Blame Obama’s Nihilism For Syria’s Destruction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Or when naivety becomes criminal, murderous idiocy!]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrice Ayme’

 

Obama “Lack Of Supermajority” Lie

The simplest, and most efficient, way of thinking is by not lying. Lying consistently requires to know both some elements of reality and the lies one adorned them with. Lying is neurologically taxing.

The so-called “Democrats” lied about why they did nothing in the early part of Obama’s reign. They claimed it was because of the Republicans, a nebulous reason. Indeed, the so-called Democrats are Republicans in disguise, and they did not do anything for “We The People“, because they identify as “We The Plutocrats” (“WE”, as Hillary Clinton admitted to Goldman Sachs partners, as she talked to them, admitting she was as good as a Goldman Sachs partner).

The main difference between Republicans and Democrats seems to be that the Democrats lie better, so they can afford to foster more regressive policies.

Diane Feinstein, one of Hillary Clinton’s main support, was a pure politician her entire life. Feinstein claims to be worth around 50 million dollars. She will conveniently forget to tell you her husband is at least a billionaire. We are demoncrats, and the demon, the devil, Pluto, made us lie, so please forget it. (And how come, as a pure politician earning no more than $160,000, she made 50 million dollars?) These people rule the world, not just the USA: Feinstein’s husband, Richard Blum, was a major investor in China… while his wife prepared and reigned, over pertinent legislation.

Sometimes, of course, one should lie. Say, if a dying child is anxious, full care requires lying with no limits whatsoever. Just tell the child she better sleep and will be refreshed when she wakes up.

However, in a politico-social context, lying is never a good idea. If one is on the side of We The People. Reciprocally, lying is how plutocrats rule. And they go all the way, inventing religions to justify their horrors (the most famous cases being Christianism and Islam, both set-up by dictators, respectively Saint Constantine, Roman emperor, self-described “13th Apostle“, and Prophet Muhammad, self-described “Messenger of God“; the latter imitating the former).

Obama was the do-nothing president. OK, Obama did a lot for plutocrats, transferring trillions of federal debt to the richest people and corporations in the world. As I called it ironically, TARP, Transferin Assets To the Richest People. But Obama did nothing much for “We The People“, besides very effective lip service. To justify doing nothing, to his supporters, from day one, Obama accused the “Republicans”. He just could not convince them, Republicans, he said. That was true, but it was also a lie. A true lie. Obama did not need to convince any Republicans. Not a single one. He was in control. In total control. (But is a child in control? Of course not: a child does not know enough. A fortiori a puppet of Goldman Sachs, Gates, Apple, etc. )

Lying Has Helped Rulers For Millennia, But It Does Not Help Civilization

The Nazis used, and advertised, the big lie technique because they believed they had achieved a superior understanding of the human condition, so it did not matter what ways they used to implement their rule. There were enormous lies implemented by self-described “democrats” in the last 24 years. Passing laws in the service of what turned out to be plutocrats who have names: Hillary Clinton considered major plutocrats (Gates, Cook, etc.) as potential Vice Presidential choices (before she realized that would compromise her chances too much) .

While Obama claimed he could not do anything without the Republicans, the democrats had a majority in the House of Representatives, and the democrats had a majority in the US Senate. So was Obama lying? (Silly question, sorry.)

No, say demoncrats. US Senate tradition (since 1993!) is that one can talk and talk and talk and talk in the Senate, and block any bill. Once Democratic Senator Byrd talked around 24 hours. Continuously.

However, filibusters can be overruled when one has 60 votes in the US Senate, a SUPERMAJORITY. Obama had such a supermajority, for many months perhaps six months. He could have also forced a 12 months bullet proof supermajority by forcing two ailing democratic  senators to resign

In January 2009, there were 56 Senate Democrats and two independent senators who caucused with Democrats. This combined total of 58 included Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), whose health was failing and was unable to be at the Senate everyday. As a practical matter, in the early months of Obama’s presidency, the Senate Democratic caucus had 57 members on the floor for day-to-day legislating.

In April 2009, Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter switched parties. This meant there were 57 Democrats, and two independents who caucused with Democrats, for a caucus of 59.

On June 30 2009, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) was sworn in, after a lengthy recount and legal fight. At that point, the Democratic caucus reached 60, but two of its members, Kennedy and Byrd, were SOMETIMES unavailable for votes.

In August 2009, Kennedy died, and Democratic caucus again stood at 59.

In September 2009, Sen. Paul Kirk (D-Mass.) filled up Kennedy’s vacancy, bringing the caucus back to 60. At this point, the democrats were back with a SUPERMAJORITY. Senator Byrd’s health continued to deteriorate. A forceful president with a progressive agenda could have made him resign. But Obama had no progressive agenda whatsoever. Neither did his helpers and sycophants. The leading ones are all establishment, they are happy wioth the establishment.

In January 2010, Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) replaced Kirk on January 19, 2010, bringing the Democratic caucus back down to 59 again.

In June 2010, Sen. Byrd died. Byrd’s replacement, a Democrat, Carte Goodwin, was sworn two weeks later. So the caucus stayed at 59.

Obama said, it’s all the fault of the Republicans, and here is this Obamacare, my “signature achievement“, plutocrats will take care of you, as long as I send them your tax dollars.

When FDR became president, he enforced a progressive agenda on his first day. In the first month, Obama did just one progressive thing: sign, with great fanfare, the evacuation of arbitrary detention at Guantanamo. Well, not really. Guantanamo is still in operation, eight years later, with people inside, arbitrarily detained. The Do-Nothing president really did nothing. His true signature achievement. (Except for arbitrary drone lethal strikes, for all to see, a new judicial precedent, and savagely hunting those who reveal some bad actions of the US government, some of them unlawful.)

A progressive president needs a supermajority only for a couple of hours. In the early twentieth century, one morning, in a couple of hours, two laws passed: one set-up the Income Tax Law, setting up the IRS. The other law passed within the hour was the Foundation Law.  

The reigning democrats are lying. They are Republicans in disguise. Republicans brought up on a Reagan psychological diet.

In the last debate Hillary Clinton attacked Trump, because Trump had attacked then reigning president Ronald Reagan in 1987… with exactly the same position Trump has today.

Need I say more?

Yes, I do. I pointed out the preceding, at the time, in 2009, as it happened. Much later, the “Tea Party” was created later. So I got to be called “Tea Party”. Last week, some people on the Internet, in public, called me a “liar, racist, xenophobe”, and added even more flattering qualifiers, for daring to say that Obama had a supermajority, for many months, in the beginning of his presidency. Some added that I reiterated “Republican talking points“. Whatever. (If politicians adopt my ideas, i am not going to complain.)

I follow the truth, an attempt to espouse reality. Politically I am somewhat on the left of Bernie Sanders, but also in the future, and that means, on the side of Mother Earth. I know Obama, and wish this will help him to stop lying. The truth is that Obama wanted more progress than he got, because most “Democrats” are rather “Demoncrats”: just ask how come some of them made hundreds of millions during their strictly political careers. Say ask the two top California democrats, Nancy Pelosi, who headed Congress for six years, and Diane Feinstein, the Senior Senator of California. Pelosi is the richest US representative. She is married to an investment banker, Paul Pelosi, the sort of people Obama helped, Clinton breathe with (Goldman Sachs). Obama will say he did a lot to crack down on bankers. Right. And another lie. Another true lie: the Obama administration cracked down on commercial banking, and on banking for “We The People”. (Worldwide, it turned out, as American jurisdiction is brandished that way.)  Meanwhile, investment banking was helped, thanks to the pernicious pretext that banking needed help (yes, commercial banking needed help as Quantitative Easing made it unprofitable, while derivatives were allowed to run amok, same as before, profiting investment bankers…)

“Democrats” never envisioned any progressive law under Obama-Biden. Obama passed several laws that were such a give-away to the wealthiest families, through their banks, that the GOP would never have dreamed to try to pass them before, so outrageously pro-wealth those laws were.
Later, when asked what happened, the Obama administration claimed it was all the fault of the GOP, because Obama did not have a “supermajority”. The retort was not only besides the point and a red herring, but it was also a lie. But it transformed Democrat public opinion into anger against the GOP.

There are system of lies, just like there are systems of thought, and the least plutocracy can do, is to lie systematically. To lie, or not to be, that is the existential question which defines plutocracy.

The road to hell is paved with lies.

Patrice Ayme’

Politics By Representatives Is Inhuman.

The lack of integrity of the “representative” politicians “we” elect now is intrinsic. The process itself creates the lack of integrity. Politics is intrinsically about multiple, fractured personalities, saying, and superficially doing, whatever people (have been made to believe they) want.

Integrity means in one piece. Namely one has just one personality, one character, one psychology, one system of mind, one system of thought, one system of emotion. Practically, the emotions one exhibits are exactly those one has.

Whereas the essence of the modern politician is to present a public persona that can be sold, and has nothing to do with who they truly are, what they truly believe, what motivates them.

Six Foot Two, Telegenic, 30 Years After His Dad The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss

I of course supports many of the aims of Justin Trudeau, the new Canadian PM. Yet, being led by a New Man, son of the Old Man (and thus, not at all a New Man, in the Roman sense of the term!) is no real progress.

Canada fell deep in the abyss. Seeing the light again, after falling in the abyss, does not a paradise make.

The ecological policies of high CO2 emission countries (Australia, Canada, USA) are nothing short of criminal on the largest imaginable scale, that of melting icecaps.

Analogies have long been made between humans and wolves (Homo homini lupus: man is a wolf for man… and reciprocally, added the French comic Coluche). Another tendency is believe dogs are, somehow, a “species” we could emulate. Yet, dogs are not really a species. Dogs gives a false impression: we don’t know how stable dogs are, as a species. After all, dogs are the product of artificial selection. In the wild, dogs can be very nasty. I knew some geologists who got attacked, in Iran, by four wild dogs (domesticated doggies returned to the wilds). The geologists had to kill them one by one, with geological hammers, to not finish as canine dinner.

Dogs come from European wolves. American wolves have been studied in the wild, especially in Yellowstone (because scientists wanted to study the ecological impact of their return, which turned out to be considerable). The “alpha” position is stable, until the next mayhem. Researchers were aghast to find the alpha female they beloved dying of her wounds in a ditch, after she had been replaced from her previous executive position.

In many primates, it is true that leadership tends to be hereditary (through moms’ influences). Comparing wolves and advanced primates help us guess that human are ethologically made for rather pacific, democratic, leadership. This conclusion is accentuated by recent research on baboons: decisions where to forage tend to be taken by “initiators” (who are not particularly “alpha”), It is also implied by the small sexual dimorphism in the human species.

This is all important, because it means our present political system, which is more similar to lupine society, is not adapted to our genetic heritage. The latter did not arise just by happenstance, either. It is a consequence of the rise of intelligence. We became democratic, because we needed that, collective thinking and debate, to become more intelligent.

Thus present world political organization is evil in the deepest sense, and contradicts human nature, also in the deepest sense. We truly are imposed EVIL RULE (Pluto Cracy) not the rule of conversation, debate and thinking, the essence of humanity.

As a a noun integrity came to mean, “adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.” This interpretation is derivative from the original sense, literally un-touched. That came then to mean both “whole” (entier in French), and integer (also entier in French). The original meaning is important to understand that the essence of immorality has long been perceived to be double faced, or worse.

(I often use etymology. Not to tell me what words mean on the surface but how the wisdom of the ages conferred to them what they are. It is related to the “Sum Over Histories” of Quantum Mechanics.)

How to gat out of all this?

New men are nothing, but more of the same old crime. We have to call upon a new process, DIRECT DEMOCRACY.

Geeks swimming in their new noise, claim the Internet will change everything. No, it does not. Not yet. It will, when people can directly DEBATE, and vote, in plebiscites, using the Internet. As the noun indicates, plebiscites, when the plebs directly voted, were already known in Republican Rome. But they were hard to organize, just as they were hard to organize in democratic Athens (where they were required).

The average Athenian farmer needed a day trip to get to the Athenian Assembly. Now the Internet will allow us to vote with a simple click.

And what of the excess of Athens’ National Assembly of the People? Just youthful troubles: similar troubles did not happen during the centuries of Republican rule in Rome.

Moreover, we presently have huge political structures full of professional politicians. They will not disappear overnight. Just as in Switzerland now, they will persist, giving us plenty of safety during the transition from the dictates of the oligarchs, to the People Rule (Demo Cracy).

Patrice Ayme’

TEACHING CHINA WELL.

TIBETAN AUTONOMY AS AN OCCASION TO GROW CIVILIZATIONALLY, AND TO FOCUS ON WHAT NOT TO EMULATE.

The People Republic of China learned its modern ways from Western Europe, and most particularly the French revolutionary models (several top leaders of the PRC were formed in Paris with the help of French leftists: Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping…)

Very good, but also pretty dangerous. Leaders of Cambodia were also instructed by the French Communist party. But they did not take to croissants as much as Deng Xiaoping did: French theoretical extremism has always been somewhat mitigated, within France, by benign hedonism, and the love of placid happiness. Absent enough of the later, Armageddon is at hand (the Terror under the French revolution has elements in common with the Chinese Cultural Revolution).

Ominously, we have seen that story before, with Germany. And Japan. A military elite, drunk on technological and economic success, pulled too hard the strings of fascism (that had favored this particular form of success), and disaster ensued in a lethal clash with democracies.

Germany used to be broken up in a few hundred states (nominally united as a rather benign empire inherited from the Franks). Then Britain and France, busy with their own civil war with each other, messed up with it (Britain financed and excited Prussia in the Seven Year World War of the 18C, then France united all of Germany as one state under Napoleon, who raised a giant German army to go vanquish Russia). Next Prussia came out of the whole interference like a roaring economic and military colossus, eager to show to her creators and competitors, Britain and France, that she was even bigger and stronger. Nationalism and fascism rose to a fevered pitch, disgusting Nietzsche, who could not find enough bad things to say about the way Homo Germanicus was evolving.

Soon the German empire, led by Prussian military men, and having integrated some democratic structures, such as a parliament (which had all secondary powers), reached achievements far ahead of the rest of the world: best literacy in the world, best health care in the world (with the first single payer system, still going on today). Besides in technology the Second German empire often reigned supreme, and had the world’s strongest military.

 Germany had a single Achilles’ heel though, FASCISM. It was mild fascism, all right, and for many Germans it looked just as if they were in democracy. Economic well being was going straight up, and so was pride, and creations everywhere.

Some revolutionary events occurred in Russia, and the fascist system there was replaced by a constitutional, democratic monarchy. Next French capital flooded Russia, and that new democracy started to develop like crazy.

The top Prussian generals took fright. Initially Bismarck had wanted to destroy France, and started the job in 1870-71. By 1890, Bismarck himself, maybe having read Nietzsche, realized that German fascism was getting out of control, and was heading towards the ditch. The young, brash, vainglorious and deformed Kaiser, a grand son of Queen Victoria, sacked him. The top Prussian generals, by 1912, had become very anxious with the enormous rise of the republican, democratic French empire in the west, and the giant democratic Russian empire in the east. The fact that France and Britain had got sort of married very officially was not reassuring in the least (”Entente Cordiale”, 1908, now transformed in “Entente Formidable”, 2008).

The last big time fascists in Europe felt surrounded. In December 1912, the top Prussian generals explained to the Kaiser that time was working against the fascist German empire: the future was to democracy, to survive, fascism had to strike now. It was convened an attack should be mounted within 18 months. Preceding attacks, against Denmark, Austro-Hungary, and France had been crowned with success, so why not again? An envoy of the US president visited, and to appease tensions, offered to overlord the world with a British-Americano-German triumvirate. On August 1, 1914, the German empire attacked four countries by total surprise, including France and Russia, and pushed a fifth one, Austro-Hungary, to declare war too. An astounded, but courageous Britain, having her closest democratic allies invaded, declared war within two days, although she had no army. This little adventure finished on May 8, 1945, with more than 100 million Europeans dead, and Europe devastated. A gang of five criminals had started it, all by themselves.

Japan’s case maybe even clearer; a society of sheep was railroaded into attacking the world by military leaders, after similarly getting drunk on spectacular technological and economic progress, in two generations. It helped also to have crushed Tsarist Russia (when it was still fascist). An attempted coup by younger Japanese officers, anxious for action, accelerated the movement towards militarism, and full fascism was imposed, crowned by the Second War against China (1936-37).

Both in Germany and Japan, fascist militaries ran the show, flushed with technological illusion, drunk on their power.

Fast forward to the 21C. China is in many ways on a trajectory similar to imperial Germany. It has the same arrogance of recent success. It loudly proclaims its difference, and its fascism with a human face (fascism is not an insult, it’s a technical term depicting the default psychological governance of baboons under attack). The Chinese military pulled all the strings until very recently, and a militaro-plutocratic elite has run the show, resting on the 5% of the Chinese population who are in the (“Communist”) Party. China claims to be ready to engage in a war about a small island. That, in the case that particular words would be uttered (to risk a world war about a relatively small place, a de facto independent democracy with 2% of the population of the PRC, is a psychological imbalance characteristic of hypernationalistic minds).

China has imported many elements of the Western European civilization. Among them is the right of “Just War” by “We The People” against its enemies (that right was central to Rome, and the Christians (St. Augustine) themselves approved of it. In this case, “We the People” is dubiously reduced to the elite of the “communist”-military machine, the small brain heading the PRC.

But China is missing many crucial elements of Western European civilization. In particular, that democracy’s most fundamental reason is that it allows to tap the big brain of the many, and not to stay stuck with the small brain of the few. China, as Japan and Germany long ago, seems to confuse the many movers and shakers of its techno-economico-capitalist-military complex, with the few who are taking, all by their little selves, the really most crucial decisions, such as going to war. China demonstrates this by its hard edges on Tibet and Taiwan, let alone the South “China” Sea.

Remember: only five “Prussian” generals took all the fascist decisions that threw the world into war for the next 31 years. The situation in Japan was similar: even the top of the Japanese Navy, admiral Yamamoto, who had deep and excellent reasons to oppose the war, and voiced them loudly, was forced into war by his superiors (he was one of many in the top Japanese brass in that situation: one can imagine how little the average Japanese’s opinion counted!). 

Confronted to all these facts, well trained sophists on the Chinese government payroll insist that China is different, that it is secular, and has never known Christianism. This is a red herring: Confucianism is a religion (the reigning native religion of China for 26 centuries; Buddhism was imported). Christianism became just one of many convenient excuses for European civilization (after having nearly succeeded to destroy it). Not, either, that Confucianism was successful in smothering war: the Warring States period lasted centuries, and only the particularly strong, book burning fascism of Qin ended it (221 BCE).

Confronted to Tibetan protests, China applied censorship methods akin to that of Nazi Germany. Massive protests in Paris by all segments of French society were ignored on Chinese TV (Paris was only depicted as “very pretty”, that Paris City Hall was decorated by a giant banner, put by the mayor, was ignored. So were the banners on the Eiffel Towewr, and Notre Dame, so were the demonstrating MPs, and the president of the Region Ile de France, momentarily stopped because she was rushing the flame with a fire extinguisher. Finally the Olympic flamme got extinguished twice, once for twenty minutes. None of the this Chinese TV viewers saw. And we are not talking about neglectable events: the Region ile de France has 16 million people, and the largest GDP between New York and Tokyo (and it’s headed by a woman: where are the women in the Chinese Communist party?).

The West has to teach China that these manipulations of information are not acceptable. Democracy means first that the people (demos) has the power (kratos) of INFORMATION. During Germany’s three generations of fascism, information was frantically controlled, starting in primary school (that’s why both Nietzsche and Einstein fled, among others). Literacy was the highest, true, but it was more to make the monkeys 

China is huge and potentially very dangerous, if its fascism gets out of control and metastatic. There is something to the fact that democracies do not attack democracies: the oldest and fullest democracies around, France and the USA, never had a war (Britain and the USA in 1812, the last time when they fought, were far from being full democracies). A quick span of history shows that democracies were typically at war with fascism (although democratic Athens attacked other democracies [5C BCE], it was part of a larger war initiated by fascist Sparta, financed and instigated by ultra fascist Persia).

China has to become more democratic in an orderly fashion, as soon as possible, under the Communist party guidance. The argument that this is impossible is ludicrous, considering the Indian example (the only threats to India are from other countries with rather fascist systems; internal instability is not a problem, the “millions of little mutinies” that animate it are like butterflies on an elephant).

China can start by reporting events as they happen, and not as it wishes them to happen. This goes for Chinese TV, and giving free access to journalists. When French TV wants access to the US armies in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan, it gets it (and then shows pictures not shown on the main US outlets). China has to watch and imitate. Refering to Confucius will not help, because we can refer, in turn, to the Warring States and the fascism that succeeded him. Confucius was just one man with a restricted philosophy not really transcended by his successors. Western information gathering capability is not restricted to the the West, and to the now.

China cannot just use a few pieces here and there of particularly aggressive and uncritical pieces of Western philosophy, and run away with them. It needs the whole thing, and that means democracy. In all ways.

Patrice Ayme.
http://www.patriceayme.com/index.html
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/

Patrice Ayme, Hautes Alpes — 09 April 2008

 

MORALITY WINS WARS. CONVERSATION IS NOT JUST CIVILIZATION, BUT DEMOLITION.

TO WIN WARS, IT IS MORE EFFICIENT TO BE MORALLY RIGHT THAN BONE HEADED. CONVERSATION IS NOT JUST CIVILIZATION, IT’S ALSO DEMOLITION.

***

Many people oppose “hard power” (supposedly American, good) and “soft power” (European, weak). They have it all wrong. It’s common sense: before smashing someone’s face, a few words are in order to clarify the situation, and give the opponent a chance to evolve positively. Absent this attitude, one cannot really initiate positive change. And this is exactly what one observes: but for the disastrous invasion of Iraq, the USA has always been hanging way behind European intervention, often by many years.

European “soft power” was not that soft in Bosnia, and it came years before the USA. French artillery used radar guided counter fire to silence the guns that were destroying Sarajevo. True the Dutch got overwhelmed, later, during the Srebrenica Massacre, and when they asked the French to help, the later military could not, officially because of a dearth of combat helicopters (only the USA had enough of these, it was claimed).

France also intervened in Rwanda in 1994, ultimately dropping from the sky (with some US logistical help) an entire paratroop division, that stopped the tit for tat genocide (that guaranteed the furor of those who wanted some more vengeance).

Of course, we do not expect these facts to be widely known among US lovers of neoconservatism. Colonial English American neoconservativism is by definition anti French ever since American Founding Fathers such as Jefferson were told they could not keep slaves in Paris (by the police of the Ancient Regime!) and ever since La Fayette tried to persuade his good friend Washington, the famous slave owner, to abrogate slavery. But so much the better: nothing European progressivism loves more than a never ending war with US neoconservatives. It’s like going to the gym to work out against stupid machines, but now to exercise the moral and mental muscles instead.

In conflicts, the most important, and most moral foundation is simply to be right, or more exactly, less wrong, and adaptive (learning quickly from one’s mistakes).

European “soft power” is often misunderstood: it gets everywhere, and so it gets involved easily enough to bring any conflict to a head, by its mere presence, but not enough to use overwhelming force, and kill it. In a way, soft power is the opposite of the Powell doctrine (that is, to use overwhelming force). Soft power can be insidious, all the way down to a soft mental virus, and completely lethal to old thought.

An example is those European journalists who interrupted the Olympic Games’ lighting-of-the-flame a few days ago. They got arrested by Greek police, but they promised more. What did great nation China do for greater glory seeking now that slapped in the face? Well it made a bad situation worse. China censored the news, showing fake footage, and its true face, bloody, uncomprehending, dazed, senile. Uninformed, uneducated Chinese were then interviewed in Chinese streets by a delighted Western media, and they showed in turn a blatantly sheepish Chinese public, bleating contently that the heavenly Chinese government would set everything right up there in heavens. So two European journalists in far away Greece made China stumble, for the entire world to see. Much more of this, and China will have to choose between becoming again a rabidly idiotic dictatorship, or turning some more the pages away from simpler fascist methods. In any case, change.

The European idea of soft power is to seize the high moral ground, which is the most important ground to occupy in war. To do that, the Europeans have learned to trot out important matters of principle, stick to them, and open a dialogue about them. Or a monologue. The idea is not to be cuddly. Quite the opposite. The idea is to harass with ideas. It allows to start small, hence right away. Experience shows that thinking is what fascists hate the most, and are the most vulnerable to. They really can’t take it, because fascism, by definition is a simplification of thinking. Complicated thinking is by definition anti fascist.

This method was inaugurated against Hitler. France (and, more reluctantly, Britain) put pressure on the Nazis, a soft pressure which increasingly reduced the mental freedom of the Nazis, to the point they made a fatal mistake (attacking Poland without noticing that a small print clause in its treaty with France guaranteed that Britain would follow France in counterattacking the Nazis).

The first problem with US “hard power” is that it often cannot be engaged, and thus becomes an excuse for cowardice (as demonstrated by Clinton in Bosnia for years, as Roger Cohen points out: http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/26/opinion/edcohen.php).

All too obsessed by total victory, which looked dubious with the Nazis, the USA, just like in 1914-1916, did not want to get involved in enforcing democracy by supporting its parents, France and Britain, lest it be TOO conflictual. So the USA was not at Munich, and had an embargo against France (for being aggressive against those poor Nazis). If the USA had been at Munich, things would have been different. Both in 1939, and in 1914, things would have been also very different (France, which was most the military might of the West at the time, would have attacked Hitler right there, or Hitler would have lost face).

The fear of soft power, power on the matters of principle, led the USA to NOT send ONE cartridge to France in 1940 (by contrast, 90% of American cartridges were French during the American independence war). Instead the USA waited, from 1914 until 1917, and from 1933 until Hitler declared war to the USA for Christmass 1941… As if the USA was waiting to see on which side it was better to use overwhelming force to come to the rescue of victory.

Using overwhelming force is also the US way against smaller opponents. This is an American habit developped when exterminating the Red Skins during the three centuries it took to genocide them (the most successful genocide in the known history of mankind). It was highly successful, since, until recently, the USA was a triumph of the white European race and its ways, so it was self reinforcing. It became a cultural trait.

This pouncing on the weak guarantees the lowest moral ground, insuring long term defeat when the enemy cannot be outright exterminated (and exterminating all of the long civilized and very populous Middle East is distinctly more challenging than exterminating neolithic populations).

That is what has happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, with grotesque “shock and awe”. All what intensive aerial bombing has guaranteing is that Homo Americanus Simplex occupies the lowest moral rung. To ask NATO to help splash around that ethical sewer would just spread a moral, and mortal infection. What is needed is an EXTRICATION from the present MORAL ABYSS, and once high morality has been regained, and a stakeholder plan for the average Iraqi and Afghan has been devised, get much cheaper UN soldiers to come in to back up the Iraqi and Afghani armies (if there is a need, but if things are well done, there should be little of a need).

French and Western European and African Union forces are involved in the Darfur-Chad-Central African theater in a much more reserved way (the occasional French special force soldier dies in Sudan). Instead the Powell doctrine would call to march onto Khartoum, after bombing the hell out of it, killing hundreds of thousands, and costing a fortune one does not have (either morally or financially). Thus the Powell doctrine can’t do a thing, but France/EU/AU has slowly, and softly, deployed thousands of troops and proxies, putting an increasing squeeze on the miscreants. France also was for a very long time in a quasi war with Libya. That allowed to contain Libya, and gave it time to perceive the extent of some of its errors, and change its ways. Full war could well have only reinforced the miscreants, or create an Iraq like mess.

Hard power is mentally retarded if the enemy has not been discovered first. In Iraq and Afghanistan the enemies are mostly not what the USA has been fighting. One cannot drop a bomb on economic improvement, no more than on corruption, backwardness, or the Qur’an. Bringing in one more school, rather than one more bomb would be more like it. Of course, Quranists kill for thoughts, as bin Laden kindly reminded us last week; so teachers will need bodyguards: soft power does not mean no power. Bin Laden insisted that the “freedom of words” was a worse offense than simple bombing. The man hinself says it; he fears soft power more than hard power. Nothing like a drawing of his prophet doing his thing: it drives him mad, because it shatters his universe.

In Tibet, we have an excellent occasion to show to that astute student of Western ways, China, that much progress still needs to be done on the moral and cognitive level. Putting pressure on China of course cannot be done in an overwhelming way (it would mean a world war). But it can be done using soft power. Start by requiring the full reopening of Tibet to non Chinese capable of reporting what’s going on. Absent this, one does one want to repeat the moral atrocity of 1936 (when Hitler inaugurated the Olympic games). The UN general assembly could be presented with a vote towards boycotting the opening ceremony (to start with). China has lost face in Tibet, but does not know it. Without an opening ceremony to the Games, it will lose face in a way that all Chinese folks will be able to see. Let them light up the flame with just Chinese to look up at it. That would be soft power, true, but it will be also capturing the moral high ground, and showing to all the Chinese population they are becoming international pariahs.

Making the WW II Germans into international pariahs significantly weakened Hitler’s military power: too many Germans knew they were viewed as evil by the rest of the world, they could not set their hearts to fight for evil to death as much as they would have otherwise. International moral pressure is very powerful, it works. It undermines Goliath’s mind. When Goliath is confused enough, about why he is doing what he is doing, he is ready for a high technology demise.

Patrice Ayme
http://www.patriceayme.com
https://patriceayme.wordpress.com