Striving For Ever Better Thinking. Humanism Is Intelligence Unleashed. From Intelligence All Ways, Instincts & Values Flow, Even Happiness. History and Science Teach Us Not Just Humility, But Power, Smarts, And The Ways We Should Embrace. Naturam Primum Cognoscere Rerum
Hamas attacked in a spirit of genocide, fully counting upon the islamophilic woke self-haters to come to their rescue. Hamas didn’t anticipate that Israel anticipated that Hamas, which says in its constitution that Jews have to be killed, had itself anticipated Hamas’ anticipation. Also, considering 3,000 years of genocides and anti-Judaism, Western leaders have become familiar with the startegy of killing Jews under the excuse that Jews are killers. In just war, it matters who killed first.
Genocide is what happened to Native Tasmanians. And it happened to many American tribes. Genocide is most common in history, it’s an engine: get smarter quick, or get annihilated.
Genocide is when an entire genetically identifiable, or culturally distinct group is made to disappear by human will (UN definition). It’s not happening to Palestinians: looking at the five year moving average, there are more Palestinians than ever. Nobody has a plan to exterminate the Palestinians… Whereas the Hamas constitution trotted out sacred Hadiths from the highest authorities of Islam who claimed that all Jews will have to be killed (see essay on the Hamas constitution and the Hadiths).So Hamas intended genocide of the Jews, a most significant notion. Those supporting Hamas then support genocide.
The problem with Palestine is that, instead of seeing the return to its homeland of a Jewish state as an asset, influencers and leaders have tried, not too well, to extirpate that small Jewish state.
The October 7 2023 attack, by displaying maximal hate, was supposed to instill in Jews the morbid feeling that, if there was such hate against them, they deserved it, and should submit… Something the Jews were forced to do for more than 18 centuries, in most places.
However the more one attacks unjustly a tribe, threatening its existence, the more it will expand in defense…. If it is allowed to have an armed defense. This is how Rome grew, with a succession of mostly defensive wars for the first seven centuries of its existence.
For 18 centuries, Jews were denied an official defense, that is an army and a state. Now they have them. So attacks against Israel will, as they should, lead to an expansion of Israel. For example if attacks on Northern Israel keep on coming from Lebanon, making Northern Israel unlivable, as is presently the case, one should not be surprised if Israel annexes part of Lebanon as a security zone.
More than half of Israel’s population consists of descendants of Jews who lived oppressed or victimized lives in Muslim countries. More than 12 centuries ago, the same places were full of Jews and Christians, ruled over by a war-like small Muslim minority armed to the teeth, legally and physically.
Israel was canceled as a state in 136 CE by fascist in chief Hadrian; Jews were also banished from Jerusalem by the “Little Greek”, the Graeculus, the unhinged boy lover in chief. Jerusalem had been Israel’s capital for more than a millennium… Longer than Rome had existed by several centuries.
Both decrees from an enraged, suffering and dying Hadrian, were in blatant violation of the Roman constitution… as emperor Julian pointed out in the 360s (the Roman constitution concerning just war was viewed as a set of laws given by the Gods; Julius Caesar had to cross the Rubicon with a legion because he was unjustly charged by Cato the Younger, a fanatical hater, with having violated these laws in Gaul..)
Julian’s untimely death, and an earthquake blocked the regrowth of Israel at the time (363 CE). Following Julian’s demise, the Christian killers rose in their absolute fury, keen to extinguish civilization if need be, so that they could stay in power. Theodosius I passed his heresy terror decrees in 380-381 CE. The gist of them was that Roman emperors could legally torture to death anyone they accused to have left their interpretation of Abrahamism. By 395 CE, the Roman imperial state had started its final collapse. A century later, it had been replaced by its successor state, the Franks, in the West. The Franks defanged Catholicism, civilizing it with mandatory secular universal education, and tolerance for tolerable non-Catholics (including Pagans, Jews and even Muslims). However, when the unjust, perceived as unjust feudal system reared its ugly plutocratic head, the thugs who called themselves noble weaponized again Catholicism in their service, and Jews were again oppressed… when not outright expelled (that was tried out of France and England, 13C, not too well, and accomplished in Spain, 1492 CE).
After being occupied by the giant Roman empire, Israel was occupied by the even larger Caliphates, terrorized by the counter-attacking Crusaders, and then oppressed by the giant Ottoman Muslim empire. So there was no occasion for Israel to rise again: the struggle of the Greeks against the Turks lasted three centuries, and the Greeks had international help. Finally, the Ottomans were kicked out from choosing the wrong side in WW1. The UK made a half baked effort to prevent the rebirth of Israel.
As the present United Nations is a direct legal descendant of Rome …through the Imperium Francorum (486-800 CE), then the Renovatio Imperium Romanum (800 CE and thereafter), and Europe… it was constitutional to re-establish the rights of the Jews, unjustly dispossessed of their land, their state, and continually threatened with extinction by unhinged Roman Catholic authorities. Being deprived of their state brought genocide attempts against the Jews which were mostly successful, as, overall.
The confrontation against Israel is mostly a made-up conflict, initially intended as a distraction by the local potentates… and still functioning as such. If Palestinians had embraced Israel long ago, they would be doing much better. They can still do that… Because clearly the two state solution, with two armies, will never work… Although it makes now for a vigorous war, it’s no sustainable solution…
Two administrations, sure. Two police forces, sure. But just one army, Tsahal, the Israeli Defense Force…
Palestinians will get out of this once they understand that Israel is an asset they can own: kill them with love and cooperation, not missiles and genocidal threats….
Only God can determine for sure what value and worth are, or, at least, so people long thought. However Judeo-Christo-Islamist God was obviously invented by savages roaming the Fertile Crescent or maybe Egypt too.
So back to guesswork. And cosmology is coming to our rescue. Everything indicates we are the only civilization in the observed universe, hence well worth dying for! Mission civilisatrice just getting started!
Patrice Ayme
Detail of the base of the Arch of emperor Titus (inaugurated 81 CE), Rome. Roman soldiers are stealing artifacts from the Jewish temple in Jerusalem, which they destroyed, leaving only its base. On that base, the Roman Catholics built churches. Four centuries later, the Muslims built major mosques… on said Jewish temple. What the Catholics and Muslims were saying with their sacred monuments on top of the heart of Judaism’s most sacred place was that Judaism had been completely defeated, and laid under foot of Christo-Islamism.
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Under Marcus Aurelius, patron saint of Stoicism, the Roman empire went from bad to worse. And much of that originates with Marcus all too stoic character: Marcus let his wife, the plutocrats, and events lead him by the nose, instead of taking manly command. History could have been different.
Some have reproached Julius Caeasar for not being revolutionary enough, but he, the head of the “Populares” Party, was revolutionary enough to die from it. The fundamental cause of Caesar’s treacherous assassination, while wearing the sacred clothes of Pontifex Maximus, was Caesar’s land redistribution law of 59 BCE: a law that Caesar had the Centuriate assembly passed(the national assembly of citizens) and which Consul Caesar immediately implemented… Something the Gracchi had failed to do…. And which the “Optimates” (the best) in the Senate never forgave.
Friend Ian Miller wrote in reply to Marcus was an ass: “The worst aspect of Marcus Aurelius was he was almost always out in the field as a commander of the army, and he wasn’t very good at it. He would have done a lot better to appoint a capable General as commander, and go back and sort out Rome. If the General was any good, he would be next in line and no Commodus.”
[For comparison, Augustus had outlawed Senators marrying ex-slaves (and also actresses). Marcus’ other top field marshall was NOT from the Senatorial class. By the way all these generals started their careers under Antoninus Pius, Marcus’ predecessor, whom emperor Hadrian and the Senate had judged most worthy to become emperor, which he was for even longer than Marcus; Nobody probably would have judged the 18 year old Commodus worthy of succession… except for Marcus. ]
My answer to Ian: Absolutely correct. But Marcus didn’t want to sort out Rome. Instead of taxing the extravagantly wealthy Senatorial plutocracy, Marcus made a show of financing wars by selling palace’s cuttlery… Professional philosopher and chief stoicist Massimo Pigliucci, author of How to Be a Stoic, retorted to me that, had he tried that, he would have been assassinated… Well, no. Marcus’ two top generals were not from the plutocracy. [Massimo Pigliucci offers Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that inspired the great emperor Marcus Aurelius, as the best way to handle life; he divorced soon after telling me Marcus did his best; actually Marcus didn’t divorce… and probably should have…)
While Marcus was fighting in south Germanic woods, the Mauri attacked and occupied Rio Tinto, which was a major catastrophe: Rome depended heavily upon all sorts of metals, even for defense. An emperor stripped the metal roofs of Rome to make weapons to fight the Muslims in the Seventh Century! Marcus didn’t behave as if he noticed. In general, Marcus was scared to disturb in any sense the ruling Roman plutocracy (not like say Caesar, who rolled and crushed it all over…)
Marcus had excellent generals. Some died in combat: Agricola? After the death of Agricola, filed marshall Fronto got a supercommand of Dacia. C0-emperor Verus had just died of the plague while he and Marcus went back to Rome. Fronto fought Germans, Samartians and Vandals. In the campaigning season of 170, Fronto’s luck ran out: “He fell, bravely fighting to the last for the Republic” (ad postremum pro re publica fortiter pugnans ceciderit). A field marshall (who had already served under Anoninnue Pius!) dying in combat!
The Senate approved a motion tabled by the emperor to erect in Trajan’s Forum (Rome) a statua armata of Fronto, an “armed statue”, a nude bronze sculpture of the hero, holding a spear…
In 175 general Cassius, a descendant of Seleucid kings, was proclaimed Roman emperor after the erroneous news of the death of Marcus Aurelius. Cassius had led two successful campaigns against the Parthians, even capturing their capital, Ctesiphon, in eastern Mesopotamia. The sources indicate he was encouraged by Marcus’s out-of-control wife Faustina, who was concerned about her husband’s ill health, believing him to be on the verge of death. She felt the need for Cassius to act as a protector in this event, since her son Commodus, aged 13, was still young. She also wanted someone who would act as a counterweight to the claims of Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus, who was in a strong position to take the office of Princeps in the event of Marcus’s death… and who, married to Verus’ Augusta, Commodus’ experienced and elder sister, didn’t look favorably towards Commodus…
Born in Alba Pompeia in Italy, the son of a slave turned into freedman Helvius Successus, Pertinax became a grammaticus (teacher of grammar, literature, philosophy). He eventually decided to find a more rewarding line of work and through the help of patronage he was commissioned an officer in a cohort.
In the Parthian war he distinguished himself. That brought a string of promotions, and after postings in Britain (as military tribune of the Legio VI Victrix) and along the Danube, he served as a procurator in Dacia.[10] He suffered a setback as a victim of court intrigues during the reign of Marcus Aurelius, but shortly afterwards he was recalled to assist Claudius Pompeianus in the Marcomannic Wars. In 175 he received the honor of a suffect consulship… So Pertinax, one of the comites, compagnons of Marcus, was in perfect position to succeed him. … Until 185, Pertinax was governor of the provinces of Upper and Lower Moesia, Dacia, Syria and finally governor of Britain. He was elected emperor after the Commodus assassination.
Machiavelli in The Prince:”Pertinax was created emperor against the wishes of the soldiers, who, being accustomed to live licentiously under Commodus, could not endure the honest life to which Pertinax wished to reduce them; thus, having given cause for hatred, to which hatred there was added contempt for his old age, he was overthrown at the very beginning of his administration. And here it should be noted that hatred is acquired as much by good works as by bad ones, therefore, as I said before, a prince wishing to keep his state is very often forced to do evil; for when that body is corrupt whom you think you have need of to maintain yourself — it may be either the people or the soldiers or the nobles — you have to submit to its humors and to gratify them, and then good works will do you harm.”
In ‘Romanitas’, a fictional alternate history novel by Sophia McDougall, Pertinax’s reign is the point of divergence. In the history as established by the novel, the plot against Pertinax was thwarted, and Pertinax introduced a series of reforms that would consolidate the Roman Empire to such a degree that it would still be a major power in the 21st century.
A native of Antioch in Syria, Pompeianus was not from the Senatorial class. His father, Tiberius Claudius Quintianus, was a member of the Equestrian Order, the merchant and banking class of Roman citizens… And strictly below Senators, since Augustus made it so. His family first received their Roman citizenship during the reign of Emperor Claudius. Pompeianus was a new man (“novus homo”) as he was the first member of his family to be appointed as a Senator. Much of Pompeianus’ early life has been lost to history. He participated in the Roman–Parthian War of 161–166 under the commander of Emperor Lucius Verus, likely as a Legionary Commander. Sometime prior to the Parthian campaign, he was elevated to the rank of a Senator. He served with distinction during the war, earning him appointment as Suffect Consul for the remainder of the year 162 AD.
Following the completion of the Parthian campaign, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius appointed Pompeianus military governor of Lower Pannonia on the Empire’s northern frontier along the Danube River. He likely served from 164 until 168. In late 166 or early 167, a force of 6,000 Lombards invaded Pannonia. Pompeianus defeated the invasion with relative ease, but it marked the beginning of a larger barbarian invasion.
Late in 167 the Marcomanni tribe invaded the Empire by crossing in Pannonia. Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus planned to drive the barbarians back across the Danube River, but due to the effects of the Antonine Plague, that was postponed until early 168. Aided by Pompianius, the two Emperors were able to force the Marcomanni to retreat. Pompeianus’ military skills earned him the confidence of Emperor Marcus Aurelius and he quickly became one of the Emperor’s closest advisors. As the Emperors returned to their winter quarters in Aquileia, Lucius Verus fell ill and died in January 169. Following the death of Lucius Verus, Marcus Aurelius arranged for his daughter the Augusta Lucilla, Verus’ widow, to marry Pompeianus. As son-in-law to the Emperor, Pompeianus became a member of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty. The Emperor even offered to name Pompeianus as Caesar and his heir, but Pompeianus refused to accept the title. Instead, Pompeianus was promoted and served as the Emperor’s chief general during the Marcomannic War. Under Pompeianus’ recommendation, the exiled Senator and fellow Parthian war veteran Pertinax was recalled and joined Pompeianus on his military staff.
Pompeianus’ successes during the Marcomannic War further distinguished him, with the Emperor awarding him a second Consulship in 173.
Marcus Aurelius died in 180 AD, and his 18-year-old son Commodus, Pompeianus’ brother-in-law, stayed Emperor. Pompeianus tried to persuade Commodus to remain on the Danubian frontier to complete the conquest of the Marcomanni, as planned by his father Marcus, but Commodus refused and returned to Rome in the autumn of 180. Commodus may well have been the son of one of these gladiators his mother was fascinated by… explaining in turn his fasciantion for the arena…
The relationship between the young emperor and the experienced general officer quickly deteriorated. In 182, Augusta Lucilla, Pompeianus’ wife and Commodus’ sister, organized an assassination attempt against the Emperor which failed when the assassin spent some time boasting of his incoming success to his victim, and who had commandited the elimination, which enabled Commodus’ bodyguards to eliminate him instead. Though Commodus executed Lucilla and other members of her family, she had engineered the (probable) myth of Pompeianus’s non-involvement, and thus made Commodus believe that her estranged husband had not participated in the conspiracy… Pompeianus was spared… While clearly Lucilla intended to make him emperor… (Who else? Pertinax?)
Pertinax, who was the Rome’s Urban Prefect at the time of the final elimination of Commodus, offered the throne to Pompeianus… who declined it, but resumed his Senatorial duties (prudently interrupted after Lucilla’s plot)
Russell Crowe’s character Maximus Decimus Meridius in the 2000 movie Gladiator is very loosely based on a composite of Pompeinus and his fellow generals and Lucilla… the Lucilla plot succeeds… Novels have been written about Pertinax ruling Rome long enough to change its direction.
Could it have been done? Could Rome have been saved from itself? The key was to cancel slavery as queen Bathilde of the Franks did in 657 CE. She was not assassinated, but she manipulated from behind, and executed a lot, it is said, and it has got to be true…
Canceling slavery and forcing technology ahead in its stead. The Franks did it, but it took centuries to have a big impact. Or maybe not: after all, even while killing each other, the Franks were able to destroy the Goths, the Lombards and conquer and domesticate the Saxons push out Vikings (who were domesticated), Huns, Slavs, Magyars, and all sorts of god crazed Muslims. This had much to do with superior steel… And large specially bred battle horses… The Franks did at least three military things that Caesar had intended to do, and the Romans tried to do for centuries and failed: conquer, control and domesticate all Germans, in particular Saxons, Goths and Lombards… Destroy the Huns. Conquer and domesticate the Slavs, invade Eastern Europe, and exploit the mines there…
Peace is good, but victory is better!
Patrice Ayme
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French Prime Minister Elizabeth Borne succeeded the competitive exam to the Polytechnique school, and then came out among the best. Does that mean she has a good level in math, does that mean she is good politician? Merkel was a physicist (applied) with a PhD… But she shut down nuclear for lunatic reasons (tsunamis in the middle of Germany?), and choose instead coal and of course her colleague Putin (Merkel was a Russian speaking “Communist” government official of the DDR, and Putin was a German speaking Kremlin spy and special agent of the KGB inside the DDR, feeding the Red Army Faction, and its ilk… )
PM Borne has a master’s degree in mathematics by equivalence… Well, so what? Borne saw solving partial differential equations… A polytechnician is not a mathematician, at best a socially ambitious baby engineer. A competitive beast who tends to think that having a big competitive brain at 20 gives you mastery of real life. And a vulgar mathematician is not necessarily a deep thinker. Borne’s statement on the need to reduce CO2 emissions in France, and the need to do in a few years what has not been done for decades reflects a singularly narrow-minded mentality…. typical of common mathematicians, namely a delirious non-observation of the real world… a trait too often characteristic of French pseudo-intellectuals, an escape from reality. California has a higher GDP than Germany (from high tech). Switzerland has a GDP per capita equal to that of California (from high tech, big pharma). What these two states have in common is direct democracy and not just being run by a pseudo-mathematician with all the answers to the five or six equations she knows.
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I rule, therefore you don’t need to think?Too much fascism does not make a country smartest. Look at all those flags and sabers…
Both Athens and Rome, when they flourished, were places of the highest intellect and thus the most superior technology… and the latter made them superior economically and militarily. France used to be democratically, and human rights superior to all during the period 500 CE-1610 CE (forgetting for a moment crusades, Cathars, Vaudois, inquisition and religious wars)… England’s democratic structures, implemented by the rogue Frenchmen thriving there during the Middle Ages, became clearly superior after 1688 CE, while France sank below her own horizon with the demented Sun king; however a closer examination shows that French peasants, however poor, owned their lands, and the British peasant didn’t. In 1789 CE, both France and the US adopted the equality of rights (the UK still doesn’t have it: look at the chamber of “Lords”, not just the clownish monarchy).
Nowadays, France is definitively less democratic than California and Switzerland, and it shows in the ability of France to pay her own bills...
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Partial French version:
Une maitrise (master) en mathématiques par équivalence… Bon, et alors?
Borne a vu résoudre des équations différentielles partielles…
Un polytechnicien n’est pas un mathématicien, au mieux un bébé ingénieur socialement ambitieux. Une bête à concours qui tend à penser qu’avoir un gros cerveau compétitif à 20 ans donne la maitrise du reel.
Et un vulgaire mathématicien n’est pas nécessairement un penseur profond. La déclaration de Borne sur la nécessité de réduire les émissions de CO2 en France, et la nécessité de faire en quelques années ce qui n’a pas été fait depuis des décennies reflètent une mentalité singulierement bornée…. typique des mathématiciens communs, à savoir une non-observation délirante du monde réel… un trait trop souvent caractéristique des pseudo-intellectuels français, une fuite hors du réel.
La Californie a un PIB supérieur à l’Allemagne. La Suisse a un PIB par habitant égal à celui de la Californie. Ce que ces deux États ont en commun, c’est la démocratie directe et ne pas être simplement dirigé par une pseudo-mathématicienne avec toutes les réponses aux cinq ou six équations qu’elle connait.
Patrice Ayme
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GREAT REPLACEMENTS HAVE HAPPENED CAUSING CIVILIZATIONAL IMPLOSIONS, And MAYHEMS:Roman Depopulation, A Consequence Of Plutocratic Rule, In Turn Made Rome More Dictator-Friendly Genetic And Cultural Replacement.
Abstract: Under the Roman Monarchy and then the Republic, when the unique characteristics of Roman civilization were forged, and before the degeneracy known as the fascist empire founded by Augustus, 70% of the population of Rome was Western European genetically. When the Republic collapsed, this Western European genetics was suddenly replaced by an Oriental genetics, which persisted during the fascist empire. After the collapse of the fascist empire, in the 400s, Roman genetics reverted to Western European stock. This is shocking, right, but it’s also science.
Ifnothing else, this Great Replacement explains why it was impossible to revert Rome to the Republic, even after the fascist empire had amply proven to be a disaster (certainly so after Caligula, Nero, and two centuries later, by the time of the “Barracks Emperors” a succession of fifty or so emperors and pretenders in a few decades accompanied by infighting and thus, invasions). The ancestors of imperial Romans were not republicans and democrats, but obsequious servants of Middle Eastern dictators, so they viewed tyranny as normal, they were naturally culturally born servants of tyranny.
Had the fascist imperial government imported deliberatley those Middle Easterners with the idea of exploiting those servile attitudes?
Other consequences can be drawn:
1) demographic implosions and replacements can have philosophical, political and demographic consequences. The collapse of the republic was accompanied by a Great Replacement of genetics, and the collapse of the fascist empire was accompanied by another Great Replacement. After all, around 400 BCE Roman civilization mostly collapsed, and survived only because the Franks followed by the Goths, and Burgundians decided to adopt it.
2) Fascist imperial Rome was genetically distinct. It failed so badly that its Oriental and Mediterranean population got killed and replaced by the original northern European mix which had been replaced four centuries prior: the wheel of fortune turned fully on itself (an image used at the time).
3) As genes move, so does culture and the neurohormonal hardware and software to go with it.
4) The sudden Great Replacement of Republican values of Rome, reflected the fascist friendly mood of the Orient at the time: no wonder if the population was Oriental. This blatant change of mood, from the Republic to Oriental-dictatorial values was observed by aghast contemporaries, under Caligula and his will to embrace all things Oriental.
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The end of the Roman Republic saw a succession of terrible “civil” wars which caused enormous loss of lives. In the end, Augustus and his army won and got the riches: a centurion brandished a glavius in the Senate and said the army would be paid or the Senate would be put to the sword. Soon Augustus changed most of the Senate, and a military dictatorship was completely imposed. Trade was reestablished, mostly from Africa and the Orient. With it apparently came the genes.
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Genetics Enlighten History; Roman Genetics Changed, As Roman Politics Did:
A genetic study published in Science, 7 November 1919, showed dramatic results. Indeed, genetic history shows that many imperial Romans during fascist times, had roots in the Middle East. At the height of Rome’s power, the city residents showed little European DNA.
Two thousand years ago, the streets of Rome bustled with people from all over the ancient Mediterranean region. The empire’s trade routes stretched from North Africa to Asia, even India. New immigrants poured in every day, by choice or by force. An ancient DNA study showed that those new far-flung imperial and commercial connections showed up in the genomes of the Romans.
By contrast, inhabitants from the city’s democratic, pre-Augustus era genetically resembled other Western Europeans. Roman genetics returned to European genetics after the Occidental empire’s deliquescence in the early 400s (massive invasions start in 406 CE, Britain is then militarily evacuated and Rome falls to the Goth Alaric in 410 CE).
But during the imperial fascist period most sampled residents had Eastern Mediterranean or Middle Eastern ancestry. At that time, “Rome was like New York City … a concentration of people of different origins joining together,” says Guido Barbujani, a population geneticist at the University of Ferrara in Italy. “This is the kind of cutting-edge work that’s starting to fill in the details [of history],” adds Kyle Harper, a Roman historian at the University of Oklahoma in Norman.
The bioarchaeologist study, published in Science, traces 12,000 years of history using genomes from 127 people buried at 29 archaeological sites in and around the city of Rome. Alfredo Coppa, a physical anthropologist at Sapienza University of Rome, sought hundreds of samples from dozens of previously excavated sites. Ron Pinhasi of the University of Vienna extracted DNA from the skeletons’ ear bones, and Jonathan Pritchard, a population geneticist at Stanford University, sequenced and analyzed their DNA.
The oldest genomes came from three hunter-gatherers who lived 9000 to 12,000 years ago and genetically resembled other hunter-gatherers in Europe at the time. Later genomes showed the Romans changed in step with the rest of Europe, as an influx of early farmers, and their plants, with ancestry from Anatolia (what is now Turkey) reshaped the genetics of the entire region some 9000 years ago.
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ROME, ORIGINAL OPEN SOCIETY:
There is a tendency to believe that the Greeks invented everything, and that the Romans were just pragmatic parrots. This comes from looking only at the Republic and not the preceding 230 years of Roman (mostly non hereditary) constitutional, Senate based monarchy, when Rome embraced or established many democratic, not just republican, values., and often before Greece (which was fully aware of the rise of the Western menace). Examplary, but not unique is the case of king Servius Tulius. Tulius, of Etruscan origin, his mother a slave, was a democrat in disguise who ruled 43 years; king Tulius switched the army to the Hoplites, middle-class model, putting the middle class in power... Tulius ruled at the same time as Solon in Athens, but for much longer and his foreign and servile origins would have disqualified him in Athens, but were welcome in Rome.
Rome went its own way from other Mediterranean city-states in the period 900 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E. The very success of its Open Society imposed the model to this day, in its direct successor states (France, Europe, their colonies). During its growth, the peculiarity of Rome, widely advertised at the time, was that Rome was the most Open Society in the fullest sense of the term, not just culturally. That openness turbocharged the growth of Rome, attracting prominent talent, even from Greece. Rome did this well before 600 BCE. According to Livy, the first Roman women, 2,770 years ago, were not even from Rome, they were “borrowed” from the Sabines.
Rome was the original Open Society. Athens also claimed itself, two centuries after Rome made immigration its main engine of growth, to be an Open Society, and Athens was Open in many ways, as Pericles boasted in his famous funeral oration; however,genetically Athens was severely locked up: even Pericles’ own son with the Miletus philosopher Aspasia was considered non-Athenian! (Reversed later.)
By 600 BCE, even prominent Greeks immigrated to Rome because they knew that their socioeconomic success there would be greater. Some of the seven Roman kings were not Roman born and had immigrated there to become greater… The genomes of 11 individuals from this period confirm that a lot of migration was happening. Some people had genetic markers resembling those of modern Italians, whereas others had markers reflecting ancestry from the Middle East and North Africa.
Between 27 B.C.E. and 300 C.E. Rome was the capital of an empire of up to 90 million people, stretching from Morocco to Britain to the Caucasus, Mesopotamia and Nubia. Rome’s population grew to perhaps a million and a half, it was the world’s largest city and much of its food came from distant shores. The genetic diversity was great… However… According to this study the vast majority of immigrants to imperial fascist Rome came from the Orient. Of 48 individuals sampled from this period, only two showed strong genetic ties to Europe. Another two had strong North African ancestry. The rest had ancestry connecting them to Greece, Syria, Lebanon, and other places in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. All places which were not too friendly to democracy at the time.
This bioarcheology thus confirms orior isotopic, archeological and historiographic studies. Many individuals from imperial fascist Roman cemeteries were known not to have grown up in Rome: isotopes in their teeth revealed they drank Oriental water when young. Ancient texts and words carved on tombstones, let alone the rise of Oriental ways, means, symbols and religions point to large populations of immigrants in the eternal city.
Thus the growth of Oriental ways, means and religions in Rome, viewed as weird and parasitic at the time, does not feel mysterious anymore. No wonder the Republic couldn’t be reestablished: much, if not apparently most of the population of imperial fascist Rome culturally expected imperial fascism as the best government!
The Oriental genetic component disappeared during the Fifth Century, manu military, under Gothic, Lombard and Frankish invasions, and a chaotic and extremely lethal war by Christian terrorist in chief, emperor Justinian, to reimpose Constantinople in Italy (Rome go seized seven times, all aqueducts were destroyed; once, an army entering Rome found only one inhabitant).
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Did Roman Tyrants Import Their Servile Tyrant-Adoring Public?
Such results can be readily interpreted in a racist pro-European way, so they need some talking to: indeed, 70% of the population of Rome was typical of the northern European mix at the time of the Republic… when Rome was truly great. When the Orientals moved in, Rome stopped being great as a republic. Numerous caveats are in order.
First, the study must be confirmed by further sampling, if possible.
Second, 70% of the population of Rome was typical of the northern European mix at the time of the Republic. This population self-extinguished during the plutocratic class wars from 133 BCE to 27 BCE. So, on the face of it, they seem to have been genetically idiotic.
So the primary reason for demographic change, chronologically speaking, was civil, and class war (several wars were entangled, including against the closest Italian allies of Rome, the so-called “social war”).
Third, genes by themselves don’t think. What was brought over were fascist Oriental ideologies, and respect thereof. So the fascist ideologies seduced the fascist in power in Rome. Under the Republic, massive immigration did not bring any change in political ideology. Can we draw a conclusion?
An obvious objection to the Great Replacement Theory of Rome is that correlation is not causation. However, during the Great Roman Replacement of Roman genetics we have direct causation with civilizational collapse: after all, the ways, means, appearances and religions of the Near East were adopted by Rome, and GREATLY REPLACED the ways, means, appearances and religion of Rome… Even Roman tolerance and philosophical openness and laissez-faire were replaced by fanaticism and religious executions… The Franks would restore much of these Roman values by 500 CE… And reestablished a modicum of civilization that way…
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GENETICO-CULTURAL REPLACEMENT In ROME, But NOT In GAUL, Hence REBIRTH OF CIVILIZATION THERE:
The problem with Rome is that the mass immigration came from a concentrated source, the Near East. While much civilization and even law and democracy came from the Near East 5,000 to 3,000 years ago, by the time of the collapse of the Roman Republic, the Near East had been shattered by wars and dictatorships for a millennium, following the collapse of Bronze Age civilization around 1200 BCE (which, by the way had its own Great Replacement, the invasion of the Sea Peoples)
As the immigrants came into Rome, so came their dictatorship-friendly moods, ideologies and superstitions. Christianism, with its jealous fascist god up in heavens, naturally won the connivence of Roman tyrants (perhaps as early as Vespasian).
However, Christianism, a form of Judaism, initially a tribal religion, was universalized with a strong injection of typical Roman values, for example generalized openness, creating Roman Catholicism (Universalism, in Greek). So Christianism, in spite of its natural hate for critical intelligence, had some civilizationizing elements of the Roman type, which explains its longevity and influence.
Could that switch from Republic to tyranny have been avoided?
After the civil wars, and Caesar’s assassination, establishing a bloody dictatorship, as Augustus did, was the easy way out, back to bovine-friendly peace.
Could different ways have been chosen? This is an extremely complex question. Gaul next door stayed extremely rebellious (within the Romanitas world).
A problem was the concentrated origin of the immigrants to Rome (caused in part by the vast populations of the Near East). This advantaged fascist metaphysics from the Near East (religions with many gods are not as fascist as a religion with one crazed maniac god threatening his creatures with “hellfire”, the characteristic of Judeo-Christo-Islamism so pleasant to autocrats).
In Gaul, the population was NOT significantly replaced, and kept embracing a characteristic mood in which Caesar found it: rebellious [1]. The Gallic wars of Caesar may have caused the death and enslavement of a few millions, but that was not enough to replace them Celts all over with Romans, who, anyway, where genetically the same and culturally very close, and military-economically entangled, even before the conquest by Caesar. When, four centuries later, the Germans, or more exactly the Franks came to control Gaul, they were fierce on the battlefield, and on the plowing field, but the Franks were relatively few in numbers. So the genetics and the culture of Gaul didn’t change much, and this explains why the Roman empire was reborn in Gaul. Gaul didn’t just preserve Romanitas: there were actually several attempts over several centuries, before the Imperium Francorum imposed itself, to establish a “Gallic Empire”… There was a state under such a name, preceded and followed by attempts from Frankish generals to seize power in Rome against the excesses of Roman Catholicism… in particular, the Frank Arbogast’s defeat in September 394 CE led immediatly to the collpase of the Occidental empire (a striking and undeniable fact generally ignored by parroting historians).
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GRAND REPLACEMENT ONGOING IN EUROPE, NOT IN THE USA:
Nowadays, Europe gets a lot of immigration from the same general region, now under fascist variants of Judeo-Christo-Islamism… to the point that “Islamophobia” has been more or less identified with being anti-immigration. Moreover, policies to make those immigrants reproduce while discouraging natives to do the same are in place in most of these countries (and those countries who try to advantage their naitves, for example Hungary, are labeled “racist”, a case of blatant hypocrisy, as if the Great Replacement was anti-racist, while, in truth, it’s genetically based!)
The USA does not have this problem of a concentrated immigration and entangled ideology from a particular place: immigration to the USA is from all over. There is a long tradition in the US to throttle back immigration from areas which are not liked, and to advantage others (in the last generation, high tech Russians, Chinese and Indians have been favored). A practical effect is that no genetic group dominates in the USA and thus, no imported ideology dominates: American football still reigns as supreme decerebrating religion.
Increasingly, the “woke” ideology is supposed to replace on the left yesteryear “Christianity”, as the new way to tie up together (re-ligare). That, and hating Trump. On the right, clinging to values evolved from Christianism is particularly seductive to “Latin” immigrants. That and condemning late term abortions, wokeness, and so on. So the USA has a balance of contradicting ideologies and immigration…. That enables the US to grow its immigration… much more, while reproducing itself ideologically.
What can Europe do to avoid the Great Replacement trap? Well, encourage local reproduction and global immigration, as the USA does… And also be more attentive to imported toxic ideologies of the fascist persuasion: not just Islamism, or Putinism, but also offshorization, the latter something that also affected Rome severely, causing mass unemployment and powerlessness… And directly related to the Great Replacement: Tiberius Gracchus spoke about many elements of this, 21 centuries ago…
The theory of the “Great Replacement” has been controversial in Europe. It is useful to know that it did happen before, and more than once, and the consequences were dramatic.
Want to learn from history? Notice the similarities…
Patrice Ayme
GENETIC EVOLUTION OF ROMAN POPULATION:
ROMAN POPULATION GENETICS WAS SEVENTY PE RCENT EUROPEAN DURING THE REPUBLIC
[The modern joke by Italians about Rome is that Rome is the only African city without a European quarter…]
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[1] In the context of the preceding chapter, the history of Gaul is very relevant, and offers a completely different, yet complementary picture. Gaul, Gallia Comida was divided in 60 states, with varying polical systems, some with Senates. Gallia was very advanced metallugically, providing weapons for the Romans, and was very proud and strong minded. However, gallic civilization was subject to the Celtic religion, prone to human sacrifices and hostile to literacy for the masses. The Romans wiped out the Druids… And the Celts were thankful.
This gratefulness for having eliminated Druid theocracy explains why Gaul never again protested Roman civilization: instead, it got incorporated, and Gaul became more Roman than Rome. At the same time, papyrus from Egypt became a basic necessity, and middle easterners and their camels were ubiquitous… The genetic dislocation of Italy didn’t occur, and the basic mood was preserved, with the tweak that established religion got a bad name… at least until the terror of Louis XIV…
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P/S: «Une société, une civilisation, nous a avertis l’historien René Grousset (died 1952), ne se détruisent de leurs propres mains que quand elles ont cessé de comprendre leurs raisons d’être, quand l’idée dominante autour de laquelle elles étaient naguère organisées leur est devenue comme étrangère.»
“A society, a civilization, warned us the historian René Grousset, only destroy themselves with their own hands when they have ceased to understand the reasons for their own existence, when the dominant idea around which they were once organized has become alien. »
This is what happened in Rome with the Great Replacement, when the idea of Republic became an alien, and this is what Europe is presently threatened with, as it makes into a moral principle to adore mentalities it used to abhor….
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There have been many globalizations of trade in sizable parts of the world before: unable to feed itself in small and desiccated Attica, Athens imported its wheat from the Black Sea and paid for it with high tech wares made in her factories. The philosopher Demosthenes was the owner of such a high tech small company.
The city of Rome became huge. Unable to feed itself, it imported its food from overseas. Its metals, including for making currency, came from Spain, its swords and helmets were made by Gauls. However, Roman globalization soon took a sinister turn: wealthy Romans learned to escape the Roman absolute limit on wealth by fiscal optimization.
When Roman oligarchs became wealthy enough, by plundering overseas, just like Russian oligarchs who plunder inside Russia (mostly, but not only), they used their gigantic wealths to buy all they needed in Rome, in particular all arable land, and not just tribunes, and votes. Rome became an evil-power: pluto-kratia. Democrats (under this name) and Populares (Marius and his nephew Caesar) fought the plutocrats to death. But they lost. In the end, after generations of massacres, the population was greatly diminished, the Roman army, hiding behind the young Octavian, took power, and gigantic immigration from the Eastern Mediterranean replaced the ancient dead Romans [1].
The present globalization has much to do with the globalization which killed the Roman Republic and its direct democracy [2]. Immense fortunes have been made by the wealthiest, whose definition is that they pay little or no tax, and buy themselves politicians, laws, media, and conspiracies and plots all over the planet.
First thing to do is to tax the plutocrats, worldwide! (Biden just announced the wealthiest Americans paid only 8% tax, a very small fraction of what average US taxpayers pay!)
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The preceding comment was censored by Paul Krugman and The New York Times: perhaps because it identified globalization and plutocratization, a terrible thought crime… Noble Nobel Krugman, famous for his celebration of globalization and his ilk explicitly say, and Krugman repeated that the end of globalization will cause us all to be less wealthy (as if we were all wealthy!) I was not surprised by this censorship, so I sent another comment, which was published, after being delayed 12 hours (so that nobody would read it while the NYT can claim that it doesn’t censor!) Here it is in a fuller version below. The version sent to the NYT was weaker, and didn’t have the first paragraph below. NYT is a crucial part of the world plutocracy presently bombing Ukraine… When I undermine that effort, and this link between the WEF/Davos and Putin, I get censored…
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The price of globalization through plutocratization, which we benefited from, according to plutocratic propaganda, was right… for the world’s wealthiest people, our masters and owners. They particularly liked the fact they could buy democracy on the cheap that way.
Our freedom is surely worth paying a bit of it through lesser GDP, especially considering most of that GDP has been going to oligarchs…
Russian oligarchs are a product of this system, globalization through plutocratization, same as Rome, with Putin playing a role similar to Jugurtha, the homicidal Numidian usurper.
Globalization through plutocratization made dictators in Russia and China very powerful. Xi made alliances with many US oligarchs and developed a murderous surveillance tyranny in close cooperation with the biggest global tach firms. All of this without paying taxes, claiming to be tax free foundations and advising, or controlling even the mightiest states, even in an educational role (foxes teaching chicken the ways of the world).
As this global corruption festered, pressing issues such as nuclear weapons and the CO2 crisis were not addressed beyond smoke, mirrors and windmills…
Evil-power, plutocracy, is a corruption of hearts, desires, and even pleasure. Plutocrats take pleasure in other people’s misery: this is why Putin goes around, saying that his war in Ukraine is going according to plan: what Putin wants is flattened cities. As they hog resources for their clans, global plutocrats want to flatten the rest of the planet, knowing well that increasingly more miserable conditions will lead to war, the unspeakable evil.
A detailed analysis of what went wrong with Carthage shows the same pattern. Carthage was an oligarchic democracy (one could say). Out of rage and anxiety from Roman gathering might, Carthage expanded forcefully in Spain. That was led by the Barca family (think Barcelone). So doing the Barcas, those ancient plutocrats cum generals, spurned Carthaginian legal control, and made the confrontation with the Roman Republic worse.
Plutocratization, especially when global, brings war. It brought it to Rome, it brought it to 1914, it brought it to us. In all cases, the origin of the global plutocratization was unbridled globalization, escaping the control of local laws, hence civilization.
Patrice Ayme
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[1] We have genetic proof of this, since 2019… Published in Science. Here is an extract:
By the founding of Rome, the genetic composition of the region approximated that of modern Mediterranean populations. During the Imperial period, Rome’s population received net immigration from the Near East, followed by an increase in genetic contributions from Europe. These ancestry shifts mirrored the geopolitical affiliations of Rome and were accompanied by marked interindividual diversity, reflecting gene flow from across the Mediterranean, Europe, and North Africa.
Metal pollution in Greenland from the economic and technological activity of Roman civilization. One can ssee clearly the rise of activity corresponding to the growth of the Roman Republic, then the collapse due to the civil wars brought by the fight to death between plutocration and the democrats (Romans used that exact word: democrats… They also use massively “oligarchs” to qualify whom I prefer to call “plutocrats” (evil oligarchs). One can see the collapse of the fascist empire and its attempted recovery, from more fascism, starting with Diocletian… Circa 300 CE. On the far right one can see the Merovingian then Carolingian Frankish recovery, with the peak by Charlemagne’s coronation as Roman emperor… The Franks had conquered Eastern Europe, all the way to Ukraine…
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In Europe, “liberal” has a slight pejorative meaning, free market as the prominent value, diminishing other, deeper values, while covered up by a quixotic parody of freedom, absolute belief in the “free market’, in one word, “American”… American supremacy masquerading, in drags, as monkey business. Whereas in the USA, “liberal” is supposed to incarnate the left, and progressive, it is therefore supposed to mean the opposite of the European interpretation of what “liberal” has become [1]…
So which vision is right? Is liberalism just facilitating world plutocracy, as the European believe, or is it a real “left”, as “Democrats” pretend in the USA?
The record shows that “liberal” as interpreted by US citizens is, in fact, as seen from a world perspective, closer to “liberal” as interpreted by Europeans: US capitalist domination, masquerading as liberty. Indeed most hegemonic, often Xi collaborating firms, from the financial giant Black Rock to Microsoft, have embraced “liberal” values… while fostering much of the present worst abuse on the planet (such as kids extracting cobalt and coltan in Congo, or Xi’s dictatorship extracting resources from its genocidal colonial empire). Obviously the embrace of US political leaders of “liberalism” is rather reminiscent of Hitler’s embrace of “socialism”.
Naturally, although US liberalism’s abuse of the world has been greater than its domestic abuse, it remains that, under their leadership which is the opposite of what they advertise, the US middle and lower classes have been going down, in health, wealth, and prospects. To replace them the “liberal” machinery has been keen to import, at high price, educated immigrants from countries which extensively trained them, such countries now to be painfully robbed from their human resources… And US liberals… applaud this new slave trade… being careful NOT to see the analogy.
Under Obama, a “liberal”, thousands of billions of dollars were transferred to failing banks owned by the wealthiest. This Transfer of Assets to Rich People replenished the coffers of the wealthiest. This is how “liberal” Obama saved the economy: by enriching the rich. Lo and behold, when Obama was finished with his reign, inequality in the USA was the greatest ever, and life expectancy was going down. Confronted to a similar crisis, Reagan and Bush Senior, both conservative exploiters of the people, nationalized thousands of banks first, depriving their wealthy owners of property. So Reagan was a leftist compared to Obama, the “liberal”. So why do “Democrats” still call Obama “liberal”? Because of the color of his skin? (Same as the color of the skin of my beloved spouse, BTW, so no turning around to call me a white supremacist… for pointing out at the skin color argument!)
The result of liberalism as a masquerade can be observed in California: sky high taxes, except for billionaires who pay none, with thousands of the world’s worst slums (worst, said the UN!) kept at a distance from the residences of the world’s most powerful men. But then Zuckerberg went around Lake Tahoe with an electric foil, while holding a US flag, probably in honor of the liberal sheep who voted for his employees (to manage the country). The symbol of a class for which having no shame is the best defense.
That inversion of all values is going full bore: those who fear Islam as the Middle Age enemy of civilization, are described as “haters”. “Liberal” values have come to embrace Islam, and hate those for fear Islam… A few centuries after Europe finally got rid of Islam’s initial model, Catholicism (and its inquisition)… And a few centuries after the Enlightenment excoriated both Islamism and Christianism. Now literary works of the Eighteenth Century criticizing Islam are de facto outlawed!
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Embracing the enemies of civilization, foreign, abusive religions and fostering inequality, insufficient education, and declining wealth, health and employment outcomes is exactly how Roman plutocracy put under increasing control the Roman people, while making a show of self-defeating liberalism (citizenship for all under emperor Caracalla).
A society where the most important corporations are monopolies controlling the tech sector is a dictatorship (more exactly, an oligarchy).
The racist explanation, obsessively claiming people are upset because a change of the color of the skin of… people… is obviously a coverup. For example in California, pure white race gatherings seem to be found nowhere. In my own California family, some are white (one from the UK), some are very brown “African-American”, some are (brown) pacific islanders, some are white Asians (Korea, Japan), some are nearly white “hispanic” (from Mexico)… and one is even from Africa (yours truly). And this is typical. Yesterday I was on a boat and an island, and the kaleidoscope of races, skin, eye, and hair color was amazing. In one concept: nobody is racist. In wealthy northern California, many are millionaires (from real estate) and feel like honorary, if not outright, masters, in other words, whites.
The less amusing part is that yesterday on “60 Minutes” some white guy from an exclusively white family, with exclusively white assistants (it seemed), who has been making documentaries for PBS for 40 years, came on TV to tell us we are all racists. In truth, he is a racist from a racist milieu, and this is often the case in the east… and thus sincerely believes the whole world is like his world: racist.
Talking obsessively about racism during an intense class struggle, the attempted take over of the world by global plutocracy, is a cover-up. Racism has become the opium of liberals.
Rome was not racist. Actually, genetic analysis and other evidence show that the Roman population became mostly eastern genetically, as Rome became an illiberal empire, imbued with ideologies and religions from the Eastern Mediterranean. Thus the Roman turn-for-the-worst was taken not for racial, but for class reasons: the wealthiest against the rest.
The paradox is this: as We The People are treated illberally by a dictating class, the natural reaction is to fight fire with fire and become illiberal oneself. This is exactly what happened when Roman civilization went down, and dictatorship kept on rising: monks, “men in black” would ravage all they could ravage, and vast armed rebellions arose (Brigantes in the West, Nikka riots in Constantinople). Something similar happened in the Middle Ages (Jacqueries, when nobles got butchered and butchered back) and, after centuries of turmoil, culminated in the French Revolution four centuries later.
The gap between the rich and poor is not accidental, or incidental. It is not a consequence. Instead, it is the engine. The wealthiest, as they get ever wealthier and more powerful, thus evil and deluded, correctly perceive the poor and the middle class as their enemies, and conspire to weaken them ever more, the more evil they themselves become. Reciprocally the poor and the middle class have started to realize that they are preyed upon, and that a mechanism similar to the downfall of the Roman republic is at work. So they are starting to react… with increasing ferocity, through their ‘populism”…
As Rome declined and fell, We The People lost democracy (=people-power), and we have been recovering much of it recently (more or less culminating around the GI Bill after World War Two). What is going to happen next? Power, that is knowledge, will guide. Telling people why they are becoming illiberal against their loud, but fake, “liberal” oppressors liberally exploiting them, is an indispensable start.
Know thy enemy and thyself! Thus your big stick will carry a long way!
Patrice Ayme
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[1] The understanding of what “liberal” meant was the same in the US and Europe up to the 18th century. The divergence started after this, and, I claim, slavery (a US practice) had everything to do with it)…. As the next essay will show…
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Roman Democracy Failed From Private Power Escaping 100% Taxation
Too much power in a family is iniquitous, dangerous for the society at large. Thus, tax power. The fundamental reason for taxation is not, contrarily to common opinion, to raise money for the government.
The fundamental reason for taxation is to prevent a few families from grabbing all the power of society for themselves, making an oligarchy...
Money and power exponentiate: they grow proportionally to themselves. So if power is not limited in a timely manner, one individual, the monarch, will grab all power.
Fully sovereign states can decide where power shall be directed, by passing appropriate laws: the Inca empire worked very well without tax or currency. Just like the Roman empire and the feudal system, the USSR, or the UK or USA in WW2, workers or companies, in a fully sovereign state, can be mobilized to do necessary work, by command and control. A fully sovereign state has so much power, it does not need to purchase it.
However, if families acquire enormous wealth, they can acquire so much power that they can direct the public discourse to their liking, and, ultimately, purchase armies. This is exactly what happened in the Roman republic, in violation of old Republican laws which limited power, and wealth absolutely. This happened greatly because global Roman plutocrats were able to escape Roman taxation and jurisdiction by going and thriving overseas [1].
Coming back quickly the overseas Roman plutocrats used propaganda to buy for themselves a large part of Italy, and manned those monopolistic agribusinesses with armies of slaves. Gracchi laws passed too late to stop the phenomenon [2]. We are in exactly the same situation. Tax power now!
The imperial Roman Republic could have been saved, and transmogrified. First it needed a different attitude to ideas, by realizing and emotionally integrating, that one should be ruled by a society where nothing can, and should, beat a superior idea into submission. Instead emperor Vespasian paid an inventor to not reveal a machine which could have saved enormous amount of work. So, by 80 CE, the official Roman policy was anti-tech investment.
Second the nefarious side of the entanglement with slavery should have been revealed. Slavery perverted society in more ways than one, including not just from its inequity, but by favoring an ever more oligarchic society leveraging inequity, and thus discouraging technological progress, an absolute good (everything else being equal). When the Latin speaking Queen Bathilde from the Roman successor state, the Imperium Francorum, outlawed slavery in 657 CE, the forces of progress were unleashed: not just tech, but mandatory secular education.
(Outlawing slavery was not just a Frankish idea, Chinese emperors tried it several times; but differently from what happened in Francia, the reform did not hold.)
The monopolists who now dominate the world propaganda and most of its information economy, have acquired those positions in the worst possible way: through complicity with the darkest part of the state of the dominant nation-state, the US.
The fabulously powerful plutocrats and their worldwide conspiracy, which include the dictatorship in China, have to be stopped now. No more excuses. The “Democrats” control the Congress and the Senate. The least they can do is to try to break the power of the most powerful families, their countless plots, foundations, and accomplices in academia. Yeah, just try, that’s the decent thing to do.
One should not want to risk the Republic, as Rome did by trying to control too late the wealthiest, the self-described “best” (as the Gracchi did).
Notice that Trump’s Justice Department launched pursuits against Google and Facebook…. And couldn’t do more, because the “Democrats” then focused on Trump instead of focusing on the monopolists. That was a bad mistake, but no doubt, as the monopolists have greatly helped the “Democrats” they saw it as the right move at the time. Well, this is now, no more excuses…
If the power of the wealthiest is not curbed immediately, civilization is in peril. Tax severely very great wealth, enough to prevent exponentiation of society into degeneracy and Armageddon for everybody. As happened so many times in the past.
Patrice Ayme
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[1] Roman rentiers became wealthy during the Second Punic War: to escape Hannibal’s forces, peasants took refuge in the cities behind fortifications (Rome’s walls were so formidable, Hannibal didn’t even try to besiege it)… But they had to rent lodgings. An aggravating factor is that many, if not most of the most noble families died on the battlefield, and with them, their Republican, democratic mentality. If anything, it was demonstrated that high republican spirits kill, and base mentality enriches.
Rome also found itself with an empire after defeating Hannibal and his Macedonian ally. The Republic had a light touch, and preserved local elites and local laws (in most cases). Roman generals expanding the Roman civilization’s security sphere were able to enrich themselves considerably by acquiring, say, mines in Iberia, as Marius did (that enabled him to run for Consul).
Conquests made Rome, and especially its elite, very wealthy. Roman public land had been acquired by wealthy members of the Senate starting in 180 BCE. Senators used the public land to create large farms worked by slaves, to produce cash crops, such as olive oil and wine. These giant farms became known as latifundia and the Senators or wealthy individuals (Equites) who owned these were not concerned with feeding the city’s populace, but instead were obsessed to become ever more wealthy. They could leverage this further by escaping the Roman absolute wealth limit from making money in other jurisdictions, overseas.
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[2] The plutocrats of Rome who wanted to override the spirit of the laws of the 350 years old Republic called themselves, ironically enough, the “Optimates”. Those self-declared optimal types, were the exact opposite of what their description entailed. They used massive propaganda to depict themselves as they were not. In truth, they were the most vile and degenerate. They were an offense to the spirit of countless noble Romans of centuries passed, including the six (elected) Roman kings (the one who was not, Tarquinius Superbus, the assassin of the great king Servius Tullius, caused a civil war, and was the last king), and (elected) dictators Camillus, Cincinnatus, tremendously courageous generals such as Regulus, etc. The propaganda worked…
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That the Roman Republic lasted as long as it did, five centuries, is greatly attributable to limit put on the wealth and power of individual families:
Roman engineering is still amazing: the Pantheon in Rome is still the largest unreinforced concrete building. We are still trying to duplicate Roman concrete, some varieties of which were much more energy efficient to make, could settle under water, etc… CO2 is massively produced by concrete making, and a big problem as we decarbonize our energy production. After the Roman state collapsed, buildings got built in a more ephemeral manner…
Ian Miller responded: In fairness, one of the better ones used a pozzolan from Vesuvius (and burnt lime) so in a sense Vesuvius did much of the heating. Another interesting one was the testa, effectively from heated kaolin, but unlike the clay cements we use, it only had to be heated to 600 degrees C (and with added burnt lime.)
Roman engineering was not the only engineering around: for centuries, the Romans purchased their better weapons among the Gauls, who had superior metallurgy.
In either case, the (relative) superior inventiveness was caused by (relatively superior) direct democracy. That may surprise: Rome is not known for its direct democracy… And it was a strange one, as it reflected the addition of further “tribes”, over the centuries, to those which founded the city itself. So older tribes had priority in voting in the so-called “Centuriate Assembly”… which was actually the National Assembly of the “Populus Romanus”.
Rome was known for its inventiveness in engineering, and it generally happened because some Roman soldier or more typically, an officer, had a bright idea, which quickly went up the chain of command. Other bright ideas were debated politically, sometimes for centuries, sometimes in the fiercest fashion (say taxation of the hyper wealthy and confiscation of said wealth by the Ager Publicus, the public agricultural lands). This makes obvious that debates were intense and their interest beyond any suspicion.
The cathedral and the Brunelleschi dome at sunset, Florence Italy. The balcony at the very top is around one hundred meters in circumference (personal estimate), and the dome is 115 meters high. It was begun in 1296 CE. The Republic invented bonds to finance itself and its army…
The situation changed completely during the empire. Emperors started to pay inventors to NOT divulge their inventions. The idea was that machines took away employment. The reality was that emperors did not want a dynamic society. The most terrible consequence was that the barbarians caught up, or even surpassed, Roman military engineering, with the otherwise incomprehensible results that tiny Germanic bands came to defeat the empire on the battlefield… another cause, tied in directly to the lack of direct democracy in the Late Empire, is that Roman armies were then smaller than at the apex of the Republic, when the Roman population was less than a tenth of what it was in the Late empire… Emperors and their attending plutocrats did not want the proverbial, levée en masse, the mass national military conscription, which would have toppled them… And which had been the rule already under king Servius Tullius, (assassinated 535 BCE) a generation before the formal inception of the Roman Republic…
Fast forward six centuries and now the great leader of the Franks, mother to three kings, queen Bathilde, fierce and absolute regent of the Frankish empire in 657 CE, outlaws slave trading when said slaves reside in Francia, thus are “Franks”. That demolished the Roman latifundia system (giant agribusinesses manned by slaves) which had risen its ugly head towards the end of the Roman Republic, helping to kill it (form the powers it conferred to the plutocrats who owned it). next thing which happened is that Gallic metallurgy, already second to none, became even better. Combined with mechanical advantage (replacing the waning slave workforce), it brought hydraulic hammers, which were then used to give metallic skeletons to great buildings (for example cathedrals and domes.
To build the Duomo in Florence, architect Brunelleschi came up with an impressively complicated design that featured two domes, one on top of the other, using a special herringbone brick pattern. he also used an system of internal iron chains that ringed the outer dome like the metal rings on a barrel to help evenly distribute the weight. Up until that point the only option to make such a dome was to using flying buttresses, a Frankish invention (Italy was part of the Frankish empire, now rebaptized the “Renovated Roman Empire” since 800 CE). The same method was used in Frankish cathedrals, especially after they bulged out and threatened to collapse (see Amiens).
Florence was a resurgence of People Power, as it became a republic in the middle of the Middle Ages. One of many in Italy. The Franks had been favorable to Republics: Venice was one of them, and the spawn of Roman refugees from the Hunnic and Germanic invasions. Charlemagne put it under his wing, but did not subdue her, in spite of the fact she had a gigantic fleet the rest of the empire sorely depended upon.
The Feudal system itself was both a degenerescence of empire, but also a resurgence of local democracy: the Roman empire was united by the Roman army, and communications, plus some basic laws in common, and enough tax base redistribution to keep the army fed, trained and equipped… But otherwise it was pretty much a galaxy of cities… When Caesar invade Gallia Comida (Long Haired Gaul), it has 60 states… the exact same number, in exactly the same region as it would have, a millennium later…
When people talk about Western Europe, and they ponder what made it different, they should pay more attention to the local democracy character it long possessed, and how it generate technological innovation.
Why it failed in Rome has to do with the absence of a revered, endogenous intellectual class. Greece had it, and Rome imported brains from Greece. Higher thoughts are different from engineering, but neither of them can live without the other, and progress, as they must, in always degenerating ecological circumstances…
Patrice Ayme
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Thinking completely new thoughts is highly disturbing, even to professionally creative thinkers. Systems of thoughts are systems of neural networks, and changing them requires a lot of energy, thus will. So, at the first sign of really new ideas, or emotions, those with little experience in the dynamical systems of thought, and why it is important to improve them, feel under personal attack. And they are. So they panic, get enraged, and hurl anti-ideas and insults, all the more as they see reason, their sort of reason, under assault.
The question then, for creative thinkers who have to interface with the Commons, is always the same: should we accommodate lesser minds and their brutish inclinations? And the answer, from Socrates, to Demosthenes, to Hypatia, Boetius, Abelard, Giordano Bruno, the historian Marc Bloch, the philosopher and logician Jean Cavaillès, is always the same: never accommodate those who want to kill creative thinking. Never, ever. Death is the better way.
Why? Because the will to new and better thinking is the distinctive essence of humanity. This is what babies and children do. And if we stop doing it, all we hold dear will disappear. All that will be left will be nihilism, ex nihilo.
This sort of consideration, how intellectual Rome was, may sound arcane, but it is all very pragmatic: Rome never succeeded to foster creative thinking of civilization class. Rome did not have this sort of meta-cultural tradition. Romans were very intelligent, but pragmatic. And perished as a result. Importing Greek thinkers, as Rome did for generations, did not really work, as, in the end, Roman generals outlawed creative thinking in general, and the Greek sort, in particular. You see, creative thinking was inconvenient, too hard, not respectful enough of the established order… too unmasked…
Imperial Rome was so anti-intellectual that engineers and inventors were paid by the state to not divulge their inventions, especially if they improved productivity. The theory is that such inventions would have augmented unemployment. Europeans, once they cancelled slavery (Bathilde, circa 655 CE) had no such qualms. By 1,000 CE, windmills and watermills were found by the dozens of thousands (6,000 watermills in England alone by 1068 CE).
The final result of this anti-intellectualism was that Rome could not see far in the distance, or deep in its own structures. But then, of course, it could not happen once the Republic existed only in name, because it was fairly clear that it had been captured by a gang of bandits.
Basilica Of Maxentius And Constantine (the former died in the Milvian bridge battle against the latter…). The trees are huge, by the way. A 15 meters tall statue of Constantine used to stand in front of it. Only its head survived. Basilica were buildings with multiple functions in Rome; they became strictly religious under Christianism.
Bis repetita with the Muslim Caliphates. The reason why the Caliphates went down was, basically, the same anti-intellectualism as Rome (for the good and simple reason that islam learned this anti-intellectualism from Rome). Why did Europe not succumb to anti-intellectualism too?
Because after the Roman state demise, the legal establishment, the religious establishments (Christian and Jew), the military establishment, all parted ways, while the Roman plutocracy embraced the barbarians: it was all a big mess… which gave a modicum of freedom, competition, diversity and the spark of intellectual debates (after all, Charlemagne talked three languages, Frankish, Latin and Greek… and took himself for King David!)
For example, 250 years after Charlemagne, a maverick such as the Normandy Duke, William the Bastard, soon to be a Conqueror, supported maverick intellectuals who identified god with reason… Or more exactly, reduced god to reason (the Pope was furious, but couldn’t do anything as William had a much bigger army).
Whereas in Islam until recently one could not say that the combination of hydrogen and oxygen makes water, but only that hydrogen and oxygen, god willing, result in water. Allah supervised all of Islam, including the simplest gestures, even during the so-called “Golden Age of Islam”. Whereas in contemporaneous Europe, blasphemy came as naturally as sex jokes, and everything was for the better when both got mixed and the lecherous local priest ended emasculated… (See the “Fabliaux”)
Capture by a gang of evils and devils, war criminals and criminals against humanity, not just bandits, is the condition sine qua non of plutocracy.
In the recent elections in the USA, strong bias, in many ways was exerted by the plutocratic monopolies. Those monopolies had been created by the preceding regime (“Bush-Obama” [1]). They have a vested interest in seeing the friendliness to monopolies resurrected (Trump is suing Google and Facebook).
The politics the tech monopolies pushed was not just to eliminate their tormentor, Trump. They also pushed an agenda of voting favorable to themselves. It is striking that, in California, rabidly “democratic” (Biden plus 5.5 million!), the pro-plutocracy propositions passed. Deep thinking shows something is wrong here: is California pro-democracy, and “left” (as it claims) or pro-plutocracy and pro-Neofeudalism (as the voting for plutocratic propositions indicates)? Further twist: the “Democratic” Party was officially against these plutocratic propositions, by the way, it’s not just me…
Deep thinking ponders: is not something fishy going on? How come a Trump hating California votes for plutocrats? Is this another proof that the pro-Biden vote was fundamentally pro-plutocracy? Right, it’s a point I have been trying to convey, approaching with a granular analysis… Or maybe Californians just do what their masters tell them to do?
Indeed a population seemingly addicted to demonstrating obedience, wear masks even in the wilderness, a new form of debasing voodoo in which even Europe at the peak of the Black Plague of 1347 CE, did not fall (then only doctors wore masks). Thorough stupidification precedes ultimate plutocratization: we are no doubt on our way…
Fundamentally, leading civilizations lead from leading thinking. For example, Rome led Italy, Greater Greece, Etruria, so all her competitors, neighbors and adversaries by being the first to introduce a hoplite army, under, and thanks to king Sergius Tulius. Not only this endowed Rome with the best army in Italy, it made Rome into a democracy (after a delay from the insane reign of Tarquinius Superbus). Later, when Rome fought powers, she was typically the democracy and certainly the republic… from better thinking, and won, by better thinking.
Reciprocally, when the government of imperial Rome after Augustus, now a plutocracy, refused to think to solve Rome’s problems, no doubt that was for the obvious reason. Indeed, the most lucid of the plutocrats in total power could guess that deep thinking would have led the people to conclude that they, the plutocrats, consisted in the deepest problem intelligence was affected by. So, the problems went unsolved, festered ever more. Rome first deperished in its analytical capability, and then perished.
If a civilization cannot sustain leading, progressing thinking, it will perish, one way, or another. Not just that, but the thinking has to be good enough to master the problems at hand. The problems we have now, a potential climate catastrophe, nuclear weapons, the Neo-Feudalism plutocracy is enthusiastically cruising towards, and an on-going Sixth Mass Extinction are all potentially biosphere terminating events. So we are going a bigger boat for our intellectual adventure as we face this tsunami of man-made cataclysms…
And yes, it will hurt to think new ideas, and foster new emotions. But there is no other way. Humanity reminds me of a solo climber way off the deck, and no matter the pain and the fright, the only way, no matter what is up… At all and any cost.
Patrice Ayme
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[1] Obama adopted the plan of Bush which consisted in giving public money to private financing firms of his own liking… Instead of nationalizing them, first (as Reagan had done in a similar crisis). That was the most important, and fateful, decision of Obama’s reign: it brought increasing financial influence, plutocratization and inequality. As the launching of this deplorable policy was from Bush, it is cogent of evoking the regime of Bush-Obama. Truly what else did Obama do? Aside from augmenting the profits of the healthcare industry?
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The US attacked Afghanistan in 1979? Most US citizens know only of 9/11, when US mercenary Bin Laden turned against its ex-employer the USA. Plutocratic propaganda “fact checking” will tell you all the precedent statements are unfounded or even know to be false; they are lying; the best way to see they are lying is that the Saudis could not have established an army of at least 35,000 Arabs Muslim Fundamentalist fighters without the approbation of Pakistan, itself a Washington puppet at the time)
National Security Adviser Harvard University (PhD) Zbigniew Brzezinski, father of professional Trump hater and MSNBC talking head Harvard’s visiting fellow Mika Brzezinski: “Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secret until now, is completely different. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”
So the Afghan war was launched, millions died, millions got exiled, an entire country got tortured for now more than 40 years. But Harvard University (PhD) Zbigniew Brzezinski had no regrets:
Brzezinski: “Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire…. What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?”
Afghanistan in 1979, before the full US attack, on the left. Afghanistan in 201o, after 31 years of US led war. Until the US DEEP STATE unleashed Muslim Fundamentalist terrorists in Afghanistan through Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan was a quickly modernizing, safe country, with little sexism. My parents, in geological missions to Afghanistan, visited it many times, and travelled all over (without bodyguards…) Picture sent by Don Kemmerling. US war in Afghanistan destroyed the country completely and made it drug dependent.
The US Deep State and its greedy plutocracy attacked Afghanistan in 1979 for reasons so shallow that there is bound to be another, deeper mechanism at work. And that is one well known of the Ancient Greeks, the reason which, perhaps more than any other, defeated Greek Democracy, hubris. Human beings are made to live dangerously. The leaders of America, visible or not, were bored. So, full of hubris, they organized for themselves a war which would pull them out of their routine. Beats golf, any day. They got away with it, from a general lack of morality and attention to detail.
The individuals at the helm of the US are used to get money and power for nothing. Rwanda, using their tool Kagame, produced cheaply, plenty of Coltan and other rare minerals indispensable for modern electronics (smartphones, etc.) The likes of Susan Rice, another daughter of a prestigious father, made it so that the war in Congo to get all these minerals out without paying Congolese tax could proceed for the best. Rice represented, in a lucrative manner, Kagame (himself formed in the USA, before being sent back to make war in Rwanda) in Washington. Only six million Congolese killed, long live Rice!
Then all the parrots out there repeat what they are told, but not in these words: global plutocracy is good for you, as long as you say, feel and think the right things.
Is there a way out? Time will tell. However historical precedent is not encouraging. If the Roman state collapsed, it was fundamentally because the Roman plutocracy preferred to deal with the barbarians than to empower, We The People. Potentially, Rome could have raised armies of millions of citizens, which would have crushed the tiny barbarian armies… But Roman plutocrats and their children preferred to marry barbarians than to resist them. Actually Roman plutocrats turned out to have been more hellish than the Barbarians: the Roman empire was reestablished,” renovated” by the Franks, ex-barbarians who were adoptive Romans, not by the original ancient Roman lineages (which had been physically destroyed by the victorious plutocrats…)
William, Duke of Normandy, established in England the most modern state in the world at the time, in 1066 CE. The first thing he did was to outlaw slavery, per Frankish law, as he had to, because it was the law. Followed an amazing succession of smart measures. A bit of digging shows why: William was part of, and encouraged, a whole movement towards greater intellect in north-west France. Those individuals believed that Earth was circling the sun, and logic was god.
Similarly, the rise of ancient Greek democracies was preceded by serious intellectual forrays in deeper understanding. So, when looking at civilizations, one has to look at their intellectual classes to guess their future: Rome (for a long time) and China (several times) went down because of insufficient mental performance. Similarly, when Western Europe recovered, it was led by its intellectuals… as early as the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eight centuries…
In the case of Rome, one may wonder why the administration could not stop the plutocratic rot. This intellectual class was of a lesser sort: the Romans never created intellectuals of the same class as the Greeks. Even when the Roman Republic or the Roman empire were at their peaks, except for a few historians, Romans never produced an intellectual class. Greece did, and Rome employed them, rewarding them handsomely. This was the time of the billionaire (Greek) intellectuals. But those intellectuals were themselves of the lesser sort: they got wealthy, as long as they sang the praises of the collapsing empire, collapsing ecology, collapsing morals, and collapsing free speech… Everybody agreed that, as they put it then:”the world is getting old”.
Well, the world was not getting old, the Roman intellectual class had got senile. By the Eight Century, the Franks made universal schooling mandatory and a condition for religious establishments to operate. It was a time of basic inventions, to enable society to work without slaves…
America has never produced a serious intellectual class. The very wealth and influence of top US, or Chinese, universities is a warning sign: closer examination indeed shows full agreement with the plutocracies in power.
So Americans don’t know that they saintly president Carter attacked Afghanistan in 1979. They don’t know that it had severe consequences (9/11 being a relatively minor one…). So why would they mind that Biden attacked Iraq?
Better. One loses all credibility by pointing at such significant facts as murdering entire nations: smarts disqualify, among idiots, naturally enough. If one wants respectability nowadays, one has to go do the monkey on Tik Tok, gains millions of followers. Any text more than ten words taxes the minds of those who have none.
Patrice Ayme
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AKIRA Intellectual Property Law
Intellectual Property Attorney, PhD Biophysics, California Bar, UK Solicitor, Member of the Bar of the Supreme Court, Computer Science Professor
EVIL EVOLUTION
Evil Is Not An Accident But A Necessary Mean To ecological Sustainabiilty. That It Is A Solution Is Also A Warning.
Ian Miller
New Zealand Physical Chemist musing very cogently about the state of everything
Our Friend Barry.
On Barack Obama’s formative years as a scholarship student at the Punahou college preparatory school in Hawaii, by his classmates and friends.
Tyranosopher
State of the Art Philosophy, Devouring the Feeble Minded.
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AKIRA Intellectual Property Law
Intellectual Property Attorney, PhD Biophysics, California Bar, UK Solicitor, Member of the Bar of the Supreme Court, Computer Science Professor
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EVIL EVOLUTION
Evil Is Not An Accident But A Necessary Mean To ecological Sustainabiilty. That It Is A Solution Is Also A Warning.
0
Ian Miller
New Zealand Physical Chemist musing very cogently about the state of everything
0
Our Friend Barry.
On Barack Obama’s formative years as a scholarship student at the Punahou college preparatory school in Hawaii, by his classmates and friends.
0
AKIRA Intellectual Property Law
Intellectual Property Attorney, PhD Biophysics, California Bar, UK Solicitor, Member of the Bar of the Supreme Court, Computer Science Professor
EVIL EVOLUTION
Evil Is Not An Accident But A Necessary Mean To ecological Sustainabiilty. That It Is A Solution Is Also A Warning.
Ian Miller
New Zealand Physical Chemist musing very cogently about the state of everything
Our Friend Barry.
On Barack Obama’s formative years as a scholarship student at the Punahou college preparatory school in Hawaii, by his classmates and friends.
Philosophy and science: the human adventure. Philosophy is not as popular as it should be, as it supports not just civilization, but human evolution. It matters what we love. Philo-Sophy: Love of Wisdom. But what is love, and what is wise? We humbly examine all the issues we can possibly imagine having to do with defining love, and wisdom. Plus Oultre!
Striving For Ever Better Thinking. Humanism Is Intelligence Unleashed. From Intelligence All Ways, Instincts & Values Flow, Even Happiness. History and Science Teach Us Not Just Humility, But Power, Smarts, And The Ways We Should Embrace. Naturam Primum Cognoscere Rerum
Striving For Ever Better Thinking. Humanism Is Intelligence Unleashed. From Intelligence All Ways, Instincts & Values Flow, Even Happiness. History and Science Teach Us Not Just Humility, But Power, Smarts, And The Ways We Should Embrace. Naturam Primum Cognoscere Rerum
Striving For Ever Better Thinking. Humanism Is Intelligence Unleashed. From Intelligence All Ways, Instincts & Values Flow, Even Happiness. History and Science Teach Us Not Just Humility, But Power, Smarts, And The Ways We Should Embrace. Naturam Primum Cognoscere Rerum
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 