Intelligence: From The Open Mind, Boosted By The Open Society

The biggest point in favor of the Open Society is that it increases intelligence. Intelligence of the individual, intelligence of society. A more intelligent society, or more intelligent individuals, will tend to survive better, in the fullness of time. This is the fundamental reason for the quick rise of intelligence in the human species (in light of what I will say later).

Intelligence is what reads in between: in-legere. Thus intelligence offers more choices, than just those lines one sees initially. Intelligence provides with more choices, using imagination to create them. The more things one can read, those many things which are provided by the Open Society and the Open Mind, the more one can read in-between, thus the more intelligent one is.

And among those newly available choices, thanks to intelligence, are some choice which are superior ones. Why, how, are they superior? By enabling us, living critters, to do more with less wasted energy… with less work.

There is a fundamental biological advantage to intelligence. However, not always, it depends upon the ecology the species reside in: consider the “perfect” species, in their local minimum energy niche, from mussels to sharks to mushrooms and octopuses… They did not change, because any change would have left the critters doing less, while requiring more energy.

In the case of humans, the niche was already maximal. Indeed humans engage in more behaviors than any other species… thanks to bipedalism in conjunction with using arms for many behaviors, from tool making, weapons, etc… So humans are capable from climbing cliffs to swimming next to the seashore to running in the desert at noon, when no other animal can move (sweating and running were part of the expanding human niche)… And humans could do everything in between: humans are all over the place, their ecological niche is maximal (right, humans could not fly, but, differently from birds, humans could invent, make and use all sorts of tools, and to the point that tool and weapon usage became co-evolutionary with humanity in the last three million years; the tool inventing niche is much more power endowing than just flying around). 

The capability, of bipedalism and arms used for a weapon platform, made it so that there was no human minimum energy ecological niche, humanity being the intrinsically open species, a natural free market, wild jungle competitor…

Evolution is an intelligence, and a creative one, it created us, and we, in turn, part of it, now help create her… For good and evil…

Patrice Ayme

Hawaiian Crow, extinct in the wild, using a tool. Hawaiian and New Caledonia crows have large mobile eyes and straight bills to use tools. Interestingly other crows have not developed this ability. Why? Related to what I said above, because of the available niches. The absence of predators in Hawaii and New Caledonia enabled crows there to evolve out of standard avian niches, and spend energy in other niches than just flying away as the first threat… and thus learn to use tools.. In the case of humans, bipedalism for at least three million years enabled humans to use tools and especially weapons: bipedalism created a large ecological niche, from the weapon capability. A simple stick in the eye is disagreeable enough a perspective to lead lionesses and hyenas to teach the young to avoid hominids. By the way, 109 Hawaiian crows survive in zoos. The fact that they are in zoos, while introduced corvids are thriving in Hawaii shows that tool usage can diminish survivability. So much for the hateful little pseudo-ecologists who hate zoos…

A Closed Society (China) is More Open To PANDEMICS (Coronavirus)

LACK of INFORMATION & DEBATE in NON OPEN SOCIETY FOSTERED DISASTROUS PANDEMIC

The Wuhan coronavirus spreading from China is now a pandemic that circles the globe. The prospect is daunting. A pandemic will have global consequences, despite the extraordinary travel restrictions and quarantines now imposed by many countries.

Science does not yet know how lethal the new coronavirus is. However, I can compute: we have less than 15,000 official cases and more than 300 dead so it seems the death rate is at least 3% (on the face of it that would be 5%). That means if one billion people get infected, 30 million will die. 

To these preliminary considerations, several caveats: first, out of the 15,000 infected, much more than 300 will die: the virus is known to kill patients who were improving for days in hospital beds. Second, and on a more positive note, information is exchanged between doctors, and methods to mitigate the effects of viral pneumonia are no doubt found. Even more important, the governments in the leadership of the world, the so-called “West”, governments are highly organized and have huge means: the USA has installed its first quarantine in 50 years, and uses large military bases to isolate potentially infected people.     

The Wuhan coronavirus is spreading more like influenza, which is highly transmissible, than like its slow-moving very lethal coronavirus cousins, SARS and MERS. [1]

How did we get there? It’s not just about markets mixing humans, live bats and live snakes, all infecting each other in a weird bat-snake-human ecology.

It’s also about China being huge, way too closed, and thus, too stupid for its own size. 

***

China is not an Open Society. The concept of Open Society was originated by Aspasia, a philosopher married to Athenian general and politician Pericles, who famously declared, quoting his famous funeral oration as reported by Thucydides:

“Our political system does not compete with with institutions which are elsewhere in force. We do not copy our neighbors, but try to be an example. Our administration favors the many instead of the few: this is why it is called a democracy. The laws afford equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, but we do not ignore the claims of excellence. When a citizen distinguishes himself, then he will be called to serve the state, in preference to others, not as a matter of privilege, but as a reward of merit; and poverty is no bar.

… The freedom we enjoy extends also to ordinary life; we are not suspicious of one another, and we do not nag our neighbor if he chooses to go his own way. … But this freedom does not make us lawless. We are taught to respect the magistrates and the laws, and never to forget that we must protect the injured. And we are also taught to observe those unwritten laws whose sanction lies only in the universal feeling of what is right….

Our city is thrown open to the world… We are free to live exactly as we please, and yet, we are always ready to face any danger…. We consider a man who takes no interest in the state not as harmless, but as useless; and although only a few may originate a policy, we are all able to judge it. We do not look upon discussion as a stumbling block in the way of political action, but as an indispensable preliminary to acting wisely.”

Debate is crucial to advancing understanding. Debating with oneself is indispensable, but debating with others enables debating with others enables one to go where none thought of, and thus to advance understanding. 

Beautiful words, yet, disastrously, Pericles didn’t act accordingly to them! Just the opposite. 

Chinese Dictatorship Politicians with advanced specialized N95 masks (which stop the virus particles which are 10^7 meter across, so 5 billionth of a meter bigger than the meshes in these N95)… Whereas the doctors welcoming them have pitiful masks which can’t do that. Best masks out there stop at 300 billionths of a meter, 3 times too big to stop the 2019 Coronavirus, Some chinese doctors had to make masks out of garbage bags, due to penury.

Instead in a dictatorship, few decide; the brain power is if not minute, drastically reduced. Actually it’s the multi-debating aspect of Western Europe which enabled most of the advancement of civilization in the last millennium. China, which used to be very advanced scientifically and technologically missed the debating aspect, motivated by mighty intellectual passions. Lack of fierce debate, independently of social hierarchy, is the main missing link of Confucius philosophy, which views the respect of one’s “station” in life, the most important feature of society. Hence Confucius is most compatible with Xi’s regime.

Let alone that Xi got his job in part from his parents’ station in life… 

Whereas intellectual debate and its descendants, in particular scientific, medical and technological advancement, are the exact opposite: they respect only truth, and, more generally, the search thereof. To equal the West, China will have to accept to see truths, and love thereof, be hurled around. 

Tribalists come to me and they whine; if you are not blue, you have got to be red. Their simplicity is hurt, their minds are reeling, they are looking for something to color their bland lives. Well, children, I am campaigning for the truth. Not for a particular potentate to satisfy his or her greed for power.

***

PANDEMICS FROM TYRANNICAL STUPIDITY:

On a great historical scale, one is struck by the fact the Roman State was wrecked by pandemics in the Second Century, The Third, and the Sixth. The first pandemic, during Marcus Aurelius’ reign, weakened the empire considerably. It’s not clear what happened. Clearly the army was struck as Marcus died. The lack of information is, by itself, an indictment: an Open Society would have debated and found ways to fight the epidemic. Instead, the tyrannical empire behaved as if the disastrous pandemics were no more than bad air not worth commenting upon. (By comparison, we know of the authorities in London abating pollution from coal burning already in the Fourteenth Century.)

We have more information from democracies than from the wretched Roman dictatorship. At the onset of the Thirty Years Peloponnesian war, a (highly) predictable pandemic (typhus?) hit Athens. All the population of the Attica peninsula was within the walls, thus very crowded, while armored Spartans roamed outside, destroying the land. Pericles ordered the Athenian fleet to sail to go attack the other side of the Peloponnese. Unsurprisingly, the pandemic exploded in the hyper crowded ships. The expedition became a disaster.

Pericles was recalled and tried for this, under the accusation that everybody knew crowding would make the epidemic terrible. Thus Athens was an open society, but not so open as to be able to avoid such an obvious blunder (much of the population died)… Pericles admitted he “had anticipated everything, but not not this”. Maybe if there had been more of a debate, when planning for war with Sparta, the pandemic could have been anticipated. 

Interestingly, when the dictator Napoleon attacked Russia, a similar situation developed. Apparently the Grande Armee suffered from typhus. In a democracy, the situation would have been revealed, and debated. The obvious solution was to take measures to stop the epidemic, and put off the assault against the Czar to another year. Instead, the dictator kept everything secret, and the idealistic young soldiers from Poland, Germany and other countries, in close quarters, infected each other. So efficient was the dictator that the scandal was kept secret for two centuries (archeology revealed the contaminated corpses recently). Napoleon thus undermined the spreading of revolution to Russia, and enabled the likes of old enslaving aristocrats such as Tolstoy to gloat.

If Rome had been a democratic state in the Second Century, perhaps it would have been able to mitigate considerably the pandemics which weakened it so much. 

During the terrible plague of 1348 CE, not one European aristocrat seems to have died: the nobles knew what was coming and took efficient counter-measures. However around half of the population, often ignorantly crowded praying in churches, died. So obscurantism doesn’t help.

***

SPACESHIP EARTH NEEDS TO BE OPEN TO DEBATE:

In the case of the present Coronavirus, some authorities loudly proclaimed the virus could not be transmitted from human to human, when doctors already knew with certainty that was a lie. So no timely measures were taken in Wuhan, a city of eleven million. 

We are all sharing a small planet, our common spaceship. No country owns the spaceship. No country can endanger the spaceship. Obscurantism and closed societies, anywhere, endanger us all. It was telling that Russia, Mongolia, Vietnam and even North Korea closed their borders to China: when they got informed, they acted as Open Societies should have. More generally, increasing more cooperation, by making the world more of an Open Society will enable to decrease suspicion, hence military spending, and thus augment spending on science, and in particular biology, medicine.

They said “Climate Change”. We said: WORLD CATASTROPHE. They scoffed. Now they are going to sneeze. They will sneeze because the world’s ecology has been all open, and kicked around to new possibilities, while the old biosphere dies. The intellectual climate needs to change and warm up. The time for imagination and passion has come.

The Open Society is not just a choice anymore, it’s a duty. A world duty. Not just a world moral duty, a world survival duty. China can’t ship out, so it will have to change. And not just China. As in China, throughout the West politicians and potentates have confiscated decision power. Debate needs to grab it back.

Wars used to be made about territory. It’s time to have one about fostering the proper open attitude.

Patrice Ayme

***

***

[1] Together SARS and MERS caused less than 11,000 official cases. Their lethality rates were 10% (SARS) and 33% (MERS). The 1918 “Spanish flu” killed only about 2.5 percent of its victims — but because it infected so many people and medical care was much cruder then, and disorganized by World War One, 20 to 50 million died. The evidence is that it started in crowded US military camps.

The highly transmissible H1N1 “swine flu” pandemic of 2009 killed about 285,000, fewer than seasonal flu normally does, and had a relatively low fatality rate, estimated at .02 percent. It is hoped by authorities that 2019 Coronavirus has a death rate of less than 2% (when more mild cases surface). The argument was made by Chinese authorities that Wuhan is more disorganized than the rest of China. Thus a death rate of 4% in Wuhan, 2% in the rest of China.

***

P/S: February 6, 2020. The Chinese doctor who tried to warn other medics about the coronavirus has been reported dead after contracting the infection in Wuhan. According to local state media, Dr Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist, died from the virus on Thursday.

#Breaking: Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, one of the eight whistleblowers who tried to warn other medics of the #coronavirus outbreak but were reprimanded by local police, dies of coronavirus on Thursday in Wuhan, the Global Times has learned. Li sent a message to fellow medics in a group chat on 30 December, and days later was summoned to the Public Security Bureau to sign a letter in which he was accused of making “false comments”.

Li was one of eight people being investigated by police for “rumour-mongering”.

PC = Political Correctness = PERFECTLY CLOSED Minds

PC, Perfectly Closed Intellectual Fascism, key to total civilizational collapse…

“Politically Correct” is a euphemism for “Perfectly Closed”:

In first approach, PC consists in a set of taboos, places where one should never go mentally. For example, if one evokes colonialism or slavery, the PC crowd bleats: condemn Europe. Never mind the fact that Europe was the only slave-free place in the world, then. PC is not about facts, logic. It’s about what makes the powers that be feel good about you, and you can join the mass of sheep, and happily bleat together.

SDM, a commenter on this site, asked: “What exactly do you consider to be PC? you seem to be all over the place without defining your terms.” There are many definitions of “PC” (see Wikipedia on the subject). Here is mine: PC = PERFECTLY CLOSED [MIND].

My definition of Political Correctness is maximal, as general as possible. The beauty, and power, of generalization is something one learns by studying modern mathematics: Generalizing simplifies. Ever since Cardano, a surgeon, took square roots of negative numbers in the 16th Century, mathematics has been generalizing.

“PC”, usually the abbreviation for “Politically Correct”, is, in truth, the exact opposite: “Political Correctness” is extremely detrimental to the Polis…For very deep, neurological, and physical reasons, the “Politically Correct” is an addictive drug, which brings quickly the fall of the polis that it pretends to protect.

***

PC censored minds are closed to what opens the world of understanding, debate: What is the interest of that? Who profits from the crime?

As usual, as Nietzsche would tell you, one has to distinguish the interest of the masters from that of the slaves, just as one has to distinguish the morality of the slaves and the morality of the masters.

Closed minds have fewer dimensions, they are easy to rule. They offer stable homes for intellectual fascism. The PC doctrine is one of the oldest tricks of the greatest dictators. In the past, violating it often meant death.

In Europe and the Middle Earth, for more than a millennium, “Politically Correct” meant being a (well-behaved) Christian or a Muslim. That correctness was enforced by the death penalty (laws of emperor Theodosius against heresy (390 CE), and Muhammad, emperor of Arabia, starting around 630 CE, for disrespect against Islam.)

*** 

Intellectual Fascism Costs Less and Attack More! Real Thinking goes in all directions. Intellectual Fascism entertains just a few. The simplest, most hare-brained tribalism unites the empire around these few ideas. The most intelligent empires, like the Athenian empire, enact just the exact opposite.

PC forces to focus on what should be non-subjects.

For example, Europe and its presumed culpability about slavery: Europe outlawed slavery in 650 CE, nearly 14 centuries ago.  (European colons, far from the arm of European law, reintroduced slavery, mostly because it was the usage all over, outside of Europe.)

Examples of non-subject and disinformation: the very word “antisemitism” (by which is meant “anti-judaism”). US and EU media love to accuse everybody they don’t like of “antisemitism”(for example Trump was accused of antisemitism, when his closest family is Jewish; in France opponents of Emmanuel Macron are accused of “antisemitism”… even though Macron is not Jewish).

The Politically Correct obsession enables the pseudo-left to pontificate about red herrings. And thus to avoid the important subjects, the simple evocation of which would endanger the plutocracy.

The case of Islam is typical : Islam is an ideology which orders to kill many categories of people. Such preaching should be subjected to the same penalties as if a Nazi were doing it. Instead, and although Islamists and Nazis were allied in World War Two, one is, mysteriously, accused of “racism” if one fears Islam.

The mystery is part of the indoctrination. As people are made to ponder pseudo-mysteries elaborated precisely to mystify them,  all and any genuine progress on important subjects is avoided.

Hurling insults such as “racist” and “antisemite”, “colonialist” prevents We The People to be even aware that one should be passionate about such subjects such as HIGH FREQUENCY TRADING.

Why? Because high frequency trading  is one of the ways the plutocracy uses to become ever more powerful, year after year. Abuse such as high frequency trading is today’s slavery, today’s colonialism (colonizing the world). But if all what people worry about is slow slave trading two centuries ago, they don’t have the mental space to know even of the existence of high frequency trading.

***

“Political Correctness” is nothing new: it has existed ever since there were dictators, and that’s how they ruled:

Ruling over the Polis, implies forbidding We The Sheeple to have inadmissible thoughts, or broaching some taboo subjects. The very fact that the pseudo-left has embraced Political Correctness demonstrates that their mannerism is just a travesty of plutocracy. Shame on them!

By excluding from debates entire subjects, the Jihadists of wealth, the PC whip masters, prevent the analysis of the exploitation schemes plutocracy organizes. (This is not an outrageous analogy. Real Islamist Jihadists worked real hard for the US fracking industry, by forcing the price of oil at extravagant level for those years where fracking rigs were paid for, built, and deployed in the USA; I am not choosing my words at random. It’s hilarious to realize that those who died screaming Alluha Akbar, God is Great, died for US oil men and their co-conspirators… GIs, who were also killed and maimed, may find this less hilarious. What I just wrote is highly Politically Incorrect, of course, as are all serious truths not previously revealed…)

***  

Intellectual Fascism: it deserves its own essay. Political fascism arises from Ethological Fascism, the fact that social animals fight better when they ACT as a super-organism (the mass with the greatest mass wins, even hyenas versus lions).

Excluding entire subjects from debate closes the minds to external influences. That stabilizes the Intellectual Fascism. A fascist mind needs to be protected from exterior influences.

An open mind does not need to be protected. By definition, an open mind is open to all influences.

Mental, and Intellectual fascisms proceed of an even more general principle, the Principle of Least Action. Brains try to do as little as possible, so adopting others’ ideas is all the more irresistible, when they come from one’s superiors.

***

Tribalism rests most economically, most stupidly, upon Political Correctness:

ASPASIA WAS A PHILOSOPHER WHO WROTE THE BEST SPEECHES OF HER HUSBAND, Pericles. She promoted the “OPEN SOCIETY”, the exact opposite of “Political Correctness” (“We throw our city open to the world”). Thus she was put on trial on a number of charges, including , of course, “impiety”.

Impiety? Tribalism is the basic religion. Always has, always will be. It defines the “Politically Correct”, what one has to believe rather than explain.

***

Those who rule, rule best, when they rule over the minds of their slaves, training them like dogs. This is what “Political Correctness” does. PC is the melodious barking of those dogs. Always has been, always will be. Instead, really philosophy is a discordance.

Even if, at some point of history a Polis (City-State in Greek; by generalization a nation, or empire) had achieved perfect morality (and this never happened), this would have been unsustainable. Politics is always geometrodynamics, because so is the environment. And it’s nonlinear, because it self-interacts, be it only through the ecology which it ravages  

Civilization is never a closed box, as it bursts, Plus Ultra, through all the bounds, even if successful, especially if successful. Political Correctness.  

Calling things by the opposite of what they are is the basis of deception. See the “Affordable Care Act” (The ACA did not have much cost control of the world’s most expensive health care; thus some of the world’s greatest plutocrats supported it, just as they support Brexit, for the same exact reason: augmenting their power).

By calling things by the opposite of what they are, way the sheeple cannot suspect the enormity of the lie, as Adolf Hitler explained in detail in his famous book “Mein Kampf”. This has long been used by US plutocratically owned media (my own “Mediating Pluto” from 2013, explains why the New York Times has banned me).

Examples of mislabelling abound: “Catholicism” means “Universalism” (in Greek): yet the “Catholics” immediately proceeded to exterminate any understanding of the world beyond their Qur’an (Qur’an means “recitation” in Arabic. So my usage here is not just biting irony, but translating in Arabic Catholic practice. Actually “Islam” is pretty much “Catholicism” translated in Arabic, for the desert).

Similarly “Communism” was the opposite of what happened with Stalinism and Maoism, or “National-Socialism” just the opposite of what it claimed to be, as it was revealed to be anti-national, and anti-socialist. Much of what is called “capitalism” and “liberalism” right now is neither.  

***

Worrying about Political Correctness, is even older than Socrates’ murky drama. The case of Socrates shows, indeed, a dearth of PC can bring death and become criminal (Socrates was condemned to death for “corrupting the youth”: his students and lovers, 50 years younger than him, were central to the near-annihilation of Athens in Peloponnesian War, and Socrates was obstinately democidal, a tradition Plato and Aristotle pursued until the official subjection of Athens to Macedonian overviewed plutocracy).

In March 1968,  Michel Foucault, a psychiatrically trained French philosopher, said: “a political thought can be politically correct (‘politiquement correcte’) only if it is scientifically painstaking“. So the term actually originated in France. Only if it scientifically proven, painstakingly. ONLY IF!

In May 1991, at a commencement ceremony for a graduating class of the University of Michigan, then U.S. President George H.W. Bush excoriated Political Correctness  in his speech: “The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred, it replaces old prejudice with new ones. It declares certain topics off-limits, certain expression off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits.”

(I officially hate Prescott Bush, H.W.’s father, a criminal-against humanity from his extreme collaboration with Adolf Hitler, and I despise W. Bush, another criminal against humanity, for his fracking-promoting invasion of Iraq; but I respect H. W. Bush, the navy’s youngest pilot, he had cheated to enroll… H. W. Bush would have never dismantled FDR’s Banking Act of 1933, as Bill Clinton and his goons did)

Earlier Blum had written “The Closing Of The American Mind” (1987; I bought the book, but didn’t read it really very much, too boring and too…closed)

Seen my way, Political Correctness, this Perfect Closure, is closely tied to Intellectual Fascism ( a precursor of, but much more general than, political fascism).

***

Political Correctness, Perfect Closure makes Intellectual Fascism not only possible, but sustainable. However, Intellectual Fascism, by reducing intelligence, makes the Polis, the City, the Nation, the Empire, Civilization, even less sustainable than Political Fascism does.

Many civilizations went on, sometimes for millennia, as Political Fascism: the obvious example are muscular, well-organized empires such as Egypt and China (although “China” was often several). However, when either engaged in Intellectual Fascism (having not enough correct, fresh ideas), they quickly went down.

Europe after the collapse of Athens under Macedonia, knew hope for real democracy with the Roman Republic, which had very strong anti-plutocratic laws. However, once those were removed, de facto, from globalization (circa 150 CE), Rome survived as a Republic In Name Only (RINO).

Intellectual Fascism is self-amplifying: hence emperor Theodosius anti-heresy laws of 390 CE made the empire collapse in a few years. Within ten years, the bishops who governed the empire gave power to the Franks, in the North-West, as they had no ideas, no choice, no money, no army, and neither the taste nor capability to do what their government of bishops needed to do.

The Franks, a recently unified confederation of Dutch (or ‘lower Germans’), legislated under a law written for them by Roman lawyer-generals, brought back tolerance for diversified people and their variegated ideas by clamping down on Jihad Christianism.

Since then Europe clamped down enough on Intellectual Fascism to produce mental progress. 

But full democracy a la Athens, 25 centuries ago, has not been re-established. Worse: the Politically Correct resurfacing today, is reminiscent of the monks dressed all in black who destroyed thinkers and their books, around 400 CE (especially in places such as Egypt).  Those monks in black were the main cause of the Dark Ages.  

While we are supposed to vilify Europe for all it did not really do, and certainly for a very long time, there is a New Force on Wall Street: The ‘Family Office’, reveals the Wall Street Journal:
‘Clans with nine-figure fortunes are increasingly investing through unregulated firms known as family offices, impinging on the business of investment banking and private equity.’ It turns out that they conspire…

“On a warm October day in 2014, envoys from 15 of America’s wealthiest families gathered at Circle T, Ross Perot Jr.’s 2,500-acre ranch outside Dallas. Skeet-shooting was on the agenda, but the real purpose of the two-day retreat was for the families to get acquainted and eventually team up to pursue investments.

From that exclusive gathering, attended by people investing the fortunes of Michael Bloomberg and other billionaires, sprang a broader network of 150 families that have since participated in more than 10 deals together, including acquisitions.

Such transactions traditionally were the province of big companies or private-equity firms. But a disruptive force has emerged on Wall Street: the family office. These entities, set up to manage the fortunes of the wealthy, and able to operate under the radar, are making their presence felt with their growing numbers, fat wallets and hunger for deals.”

Meanwhile the PC cultural retards don’t have any notion of the preceding, busy as they are calling everybody a racist, not knowing that it was exactly what the Nazis were doing during their ascent (more bad news for the PC crowd: the Nazis were very loudly defending minority rights, the environment and the rights of animals. Hitler was a vegetarian; all of this PC distractions deliberately planted to make the German people lose sight of what was essential…)

The reign of the non-censored Internet gives hope, though. Now at last, and at least, we can debate, no holds barred, a few squeaks in the darkness… While our masters laugh, martinis in hand, watching the sun set from their private islands, secure from their vast conspiracies, protected by their private armies, jetting around in their private jet fleets, as the little ones down there are calling each other names…

Patrice Ayme’

 

 

No Transparency, No Democracy

 

PLUTOCRACY AND ITS ENEMIES.

***

THE CLOSED SOCIETY AND ITS PREYS:

In "The Open Society And Its Enemies", the philosopher Karl Popper criticized those who attacked what Pericles himself (advised by his own top Athenian philosophers) had called the "Open Society".

Unfortunately, well after Pericles’ death, Athens produced its own intellectual enemies of the open society, and the open mind. Plato, from the wealthy class, and Aristotle, straight from the Macedonian court, are may be the two highest examples of the fascism-plutocracy complex who ever were. The fact that they practiced creative thinking made them even more dangerous (and those two and their students may well have added enough poison to kill Athenian democracy).

Both Popper and Pericles used euphemisms. They did not conceptually distinguish and name the real enemy. It is true Athens, at its apogee, was an open society (for the times). However, there was still a lot of power among too few, very rich hands in the City-State. And Plato belonged to that class, and was busy undermining his enemy, namely the demos.

Ultimately, that wealthy class betrayed the Athenian democracy and sided with the Macedonian fasco-plutocrats (whether the Macedonian generals who preceded, supported, and replaced Alexander, were more plutocratic than fascist is a matter of debate; in any case, the two notions are two different dimensions of human psyche belonging to the Dark Side).

Thus the existence of that plutocratic layer ultimately defeated Greek democracy. As Athens and other Greeks, finally, allied with Rome, defeated the Macedonians, Roman plutocracy (led by the Roman Senate), turned around, and crushed democracy in Greece again (by throwing four legions onto Corinth to repress socialism there).

An uneasy status quo would perdure, between Greek intellectuals and Roman plutocrats, until Roman fascism unleashed theocracy over the whole empire under emperor Jovian in 363 CE (an unusual date, but I chose it because that’s when the state engaged in library burning; even a redoubtable Catholic fanatic such as emperor Constantius II had not dared to do that).

The final straw was when emperor Justinian closed the academies (529 CE). The Greek intellectuals and their books fled to Sassanid Persia (a fascist state, but not as fascist), and Hellenistic intellectual tradition survived long enough (3 centuries) to have a lot of it transferred to the Arabs and Muslims.

***

PLUTOCRACY IS THE ENEMY OF THE OPEN SOCIETY:

What Plato and Popper did not dare say was that the hyper rich, as a class, was for the closed society. The problem is acute nowadays: we see, worldwide, a struggle to death between plutocracy and democracy. Notice the word “death”, please.

Past democrats, sometimes centuries ago, say when England was fighting the dictator Napoleon (a dictator that England had itself created, and that shows how deep the roots of plutocracy can go), used creative financing. It actually started way back, in Renaissance Italy, especially during those charming wars before 1300 CE, and got boosted by the (civil?)war between the French Francois I and the Bourguignon, Charles V (elected emperor “Charles Quint”).

In any case, political power came to use, and thus depend, upon PRIVATE BANKERS. In particular the Rothschilds. Private bankers were given a monopoly of the state, MONEY CREATION. It is true that this fractional reserve system augmented the power of the state, short term. But mostly it augmented the power of the bankers, and the riches of those in government, who let themselves be corrupted by them.

This satanic arrangement started mainly as a European conspiracy. The early American presidents saw it, as such, decried it very loudly, and avoided it. Just the opposite of the present day USA.

This connivance between state and private individuals happened before; it’s called the END OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. At the end of the empire, the hyper rich refused to pay taxes, and the state did not have enough power to force them to. So the state, starved in revenues, turned to German bands for defense (or even to the Huns!)

Later the confederation of the Salian Franks (the free from the salted area, namely the southern Netherlands), a nation of peasant warriors versed into international and religious matters, took overall power (after becoming indispensable to the empire as its shock troops).

When the Muslim armies invaded with their Arabs and Berbers, the Franks needed a serious army. They were powerful enough to get the money they needed, by nationalizing the Catholic church (early 8th century). That professional army was the largest since the heydays of the Roman empire.

***

THE ROMAN REPUBLIC WAS DESTROYED BY PLUTOCRACY UNCHAINED:

During the Second Punic war, the Roman republic was victim of a succession of tremendous defeats. Entire armies, with the best and brightest of the Roman citizens got annihilated. Most of the old aristocracy got destroyed (that’s a fact). And with it, most of Rome’s old republican culture (I am assuming this, by observing the change of tone of legislators and orators, let alone the decisions taken by the state). Even if some old families survived, the sons had no time to be properly educated by their fathers.

Meanwhile war profiteers became the new rich, and soon the new Roman aristocracy. That, and the immense growth of Roman wealth, explained how Rome sank in abject plutocracy. It took 60 years.

Sixty years ago, under president Eisenhower, the upper margin rate on taxes was 81%. Yes, not far from 100%. So Ike could pay for the Interstate Freeway system, massive weapon programs (the Stalinists had gone thermonuclear), create public utilities such as NASA, and pay for ordering the troops to crack down on institutionalized racism in American schools.

More generally, republican president Eisenhower kept the plutocracy in check. Nowadays, with the neofascist neocons in power, Eisenhower would be viewed as a dangerous communist, if only the neofascist neocons had heard of him.

Lying has a lot to do with the unleashing of plutocracy in Rome. A lie was that, 60 years after its second crushing defeat, Carthage still represented a danger. It did not (having lost its empire, now under the control of Rome).

Carthage having become democratic, was not a danger for Rome, but a danger for Roman plutocracy, as it represented the example of a giant and wealthy city where hyper plutocracy did not reign. Numantia, Corinth, and Greece in general, fell to the same logic.

***

NO TRANSPARENCY, NO DEMOCRACY:

It is as simple as that. This principle ought to end the base controversy about WikiLeaks philosophy.

Some will say: "And what about the secret services? What about killing the worst enemies of democracy in the night? How can we still do that? with all this transparency?" Well, that is precisely why those services are secret, and reside in the shadows.

Democratic institutions cannot be covered by secrecy. It is one thing to have nuclear codes, and keeping them secret. That is about war, the fascist side. That is why the highest legal authorities of Rome, among them the Consuls, were surrounded by big men carrying big axes.

The fascist side is necessary: it protects the people (demos) from ultimate harm (when the people is made into cat food or turned into ashes).

But the people ‘s normal state, the pursuit of happiness, requires that fascism be kept away, and that means for secrecy to be kept away. The people, the demos, cannot rule, kratos, if it does not know what is going on. Obama is our representative, not our ruler. WE rule, We The People.

Even the expression "First Lady Of The USA", should be ruled out. This is the way Augustus, the first emperor, killed the republic: by calling himself "FIRST". In Latin: PRINCEPS. Or as the French came to say: "Prince".

Plutocracy has grown, precisely thanks to, and under the cover of secrecy, as it corrupted the elected representatives of the people, and its democratic institutions (see the central bank, below, and the Irish crisis, where taxpayers in Ireland, Britain, Europe, and the rest of the IMF countries of the world, including the USA, are asked to make sure that fat cats keep on purring in their castles, and fly in private jets… to support what THEY call the economy, their economy.)

***

CONTEXTUAL LYING

Hannah Arendt would support "No Transparency, No Democracy" She actually railed against "invisible governments".… She is misquoted wildly in connection with WikiLeaks by the servants of plutocracy (who claim that she would have been against the leaks).

The technique used against Arendt is simple. A philosopher says: "Non A". Then an anti-philosopher comes and claims that: ‘the philosopher said: "A"’. Similar techniques are used with hyperlinks (hyperlinks are often brandished, which do not support what they are claimed to support, so the quoting looks scholarly, but it’s just dishonest).

***

SKY IS THE LIMIT:

I often mention the 5 trillion of gift to the American financial titans, which caused the so called "Great Recession" (aka Great Depression III), by depriving the rest of the economy of money (aka "investments"). I may have to up my numbers: a new law, a law requiring more TRANSPARENCY, has brought up many revelations about welfare for banks, as engineered in secrecy by the central banks:

The Federal Reserve made $9 trillion in emergency overnight loans

Top recipients of overnight loans made by the Federal Reserve under special program that ran from March 2008 through May 2009.

That is more than 70% of the GDP of the USA, in overnight loans to major banks and Wall Street firms during the financial crisis (data released December 2). Money was also sent to overseas elements of the international plutocracy (not shown here). The amount of cash being pumped out to the financial giants was not previously disclosed. Oh, and this was just for the year up to May 2009. USA workers make GDP, Federal Reserve loans most of it to top private banks and money manipulators: that is how plutocracy works.

Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who authored the provision of the financial reform law that required the December 2, 2010, disclosure, called the data incredible and jaw-dropping: "The $700 billion Wall Street bailout turned out to be pocket change compared to trillions and trillions of dollars in near zero interest loans and other financial arrangements that the Federal Reserve doled out to every major financial institution…"They may have repaid their loans, but that’s not good enough," he said. "It’s clear the demands the Fed made were not enough."

Wall Street firm Merrill Lynch received the most assistance, an astounding $2.1 trillion, from 226 loans. Merrill Lynch was not even a bank, but a money manipulator for the rich. The government then engineered its integration in Bank of America (with taxpayer money, as Mr. Assange and his colleagues at WikiLeaks will reveal within a few weeks).

***

CORRUPTION EVERYWHERE:

The USA used Spanish airfields and bases for the rendition and subsequent torture of human beings.

When Spanish courts moved to investigate Bush administration officials Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Douglas Feith, and William J. Haynes for these apparent war crimes, several US Senators and the Bush and Obama administrations told the Spanish government that they did not care whether the Spanish court system was independent or not, but that any indictment would not be understood by the American people, and would have serious consequences for bilateral relations. Source: WikiLeaks.

Ultimately the prosecution did not happen, and the top Spanish prosecutor was himself persecuted (he lost his job).

People, worldwide, can note where all too many European governments get their orders from.

Many "extraordinary renditions" proceeded through Sweden (the state who made a fortune by selling high grade iron ore to Hitler before and doing World War Two). More convenient than ever, now Sweden wants Mr. Assange, from WikiLeaks for sex between consenting adults (!), and put an Interpol red notice for him. Assange had an encounter with two women who have since deleted their web sites and tweets, as they revealed a lot about their plans, sudden, delayed dissatisfaction with Mr. Assange (the great outrage of an allegedly dysfunctioning condom was revealed to police more than a week after it happened).

Another one who is developing problems with Interpol is Mr. Cheney. The USA has an extradition treaty with Nigeria. So if Nigeria wants an American citizen for seriously corrupting Nigerian citizens, the USA has to cooperate. As it turns out, Mr. Cheney, a major servant of plutocracy, has been named in a 180 million dollar bribe in Nigeria, before he became VP. Fortunately, he should be easy to find, since the US Secret Service is with him at all times. No doubt the diplomacy of the USA is working overtime about that one, since it is very important to not connect blatantly major USA policy makers and gangsterism.

***

CONNECTING AMERICAN PLUTOCRACY WITH NAZISM WILL GET YOU BANNED:

I was banned from the "philosophyforums.com", immediately after mentioning that American Senator Prescott Bush received millions of dollars in 1953, for his management of companies such as American-Silesian (some of Hitler’s most important military companies). American efficiency at its best.

I did not even have the time to mention that American-Silesian, and that other company managed by Bush "Consolidated Silesian Steel Corporation", located in Silesia, next to Auschwitz, were using Auschwitz inmates [Note 1]. Or that Hitler explained to Bush that he had to nationalize the company (funded by American banks), for the duration of the war, but that Bush would be amply rewarded afterwards.

Bush was indeed rewarded, with what is in 2010 money, more than one hundred million dollars, and this 8 years after the Third Reich capitulated. This is another indication that that there was more to Nazism than the Nazis themselves. And, whatever it was, it was alive and rich, well after Nazism was officially dead. What is the name of that entity, for which international law is nothing?

The reaction from the "philosophyforums", to which official philosophers such as John Searle are associated, shows that all too many American academics know all too well how nasty the plutocracy which feeds them is.

I documented many of the connection between IG Farben, of Auschwitz fame, and American plutocracy. Companies such as Jasco, half owned by Standard Oil and IG Farben (1930), and holding more than 2,000 patents, are evocative enough. In 1927, Standard Oil and IG Farben founded the company "Standard IG Farben“; its president was the oil dealer William Farish from Texas (a plutocratic family with lots of clout in Anglo-Saxonia to this day, and which was involved, and paid in WWII on BOTH sides, simultaneously, etc.

Those poor fellows at philosophyforums thought I would not dare to document my statements, and that trying to connect American plutocracy and Nazism was, as they put, it "pseudologia fantastica" (which is incorrect Latin: "logia" in Latin does not mean "logica"; what they wanted to say was that my logic was fantastic; clearly they have to study not just logic, but also Latin).

To some of the ignorant, knowledge is offensive, and wisdom, witchcraft. Those we ought to fear.

One of the "moderators" of what is in my view, an intellectually dishonest site, actually threatened that he would have my site, on WordPress, "removed". As I pointed out that this would violate my Constitutional Rights, he coolly replied that the "Constitution applied only to the government". The Constitution is certainly not applied with enough force in American schools. The same gentleman claimed to be a published poet and tenured professor at a major university, which, under the circumstances, are aggravating factors, since basic human rights escape his conceptual grasp. With fools such as these teaching, who can complain about Palin’s mity brain?

Mosquitoes have been a danger to man, ever since there are men, and they think. Trying to get the mosquitoes to think it over, is a dangerous misallocation of time-energy.

***

SOME EUROPEAN BANKERS STILL LOVE HITLER:

In 2009, I was banned from the European Tribune, an American (plutocracy) loving European website. The founder of the site, a banker of the type who gets bonuses, told me that I had caused too much infighting on the site. How?

I had mentioned that in 1920 a unit of W.A. Harriman & Co. took effective control of a German shipping line, the Hamburg-Amerika shipping company, which played a major role in the rise of Nazism, with Nazi serving propaganda in Germany, and the USA.

Hamburg-Amerika also smuggled American weapons for the SS. That unit of Harriman, American ship and Commerce Corp, was run by Prescott Bush and his father in law, Walker. A number of bankers on the European Tribune site had tried to demonstrate that I was crazy, but I had answers to all. So I was banned.

Victims still go around, like Elie Wiesel, and wonder how the "Holocaust" happened. But even now, one cannot tell the truth about the "Holocaust", without being called crazy. So how could we get to know how it happened?

***

THAT THE USA STABBED DEMOCRACY IN THE BACK IN 1939, THERE IS NO DOUBT:

There are hundreds of facts supporting this striking idea. But, as Hannah Arendt herself pointed out, one can hide the truth in a public sea of facts (OK, she did not exactly say that, but that’s the idea).

Two facts are sufficient to see the extent of the betrayal of democracy by the USA in 1939: first that, after France and Britain (and then many other countries, including India) declared war on Hitler, the USA (its Congress and President) declared France and Britain "belligerent" (with associated sanctions).

The other fact was that the Ethyl Corporation of America provided 500 tons of lead tetra ethyl, an anti knock agent, to the Nazis. Those 500 tons allowed the Luftwaffe to keep on flying, as 41 French divisions were attacking in the west, and the Poles were desperately fighting in the east. As the Luftwaffe kept on flying, Poland fell quickly, and the French offensive became pointless, if not self defeating: it came into contact with the Siegfried Line (promising the destruction of the French army: that equivalent of the Maginot Line took 6 months to be breached in 1944-45, with a giant multinational army with air domination).

The fall of Poland, something American plutocracy worked hard for, was not innocuous. Flour mills were destroyed, so that the Poles would starve to death in winter. Auschwitz was open, to put Poles inside. One always talk about the Nazi will to eradication of the Jews, but they started with the Poles, of whom they would kill about 6 million (17% of the population).

Now, of course, one has to distinguish a country, its ideology, its ethics, its spirit, its institutions, its people(s), its leaders, its domineering classes, etc. So when I say that the USA stabbed democracy in the back in 1939, it’s all too vague. What happened is that enough elements of the American plutocracy were in enough control of the government of the USA in 1939 to make said government stab democracy in the back in 1939.

It was not going to stop there: powerful elements of the American plutocracy would keep on collaborating with the Nazis throughout the war, such as the plutocrat Farish above. And of course, IBM, Hitler’s crucial monopoly, would keep on being managed from New York.

Thus elements of the American plutocracy kept on insidiously stabbing in the back the American Army itself, throughout World War Two!

***

ARISTOCRACY: TOO SERVILE A NOTION. PLUTOCRACY: WHAT IS HAPPENING.

Some speak about the rise of new aristocracy in the USA. This is too kind and misleading, not to say servile. And it’s not just in the USA, as the story of Ireland shows.

Or as demonstrated, more generally, with the governmental will to nationalize the losses of the plutocrats, while privatizing their profits, which they make, thanks to their governmental servants.

"Aristocracy" means the power (kratos) of the best (aristos). Thus, "aristocracy" is too complimentary a concept: it assumes a superiority beyond power. Aristocracy is the rule of the best. It is clearly not what we have here.

"Plutocracy", the rule of the underground, the riches, Pluto, the god of hell, is more like what is really going on in the USA. And even in Europe. Let alone other places.

And don’t ask where the astounding blossoming of plutocracy in the USA is coming from: it’s obvious. Other democracies have more barriers, more laws, between money and politics. Not that much in the USA, and ever less.

Democracy and plutocracy are not compatible. One is about the rule of man, the other about the rule of Satan. So the outrages will keep on growing.

***

NO TRUTH, BUT THE TRUTH:

No wonder that, as WikiLeaks threatened to expose soon the collusion between the supposedly democratic governments and the plutocracy, government after government is trying to shut WikiLeaks down. Then they will be ready to crack down on WikiLeaks’ accomplices in the standard media: the New York Times (and its affiliates), the Guardian, Le Monde, etc…

There was a point when enough people of good will and good character could have easily stopped the Nazis. But they would also have needed good knowledge, and that they did not have. Or did not want to have.

A disastrous attempt by the French secret services in 1933 to expose the Warburgs backfired. The Warburgs were an Americano-German Jewish plutocratic family which made a bridge between Anglo-Saxon plutocrats and Hitler (so it clearly showed that plutocracy ruled all concerned). A book secretly written by the French secret services, to expose them all to the light of the day, was outlawed internationally, and thus its thesis, which was correct, got, unfortunately discredited, for all to see.

Instead what went on was polite, mostly secret diplomacy with Hitler. As French PM Daladier came back from Munich in 1938, he was feted at the Bourget airport. He muttered to aides:"Les pauvres, s’ils savaient!" ("Poor little ones, if they only knew!")

To know is not always nice, but to have democracy, it’s the only way. We are the bosses, remember? So we need to know, we ought to know, what our servants have been, or may have been, plotting behind our backs. Remember last time we got stabbed in the back, big time? 1939?

***

Patrice Ayme

***

P/S: Another enemy of the open society was Confucius. Confucius, although less overtly pro-fascist, was also pretty bad, as a prime anti-intellectual. He is famous, and often quoted positively in China, for saying that studying always brought fruits, but generally thinking did not (Rousseau said the same, but expressing it in a way that obviously inspired the worst Nazis).  So the former ought to be preferred to the later. It fit perfectly well a civil servant of plutocracy, as he was (and could only be).

To be free, a human beings needs first to have free thoughts, and that means the ability to derive them autonomously, and thus to have information freely available to feed such thoughts. Freedom of information leads to freedom of thought, and thus greater power in those who have it, and the society which harbor them. Therein a difference between Europe and China, or even the Mongols and China.

***