and his goons know where she is. We have not seen this sort of behavior since Stalin or Hitler. She is probably being reeducated with generous doses of electroshock therapy in sensitive places while dealing from injected COVID. Hey, Xi, Virus-man, tell me why not? Isn’t that your way? Don’t you know best?

The same phenomenon, giving to, and getting from, dictators, propelled by the ancestors of the present actors and their culture of greed, helped considerably the rise of fascism in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. For example major plutocrats and organizers of the US Democratic Party, the Harriman Brothers helped considerably both Hitler and Stalin (Baku oil fields, Caucasus). They got medals from both.

Stalin was an instrument of, financed and equipped by, the US Deep Plutocratic State… The same one which fostered Hitler, at the same time. Counterintuitive? Have you seen two cocks fighting? That’s sponsored too, and the cocks are equipped with sharp blades, to kill the other cock. Why do you think the US gifted trillion of dollars of equipment to the USSR in WW2? While Soviet soldiers were fighting the many US corporations operating in Germany, which, like IBM, had been given monopolies by the fascists?And why do you think Roosevelt, ignoring De Gaulle and Churchill, rewarded Stalin with half of Europe? Let’s not be as stupid as the Nazis, or Lenin, and still claim we do not understand what really happened!

That same phenomenon of plutocratic globalization, while imploding socioeconomically the core, caused the weakening of Republican Italy under the fascist Roman empire (The “Principate“). Italy, once the world’s wealthiest region, soon got deprived of work, wealth, power and liberty under the Roman globalization orchestrated by Roman plutocracy and then its chiefs, the emperors. The dilution of the rights of Romans and Italians was accentuated by massive immigration from the Middle East to Italy, which changed the mood of the Roman population from Republican Libertas to Oriental Submission. (In the end the whole thing imploded, and an imported partially Roman creation, the Franks, were put in power by the increasing morbid “Romanitas”, starting circa 400 CE…)

Opposing “populism” and democracy is etymologically, philosophically and logically dangerous. It is done by the plutocrats and their media to insinuate that the People is a form of fascism. The trick is nearly 22 centuries old. In the dying Roman Republic, the plutocrats called themselves the “Optimates“, the “Best“, a Latin translation of “aristocrats“… whereas those who wanted the existing, centuries old legal limits on wealth be respected and who wanted the redistributions of riches, that the application of these laws would entail, called themselves the “Populares” (leaders: the Gracchi brothers, Marius, Caesar; the Optimates tried to kill them all). Demo-kratia means people-power.

Restricting immigration and trade is not necessarily a bad idea. It’s like restricting intrusions and injections. Intrusions and injections are needed when one is sick… but prevention is always better to diseases requiring intrusions and injections. The fundamental question is what are immigration and trade compensating for, why are they needed? What do they cure?

Agreed, in the prehistoric world if one had no flint and no obsidian, to make sharp tools and weapons, one had to trade them. But we are not in prehistory anymore. Most countries have enough material goods. 

For example, there are plenty of Rare Earths outside of territory occupied by Beijing. The only reason we get most of our Rare Earths from China is that political will of the global plutocratic government has contrived the laws of supply and demand to operate worldwide so as to make us dependent upon Beijing. And why is this happening? Because the Big Brother in China is friend with Little Brothers such as Bill Gates. Big hells meet Little Hells, and they help each other, because they have persuaded themselves they are the Best (Optimates). So Bill wants us to be friendly to his Big Brother in Beijing, Bill will get more powerful that way, and look wiser to imbeciles, who are countless. And we will be friendlier to our Big Brother in Beijing  if we end up believing that supply and demand make the Beijing-controlled Rare Earths the result of the noble law of supply and demand. Never mind that “Rare Earths” are not rare at all, and could be extracted from all over.

The same logic apply all over, indeed: no phones, no antibiotics, not even hydroxychloroquine, or face masks, without our Big Brother Xi in Beijing, say those who own and control the media. So to accuse Xi of the corochinavirus is futile, says Gates Of Hell, a “distraction“, as Little Brother Bill Gates Of Hell informed us [2}. This attitude is not new: Gates has long observed he is the government, or at least one of its major prop…. Obama wholeheartedly agreed and gave him and his female prop the “Medal of Freedom” (NSA surveillance freedom). One of Gates’ method is to use his foundation to pay nefarious outfits he is invested in, such as making glyphosate and associated GMOs, and the latest being McKinsey, a consultantship which already brought us the stooge known as “Mayor Pete“.

In the case of Rome, retrospectively, the aim of massive immigration and massive trade was to prevent a republican uprising against the oligarchy which had seized power in Rome, starting with Augustus, by weakening the Italian population with a disappearance of employment, dignity, means, power, intelligence, creativity and population… Only thus was the idiotic, vicious and debasing dictatorship safe. 

Decoupling democracies from dictatorships will enable democracies to decouple from those who rule them, the globalists who have evaded democratic laws by making the deal of sending most employment and power to dictatorships. Besides, it should make it easier to fight pandemics, as those are friendly to dictatorships and incompetent governments. Surely buying everything in China was pretty incompetent. Surely a country which accepts to be led by a dictator, even if his name is Xi, is pretty incompetent.

Caesar’s intuition was correct; the Roman Republic couldn’t survive with major enemies at the gates. Some of the fascists imperial Romans would understand this, but not too loud, and not enough: Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, Julianus: those four emperors, among the very best, died while involved in major expansion military campaigns.  The Franks, endowed with Roman imperium, would not rest until they are conquered, or reconquered for “Renovated Romanitas” most of Europe. Thus they insured that Europe couldn’t be conquered ever again (whereas China spent most of the last millennium occupied by foreign powers, and came close to annihilation).

In a similar vein, one could argue that Athens would never reached the same Athenian heights if Athens had not prepared for war with that immense fascist, yet clever plutocracy, Achaemenid Persia which had even conquered Egypt, part of Eastern Europe, and attacked Ethiopia. At some point Athens even embarked on a long war to free Egypt from Persia…

Challenges elevate! The confrontation between Persia and Athens forced both to create and trade ideas, not just blows. Paradoxically, that titanic struggle was good for humanity’s progress. Differently from present-day “Communist” China, Achaemenid Persia, in spite of some hyper brutal and vicious ways, had invented genuinely new progress, such as various economic models and practices, and the Pony Express, which carried news to Persepolis within a week, from the confines of the empire. Also, new for the times, genuine maximal religious and ethnic tolerance: the empire functioned as an alliance of local plutocracies, so-called “Satrapies“…

Democracies are more clever, because they can, and do, fight for higher intelligence. Debate is central to democracy, and it fosters intelligence best. Dictatorship dictates, it doesn’t debate. Dictatorship knows already all there is to know, it does not beat up all possibilities.

Let’s not submit to the stupid dictator Xi, a would-be emperor, a virus-man, who like most of his Roman imperial tin-can predecessors has not learned the most basic lesson, namely that the superior mind can’t think better than the many without debating with the many. Superior is the challenge of trampling all, if genuine. But dictators cheat. Let Xi and his little helpers be submitted in turn to the fiery criticism they justly deserve. Off with their heads at the head! Off with them at the head of our spaceship Earth! It doesn’t belong to them… Nor do we. belong to them. This is why there are anti-monopoly laws, and why those who violate them, from Xi, to Gates, to Zuck do what they do, imposing their will to us.

What is most human is to debate: from dis-battere, to beat down in diverse directions. That’s what real democracy achieves and its product is mental superiority, magnificence of mind, enduring survival of the species. We can’t play with small-minded dictators anymore, be they holding the Heavenly Gates in Beijing or the Gates of Hell in software manipulations inside the devices we write on [3].

Patrice Ayme

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[1] I am not trying to suddenly claim we in the “West” have suddenly achieved real democracy. Not at all! Representative democracy is only part and parcel of real democracy, a much more complicated affair, with much more dispersed power and direct votes (as Athens and Rome had). But surely we are much democratic than a dictatorship.

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[2] I decided to remove my analysis of the outrageous interview of Gates where he claimed that saying the virus originated in China was a “distraction“. This sort of grotesque disinformation poorly educated plutocrats deliberately inflict on us is not just painful, and an oppression, but also an extreme danger, as it makes us all very stupid. Even answering idiots make us stupid… Imagine arguing with a cockroach: would not that be crazy? But isn’t it what we are doing, debating Gates of Hell? Especially deliberate idiots, like Gates Of Hell.

But we have no choice. When Caesar opposed the summary, illegal execution ordered by the Optimate Consul Cicero, Caesar was logical and methodical, whereas Cicero was all emotion. In retrospect, Caesar, the law and the future of the Republic may have been better deserved with a bit more passion (and a bodyguard!)

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[3] Gates of Hell has taken several subterranean measures against yours truly, from having The Guardian (one of GOH’s paid-for mouthpieces) sanction me as a Jihadist (!) to making me impossible to find in his lousy search engine…

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P/S: Excellent news, at last! Female sexual mutilation outlawed in Sudan! What about males now? Why can’t Euro-America show the way? If not for Europe, and its imperial influence, China would still mutilate the feet of high class women…

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-52502489

FUNDAMENTAL REASON FOR DEMOCRACY: BETTER THINKING

It’s never optimal for a society when a small oligarchy is in command, monopolizing power and knowledge. Arguably, it’s even diabolical, and it’s exactly what “plutocracy” means.
Arguably, monopolizing power and knowledge is even diabolical. This is exactly what the concept of “plutocracy” means. Being ruled by such oligarchies is tightly connected to civilization, which provides with the power, and the Dark Side, the evil, self-inflicted divinity, which has always, counterintuitively, keeps humanity in check.

As the world is now a village, a village with many ways and weapons of mass destruction, any subdistrict of the village living under dictatorship is bad for the rest of the village. Evil and incompetence can’t be isolated. Anymore.

A recent example? The Chinese dictatorship delayed the alert on the danger of the coronavirus COVID 19 by at least one month relative to what would have happened if the pandemic had started in an advanced democracy… And Chinese dictatorship employees actively suppressed whistleblowers with advanced medical knowledge, who tried to alert authorities and public about the danger. This certainly caused the death of thousands and impacted severely the world’s economy (causing in turn more death and destruction!)

To defeat the enemy, one has to know the enemy. And a world without enemies can’t exist, because our opportunity creates them, whether we like it, or not.

Ignorance comes from not knowing facts. In the most acute form, ignorance crystallizes itself by clinging to dogma: a rigid set of beliefs is supposed the know-all, be-all, can-all. This is what happens with any tribalism or religion, even when the religion is the cult of a leader… such as Stalin, or Xi… Or G W. Bush, invading Iraq.

Ignorance is never safe. Secrecy can rarely be justified on the part of those entrusted with power. Generally secrecy fosters the grip of those in power helping them to keep their power… And sometimes those who love power so much will do anything not just to keep that power, but to exact vengeance on all others alive, in the name of their reduced fate, should their power wane (Hitler’s obstinacy to kill as many as he could as long as he could is a striking example of such madness).

We are now a world village. Such a village has been increasing enforced since 1945, thanks to the United Nations and its enforcers. We want to keep it that way. Increasing democracy, by sharing knowledge and power is how to do so.

Our primary objective should be to make the world safer and better for all, and that requires debating well, to find better solutions. And debating optimally requires optimal information. Also debating everybody with everybody gives their chance to the most unexpected ideas, the more people take part in it. This capability, getting ideas from all over, to enrich debates maximally is the deepest, most fundamental reason for democracy. The more democracy, the more a people is forced to learn to think by itself, including forced to learn how one suspects, and gathers the most important facts. Once again, it’s not just a matter of choice, national preference, but of safety of spaceship Earth we all live on.

Patrice Ayme