If You Want Peace, Arm Ukraine To The Max ASAP

There is such a thing as military science, comprising, in part, the study of past wars. There are patterns.

Humanity is good and, or evil, according to prospects and circumstances. According to the law of action equals reaction, any violence will bring at least the same equal and opposite violence. One does not stop a modern military force through negotiations, but by defeating it on the battlefield. Defeat does not imply necessarily direct confrontation: McArthur, through island hopping, defeated the Japanese imperial army by circumventing its strong points and cutting it off: no food, and no fuel or ammunition. Most Japanese imperial soldiers in WWII in the Pacific theater died from starvation.

In 1931, a rogue Japanese army attacked Manchuria, seizing it from China. Tokyo was aghast. But the offensive was lightning fast, and a success, so Tokyo did nothing. In retrospect, World War Two had started: for the next ten years, the Japanese army would invade China ever more, fostering a genocide. Japanese army brutality would encourage Stalin to kill 6 million Ukrainians in 1933 (Holodomor). Hitler followed suit, making the “Axis” with Japan and fascist Italy, and invading Spain in 1936. France nearly helped the Spanish Republic… But the UK and US were opposed to it.

And Japan was fueled… by US oil. 

When France and Britain declared war to Hitler, that dictator was allied to the Kremlin (providing oil to the Reich, among other things). The US reacted by accusing France and Britain of “belligerence” and applied sanctions.

When France fell to the Nazis, the US didn’t even bark (Canada sent troops, which were beaten). Instead, FDR, having forgotten his “guarantees” to France, and after seven years of effectively pro-Nazi policies (covered up by criticism of Hitler), sent his right hand man to the junta in Vichy. The very dark deep US state, its universities, etc. had interest to see the French empire collapse: it would become part of the US empire. World government, ladies and gentlemen! 

Two to three million died in the French empire during WWII, up to 15 times US loss of lives. It’s a general feature of WWII that, so great was the destruction, including of archives, that sometimes one has no idea how many people died. Early estimates of the number of Chinese killed were from six to ten million. Most recent estimates are more than 50 million (even Japanese media now admits very high numbers)! After the war, many governments had no interest in revealing the extent of their failure to protect their own population… Or that they unconditionally, yet stealthy, surrendered to the victorious US deep state and its greedy plutocratic corporations…

In other words, WWII happened greatly because of divisions among the leading democracies and their friends… Many pursued their personal agenda. As usual, US plutocrats were allowed to run rampant, creating not just profit, but havoc by empowering dictators. 

This time, contrarily to what happened in the 1930s and early 1940s, confronted with the blatantly genocidal invasion of Ukraine, democracies have been in one block. Democracies have apparently been instructed by what happened in WWII: then, in the 1930s and early 1940s, the initial languor and disunion of democracies, and even their crass interest (not just the USA, but also Switzerland, Sweden, etc.) made the tyrannies strong. The democracies did not react properly when fascist Japan (invading China), fascist Italy (invading Ethiopia, Spain), and fascist Germany (invading the Rhineland, Spain) engaged in world war activities. Had the democracies acted in one block, early on, World War Two and its holocausts would not have happened.

So the democracies acted correctly this time: a fascist acted up, Putin, and invaded a democracy, which cried for help. The democracies passed the ammunition. In 1936, when fascist Germany organized the invasion of the Spanish Republic by a rogue army, the Spanish Republic asked the democracies for ammunition. Socialist France said yes, and then no, because the Anglo-Saxon leaders seemed to have liked what they saw, war in Europe. 

So this time the democracies are passing the ammunition. Good. But they are running out of ammunition.

At the peak of the fighting in East Ukraine’s Donbas region, Russia was using more ammunition in two days than the entire stock of the British military, according to the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank. Europe has ideas, but no weapons. The Kremlin is the opposite: plenty of weapons, little mind. 

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It has helped this endeavor, helping Ukraine to survive, that the USA is, in the guise of reinforcing and arming Europe, has been able to extend juicy military contracts all over, turning all European powers, except France, so far, into military satellites. In particular, the US has sold F35 “stealth” fighter-bombers all over, and these are contracts meant to last 40 years… When a power agrees to buy 50 F35s, that’s 5 billion dollars, before maintenance and support, and there is no money for an equivalent European system. Now the increasing dependence of US manufacturing and military has been extended to anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems [1]. 

Negotiating with Putin is impossible: as a tyrant who has killed too many already, he has to win, or die, he and his kind. Right, the US is extending its empire, somewhat irreversibly… But, well, the Europeans made love, not war, and now that war is upon them, they are not ready physically or mentally to engage that way. Loving Putin is not an option anymore, love didn’t capture Putin and his clique, so Europeans have to let the US make war on Putin. As ancient Greeks used to say, the weak do what they must, the strong, what they can. By giving Ukraine the means to defend itself, the US incited all of Europe but France to become a US client state. This is a giant investment coup, which will profit the USA long term. The rest is creative destruction, nothing that high quality immigration can’t easily overcome.

The choice now is between the not so benign US empire of plutocracy, or thoroughly genocidal Kremlin Nazism (fake National-Socialism of real oligarchy).  

To prevent Putin’s win, all and any classical weapons should be provided to Ukraine, As Soon As Possible. Ukraine can bomb all Russian cities, just as Russia has bombed all Ukrainian cities. WWII blossomed because maximal war measures were not taken by democracies early enough.

In war, momentum is important: Ukraine has it now. If Putin can get Russia in a state of total war and total mobilization, thus total tyranny, so much the better for him, because he is the tyrant. Now if that tyrant blossoms that way, many other tyrants, or would-be tyrants, will be so inspired. This basically happened after a rogue Japanese army invaded Manchuria: tyrants, would be tyrants and their fellow travelers got inspired all over.

And history doesn’t truly repeat itself: now there are nukes. The Chinese tyranny is set on acquiring enough to destroy the world (by more than quadrupling its strategic nuclear weapons). All this will make the world ever more unstable, by switching from a two body problem (Russian tyranny + USA) to a three body problem (Russia, US, China).

In 1939, it took barely more than a week to expel Russia from the Society of Nations (UN version 1), after the Kremlin attacked Finland to invade and eradicate it. What are we waiting to expel Russia from the UN? That would solve the problem of the Russian veto at the UNSC. 

Russia should stick to culture, and sort of disarm, like the rest of Europe: here below a cathedral in Saint Petersburg… Magnificent:

[1] France has the Rafale active stealth fighter-bomber. The F35 is actually an imitation of the Rafale, but more oriented to passive stealth from the frontal aspect in some radar frequencies. The F35 would be better in some SEADs (Suppression Electronic Air Defenses). The Rafale has proven imminently capable in SEADs during a real war in Libya (F35 has barely been engaged by Israel in combat in Syria). Moreover, the Rafale is much more competent in “beast mode” (fully loaded with ammunition.

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Europe, but for France (and Italy), have opted for US anti-ballistics with Patriot… While France produces the just as competent anti-ballistic Aster (and Italy and the UK are also Aster equipped). By ordering Patriot instead of Aster, countries such as Germany and Poland ingratiate themselves to, and become clients of, the US, not France. Ordering Patriot is an application to the status of a US subsidiary state

Perverse History, Perverse Civilization.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patrice Ayme

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

Ivan I “Moneybag”: How Kremlin’s Reich Grew So Big

Tyranny is the chronic problem which has affected civilization. Civilization was created to leverage power, and that leverage can be used by oligarchs to confiscate power.

Such a confiscation is traditional in the Kremlin since Ivan I “kalita” (moneybag). Ivan got the monopoly of taxation from the Mongolian Golden Horde, confiscating as much power as he could. Ultimately he and his successors beat the Mongols at their own game. Ever since, when the tyranny in the Kremlin runs into problems, it engages in a foreign war, enabling it to increase the tyranny at home, by calling all opponents traitors to the fatherland. This has ultimately made the Kremlin led empire into, by far, the world’s largest.

The South of Ukraine Putin is trying to conquer was named the “New Russia” in a preceding conquest, under Czarina Catherine II. Unfortunately for the Kremlin, the “New Russians” who were imported got the westernizing democratic bug…

After the confiscation of power, minds have to be confiscated too, because they tend to rebel. So oligarchies tend to produce populations which are not creative. But the problems always accumulate. Ultimately a supine yet bellicose populace is produced, and one war too many is engaged, and the dictatorship gets destroyed in an invasion, often to be replaced by another tyranny.

However now democratization of the entire planet is a must, because WMDs are so powerful, one tyrant could destroy the planet. And global destruction is tyrants’ personal life insurance. Thus world annihilation will be brandished, again and again, as the life insurance for minds so deranged they can’t tell what reality is. 

It cannot end well, except if democracy ends tyranny, once and for all. Not to be fanatical about it: small tyranny, if democratizing at maximum effort, yes (like Deng Hsiao Ping’s China, or maybe MBS’s Saudi Arabia). But large military dangerous countries which are getting more tyrannical, like Russia or China: no… and the case of China shows a relapse is possible.

Thus weakening tyrannies to the point they cannot attack the world anymore is a must.

Russian civilization was born out of adversity and has quite a few things to teach that way, and reached heights in arts and science which contributed immensely to world’s civilization. But the road of war, and the trick of expending the empire ever more to reinforce fascism, ends here.

Patrice Ayme

 

In 2022 St. Basil’s Cathedral (on the right) celebrates its 461th birthday. It’s 65 meters tall. And totally unique. Some Kremlin’s towers on the left. The Kremlin has many churches inside.
This unique architectural and artistic treasure was built by order of Ivan IV the Terrible to honor his military victory in the Russian-Kazan war. Its full name is the Cathedral of the Intercession of the Most Holy Mother of God on the Moat — celebrating the capture of Kazan with 150,000 troops, plus the help of some West European engineers and military… Most of the population got massacred, the old fashion way, the area got “russified” and Kazan never rose again…

Most Of History Is The History Of Conspiracies. Those Who Deny It, Deny Oligarchy. Often Because They Belong To It.

Con-spirare means simply together-breathe. Conspiracies are even more frequent that the oligarchies they enable. Oligarchies are organized by individuals so close to each other, that they breathe together. Oligarchs also dine together, have parties together, play various games together, love together, marry together, do business exclusively with each other, etc. If oligarchies want to stay in power, they have to deny that there are such collusions, because smart people would attribute the unjust power of oligarchies to such collusions, instead of more meritorious circumstances. So dutifully, little scholars in the employ of oligarch condemn “Conspiracy Theory“, to satisfy their employers and get treats like the greedy pigeons they are… To boot, the employees of oligarchy accuse common people of being racist. Conspiracy Theory is out, say the conspirators, Race Theory is in, instead. Amusingly, said conspirators ted to be always of the same “race”… 

So oligarchies deny conspiracies exist. Instead they prefer to attribute their success to “God”, a great dog in the sky, or chance, or… merit… not the application of groupthink, group discrimination, and group plots… All all too close to plain old racism not to muster  a putrid odor…

Yet, conspiracies exist, history is full of them. Conspiracy is a more general notion than the notion of “plot”, with which it is often confused by lesser minds. A plot necessitates a conspiracy. A conspiracy does not necessarily entail a plot. Conspiracies, like elites socializing together, do not necessarily create explicit plots. 

Oligarchies bind through conspiracies and act through plots. Consider for example Julius Caesar: his entire life was spent fending off, or organizing conspiracies, sometimes for excellent reformist reasons (his distribution law in 59 BCE, when Caesar, as Consul, worked directly with the People Assembly, so-called Centuriate Assembly, ignoring the Senate which led to hatred which brought diverse plots, including civil  war and Caesar’s assassination…).. 

One of the oldest documents in the world, engraved in stone by pharaoh Ramses III describes a “conspiracy of the Sea People in their islands” (Sicily, Sardinia, etc.) which destroyed most civilizations (Egypt barely survived and enslaved an entire invading army.. Israel appeared a bit later…) 

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Here is a more detailed example:

RUSSIA, LAND OF CONSPIRACIES, FROM IVAN THE TERRIBLE TO PUTIN…

Peter the Great was born in 1672. His reforms, battles and conquests had a lasting modernizing impact on Russia, as he firmly intended. Many institutions, and conquests, of Russia originate from his reign. He adopted the title of Emperor in place of the old title of Tsar in 1721, founded and developed a Navy and the city of Saint Petersburg, which remained the capital of Russia until 1917. A year before his death from pneumonia after bathing in a river in the middle of winter, Peter founded the first Russian university. Peter spent his entire life fighting lethally against opponents who preferred death to Peter’s far-sighted reforms. Many of these opponents were extremely close to Peter, and he publicly executed some of them from his own hand, arguing with them even during their execution. One can say Peter had to, because the conspirators were so fanatical and kept on going, like demented energy bunnies, until death stopped them.

Like many children of European monarchs, Tsaverich Alexey Petrovich, son of Czar Peter the Great, didn’t often see his father, who spent much of his reign away fighting the Ottomans and Swedes and traveling around Western Europe to instruct himself. Instead, Alexei was surrounded by a Moscow entourage that believed in “less westernization and a bigger role for the Orthodox Church, the aristocracy, and the old ways”. Alexei bathed in conspiracies of those vested in the obsolete and Russia-defeating ways that Peter had fought against for his entire life, in continual life and death struggles.

Still a boy, under the secret and forbidden influence of his banned mother, Alexey once swore to his confessor Jacob Ignatiev, that he wished his father’s death; the confessor answered: “God will forgive you; we all wish him dead because there are too many burdens on the people” (Impositions of Czar Peter such as cutting beards and removing boots while sleeping…). The confessor spent enormous time with Alexey, often in drunken feasts of equally minded oligarchs. 

Peter wrote to Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, in the hope of recovering his son Alexey, who had fled to Germany and then Napoli, yes, in Italy, part of the “Roman” empire: …”a friendly fraternal confession to share it with you, namely, about my son Alexey. Some time ago the Prince received a command to come to me so that I could distract him from indecent living with indecent people. But instead he hid somewhere and I can’t find him. For his sake I ask your Majesty that if he is found secretly or explicitly in your areas, he should be ordered to return to me…”

Peter’s son returned to Russia. After adverse testimony from his own pregnant lover, Alexay ended tortured to death (that was presented to the public as “died of sadness”)_. And on it went: the rest of the history of Russia is a succession of conspiracies, plots and coups. The consequences could be serious: when Elizabeth, daughter of Peter and  Czarina for twenty years was on the verge of winning against Prussia and Britain in 1761, she died and her nephew who succeeded her, and admirer of Frederik II, immediately withdrew from the war, and Prussia-Britain won, with consequences such as the loss of America for France, and Nazism for Germany…      

Nearly two meters tall Peter the Great was painted when he visited London, by the same painter who painted Newton and Locke… Peter nearly caused the court of France to faint when he grabbed the child king Louis XV, at Versailles, and brought him up in the air to embrace him… His serious purpose was to study European high tech, and he worked in Dutch shipyards. Later he duplicated the ship making in Russia, building Russia’s first Navy, and a mighty one…

All historical figures were involved in conspiracies and plots. This is true even of intellectuals. Live conspiracies and plots are themselves covered up by other conspiracies, plots and propaganda… it reminds me of renormalization in Quantum Field Theory… The apparent masses and charges are not the real masses and charges, and the more detailed the analysis, the more different… Exactly as QFT has it, and for similar reasons… This is an interesting case where state of the art physics provides a ready-made example of how refinement of analysis changes the analysis itself.

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ENABLING THE NAZIS, AND THUS THE HOLOCAUST OF WORLD WAR TWO WAS A CONSPIRACY: However, that was (greatly) a US Deep State conspiracy, and those are generally protected from revelation by overlaying layers of other conspiracies (Why? “Revelation” in Greek is “apocalypse...). So there is another conspiracy to cover-up the fact that Hitler was enabled by a US cover-up. That cover-up, itself enabled by its own set of lies, is called “isolationism”.

Before 1942, Roosevelt, other top US politicians and the US media conspired to hide from the US public the holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis. To do so, FDR fired his friend Dodd, a University of Chicago historian. Dodd had been FDR’s ambassador in Berlin, who was extremely well informed and extremely anti-Nazi. The story is told in “The Garden Of The Beasts“, by Erik Larson, an excellent book.

Then FDR named another pro-fascist plutocrat (Jo Kennedy) as ambassador to London… and argued with Hitler for years… thus validating and recognizing Hitler as an interlocutor… when there was just one way for civilization to talk to Hitler, war, and it was precisely what France and then Britain, decided to do. Because they had to, there was no alternative. For the US Deep State, the one centered around Harvard, Nazism was the key to world control…. And indeed the stupid Nazis sent a battleship to Boston to celebrate Harvard! I say “stupid”, because it did not dawn on the Nazis what the American Deep State was exactly up to… namely a bait and switch similar to the one of 1914-18 (first pro-German, and Germany enabling, then anti-German). The Nazis… and Europe… would have gained from making a more in depth analysis of what exactly the US powers-that-be were exactly up to… while they helped Nazi Germany (not just to exist and go to war, but even to bring Nazism to power…)

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A few glimpses of functioning, multi-generational conspiracies:

The mother of the present US Secretary of State was elevated to “Commandeur” of the French Legion of Honor (it’s a supreme grade of the Legion d’Honneur, above Chevalier, which means knight, to which some mainstream US journalist were also elevated, like Roger Cohen…). So was the Sec of State’s stepfather Pisar (at the highest possible level of Legion d’Honneur…)… All US citizens, not French… But somehow at the core of the inner machinery of… France… Donald Mayer Blinken (born November 11, 1925) is an American businessman and former ambassador. He was a director and one of the founders of E. M. Warburg Pincus & Company, an investment bank in New York…. Easy enough, when one is a scion of the Warburg banking family… During the Weimar Republic, Max Warburg served on the board (‘Generalrat’) of the Reichsbank from 1924 to 1933, under Hjalmar Schacht, (until 1930). Dr. Schacht, himself a pawn of JP Morgan (secretly tied to Rothschild), was the financial master mind of fascizing Germany in the 1920s and 1930s… thus Wall Street… and Hitler… most important promoter. Schacht was Hitler finance and economy minister. A monster scandal, severely repressed, happened when, shortly after Hitler got to power, and when Nazi rule was not yet firm, a book revealed that the Warburg, German-American Jews, had financed Hitler. The book was ordered destroyed by “judges” everywhere… Just one copy survived… Yet there are plenty of reasons to believe in its overall message, that Hitler had secret backers (it’s even possible a family member of the Warburgs wrote the book as a warning against Hitler… [1])

Hey no oligarchies here, nothing to see, please do not ask too many questions… Pisar’s clients included many Fortune 500 companies, celebrities, and many known political and business leaders of the 20th and 21st century, including some notorious ones: tycoons Hammer and Maxwell, French and US presidents. His books have been translated into many languages. Pisar was the longtime lawyer, confidant of ill-fated plutocrat Robert Maxwell a plotter so great that, at his burial after he mysteriously “feel” from his yacht of the Canaries, the Israeli PM solemnly declared he could never say all the services he rendered, they were top secret…

https://www.lefigaro.fr/actualite-france/legion-d-honneur-la-liste-des-promus-du-14-juillet-2021-20210714.

Another glimpse:

Congo has 2/3 of the world’s cobalt (for so-called “renewable”, actually intermittently clean energy). In 2021, most Congolese mines are Chinese owned (19 out of 25). Some of these mines are so enormous, cities have sprung next to them. The purchase by the Chinese of a giant American-owned Cobalt mine in Congo was done by a private equity firm with Hunter Biden, son of Biden, on its board… as a founding member… As in the Warburg cases, a number of companies were created to use as screens for plausible denials (plausible only to very friendly media breathing the same air and going to the same receptions…)

Race to the Future: What to Know About the Frantic Quest for Cobalt. A New York Times investigation examines the global demand for raw materials as the clean energy revolution takes off. This is what we found.

***

Rage against “Conspiracy Theory” is something intellectuals employed by plutocratic university seem to view as a duty to demonstrate how much they support the established oligarchy. After all, their self-respect and a crucial part of the propaganda they project depends upon denying that they belong to anything else, but an oligarchy of merit. Typical is this October 2021 declaration from a particle physics theorist:

“Conspiracy theory would be hysterically funny if it weren’t so widespread and so incredibly dangerous. Today it threatens democracy, human health, and world peace, among many other things. In the internet age, scientists and rational bloggers will have no choice but to take up arms against it on a regular basis.” (Professor Strassler claimed to be all angry against silly people who believe there was some conspiracy about how one represented the activity of La Palma’s volcano… Because they are unused to digital data… But in truth he seems to have been more interested in fustigating so-called and non-defined “Conspiracy Theory“) Strassler is a specialist of QFT, Quantum Field Theory… Hey dear professor Strassler, visiting scholar at great intellectual Harvard university, please define “Conspiracy Theory”? (Strassler is an excellent physicist…). Curious how much Harvard keeps on resurfacing, the naïve may say… But it is no accident whatsoever: the daughter of Xi, Chinese president, went to Harvard to, to learn to think oligarchically, lest she didn’t know how to do that very well already… Harvard is the leading plutocratic university. History may well vomit on it… As the place where misleading the world was taught. Yes, Obama became a genius at Harvard, blossoming later as a disaster for health care and the climate, the CO2 crisis, and world peace… Although magnificent propaganda has persuaded hundreds of millions of poorly informed victims… of the exact opposite, a testimony to plutocratic brainwashing…

Now of course Strassler thinks probably the world of Blinken, son of Blinken, stepson of Pisar the Great… Who mysteriously went from gangsters of a pillar of the world, in a few years (family connections did it)… And that’s the entire point. Strassler wants us to not doubt Bilken and his ilk, and their oligarchy-given right to lead the world establishment (into the wall, but hitting a wall should calm the commons). Strassler is trying to seduce his superiors at harvard to get what the pigen wants: more crumbs from the masters.

Right, Blinken went to Harvard (what else?). So now Blinken, family connected to Warburg connected to Hitler (one way or another) has the right and duty to steer the world: he was born that way. And us, who see that see what should not be seen and theorize about what one should not theorize. Some will scoff, and say that it was always that way, and always will be. But that is incorrect thinking: we are in exceptional times, with an on-going Sixth Mass Extinction, the preceding one was 66 million years ago… and we are led by… abject conspirators. They are abject, because they feel, in their infamy, that they are qualified to feel, think and act in the name of the world… And they have obviously been making a terrible job at it (from thousands of nukes threatening to blow us all any time, to a dismantling, deconstructioning climate and imploding biosphere).

***

History is not restricted to conspiracies: natural events and vast economic, ecological and sociological forces also arise. But most of the human actions launched by leaders and oligarchies are enacted by conspiracies. 

Denying the necessity of making theories of conspiracies is denying the necessity of studying history as a science… precisely to study plots and conspiracies and how to prevent them… Denying conspiracies is what oligarchies need to exist, to breathe together… In peace… to digest us in peace.

Patrice Ayme

***

P/S: New York Times has written many essays deploring “conspiracies theories”. Condemning theories about conspiracies as a mental disease destroying “democracy” is a staple of the NYT. The last one was yesterday, 11/22/2021. I sent a comment to the last of these essays explaining the difference between plots and conspiracies, and the ubiquitousness of conspiracies in history. My comment was delayed overnight, and published only after the comment section had been closed.

***

[1] Franz von Papen once a German Chancellor (in 1932) and Hitler’s colleague (in 1933) recommended the Warburg book in his memoirs that were published in 1953… The book was also said to have got the help of French intelligence which desperately tried to show the US-Nazi ties… a strategy which may have backfired as early as 1933, when FDR took a detestation of France…

Football Teaches Russia A Lesson

Plutocrat Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev looks dejected, while the president of Croatia celebrates.

President Croatia celebrating. Medvedev, a football fan (on the lower right) is experiencing pain.

I call Medvedev a plutocrat, be it only because he has been very powerful, for all too long, doing Putin dirty business. Also it has been alleged in detail, from different sources, that he is personally wealthy. An internationally renown bat researcher claimed he had to flee Russia for stumbling on Medvedev’s properties under construction, which destroyed caves in the Sochi area. A video by anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny purports to show “the vast trove of mansions, villas and vineyards accumulated” by Medvedev. Putin ex-wife, who had no discernable income or inheritance, ever, is also a multi-millionaire, with one property alone…

Friends again, at least for the next few minutes…

Russia has long felt rejected by the West. And reciprocally, many Muscovite leaders intentionally rejected the West to such an excess that others (say Peter the Great) forcefully tried to westernize Russia (this is why Peter founded his capital on the Baltic Sea).

In a sense Muscovite Rus was always from the east, because of the considerable influence of the Mongols. Yet, the Rus leaders, who founded Kyivan Rus, which came first, were Swedes from eastern Sweden. Still the oldest human stock of Rus was, paradoxically, German. This is highly confusing, as a current of thought in Germany came to despise “Slavs”: Germans used to live in the area more recent Germans considered peopled by Slavs (slaves). Indeed, slaves comes from Medieval Latin Sclavus (circa 800 CE). Vengeful folk etymology turned that into “Slava” (Glory).

So the ancestry of Russia is a mix of Swedes, old Germans, and more recent Mongols and other Easterners (look at the Asiatic style eyelids of Lenin, Brezhnev, Putin…)

Viking colonization followed the network of mighty rivers of Russia, all the way to the Black Sea. Trade flourished, northern furs against all kinds of goodies from the south, Rome or the Muslim empires. It’s Ukraine which founded Rus, and then expanded east. Republics, such as Novgorod, appeared. Ukraine had seized Crimea from the Tartars, who, themselves had seized it from the Greco-Romans. Vladimir of Ukraine converted to Catholic Orthodoxy, eastern style.

The Russians were able to stop the eastward expansion of the Teutonic Knights. However, not the assault of the Mongols. The Mongols occupied Russia, massacring away. When the Mongols pushed further west, Western Europe united militarily, and the Mongol victories came with a heavy, unsustainable price. Then the Mongols remembered what happened to their ancestors the Huns when they invaded Gallia: they were utterly defeated, and owed their survival to the duplicity of the Roman commander Aetius (who had lived with the Huns prior). The war techniques of the Mongols were not adapted to wet,cold, forested areas. The superb bows would lose their snap, it would be impossible to move fast, etc.

The Mongols reached the Croatian coast and turned back (pretexting the election of the next Khan beckoned).

For many centuries Russia was occupied by savage invaders…

Yet the Golden Horde stayed in command of Russia, using Moscow as a tax collector. Ivan the Terrible would make Russia independent again. In the Russian psyche, a question looms: why didn’t the West call a Crusade to free Russia from the savages? First it was a problem of distance. Anne of Kiev, daughter of the Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise of Kiev and Novgorod had married the king of France, Henri I in 1051 CE, and acquired a tremendous importance (she spoke 6 languages and found the French court uncouth; the king proudly signed his documents, mentioning Anne approved of them…). She had four children, including the next king Philip I of France. All subsequent French kings were her progeny. She made a scandalous second marriage (the husband, not her, was excommunicated). Anne never went back to Kiev (she was too important in France, but also it would take forever to go across Europe by land: the success of the Greco-Romans was maritime, sea transport being very fast and very cheap, relative to land transport.)

***

A refined analysis shows that the Cyrillic alphabet itself and the distanciation of Eastern Christianity from the Western one were deliberate: the Bulgarians and Constantinople wanted bad relationships with the Franks, they wanted to get, and keep them, alienated, and it worked!

Those Franks were the Eastern Franks, dominated by the Saxons whom Charlemagne had vanquished… And had become the pillars of the “Renovated Roman Empire”. In a further testimony to human frailty, after the alienation with the Franks was launched, Constantinople reached the apex of its power, around the year 1,000 CE. However, things turned quickly for the worse, and by the end of the Eleventh Century, the Franks had been called to the rescue, launching the First Crusade. Conclusion: alienation for alienation’s sake, should be avoided…

It is high time to bury the hatchet.

Football/Soccer helps, and that’s good.

Croatia beat Russia, barely, during the session of goal kicks. The Russians learned something again: that it is good never to forget: a nation of four millions can beat one of 144 millions (a lesson learned the hard way when Finland won quite a few battles against Russia in 1939-1940; then the USSR suffered five times the casualties of Finland, nearly 400,000…)

Russia found one more reason for paranoia in the 1990s: the US proposed its help, the best possible help, the one from places such as Harvard. But Harvard is, at least in the humanities, including politics and economy, is, at best, a conspiracy: it is there to make things better for the world plutocracy it partakes in. So the advice to Russia was to constitute a plutocracy founded on new stock issues. In my thought system in socioeconomy, Stalin’s rule was also a plutocracy, a plutocracy of the tyrannical type (tyran = unique): one man commanded the USSR and was the ultimate capitalist. The advice of Harvard was to constitute a diversified plutocracy (many plutocrats, not just one). Thus many Harvard professors and their ilk were able to profit (there was never a special prosecutor for that scandal).

The reaction was the ascent and popularity of Putin… And Putin military expansionism, the first such madness in Europe since Adolf Hitler’s pathetic little adventure.

The solution is diversification in very advanced technology… as China is doing. Paradoxically, China can do it better, because it’s more dictatorial… Also China believes it is high-tech for a few millennia. Putin had, long ago, proposed a strange alliance with the European Union, complete with Russian guns to protect Europe. This ignored the fact that the USA is not just a West European colony, but twice the child of France (through Great Britain, and also directly). Instead, Russia should remember it started as a European colony too. One of the reason of the spectacular ascendency of the USA has been enormous injection of financial capital, in the nineteenth century, and human capital, in the last two centuries, straight from Europe.

So Russia, should it want to develop must open to European immigration, technological, human and financial and to open to Europe in general: that could actually alleviate the migrant problem Europe is facing (a mild problem so far; but that could change).

The world cup is an open hand, and Trump, a practical man, is coming with another. Let the occasion be seized… And remember to reduce the number of nuclear warheads, this should be the top priority: an accident could happen so fast… The nuclear arsenals of Russia and the USA are oversized. The French Republic, with its 600 (300 only announced, in a slight of hands) thermonuclear “oceanic” warheads has enough to decapitate all the major powers, together. So why do the US and Russia need ten times that?

Russia can, and should make friends with the West: with 70% more land area than the next continental sized countries (Canada, USA, China), and a warming climate, there is a lot to develop… With 1.5 billion Chinese ready to help, otherwise, as Stalin suddenly noticed to his own horror, when he finally understood what Mao was up to…

Patrice Ayme

From Ivan The Terrible To Vlad The Mad: Putting Up With Putin

A Continuity In Horror, Terror and Infamy:

Russia is by far the largest state on Earth in the expanse of land it owns… And it is weird, and why it is weird is directly related to how it became so big. This colossus spread across eleven time zones, until Putin a few years ago reduced it to nine, by putting more zones under Moscow time.

Russia is 70% larger than the other very large countries: Canada, China, and the USA. With a bit more than twice the French population, Russia controls more than 30 times the land area, with a total wealth that is not even half that of France.

Russia, as a state, is superior mostly in weapons and military power. Aside from its supergiant empire, and its oil and gas, sheer physical force, threatened or applied, is what makes Russia powerful. That, and the conquests of imperial Russia.

Saint Michael Cathedral, Kiev. It Survived the Mongols, Not Putin’s Soviet Teachers

[The cathedral was destroyed by Stalin in 1935, and rebuilt identically in the 1990s. Although against religious fanaticism, or precisely because of that, I am for the safeguard of beautiful religious buildings, and that includes a lot of magnificent mosques.]

On the face of it, one should say that Russia is a classical example of military imperial overstretch: bloated land control, vast military, little else.

On April 17, 2015, Putin just gave a public conference that lasted 4 hours. Then he talked some more informally with the press outside. He denied the obvious, that his aim was to reconstitute the Russian empire. The lying bear with his beady, untrustful eyes, denied he would ever eat again.

Old nations such as Russia have long traditions. Ukraine is more than a millennium old, and was launched as a Christian state in Crimea, by Vladimir of Kiev around 990 CE.

Ivan III, predecessor of Ivan The Terrible, the latter much admired by Putin, beat the Mongols, a bit more than 5 centuries ago, and united three states. Moscow subjugated Novgorod and Tver. This makes the Muscovite state half the age of Ukraine (although it is possible to argue Russian history descended from Alexander Nevsky, and the republic of Novgorod; Nevsky’s son founded Moscow).

Ivan III’s grandson, Ivan The Terrible, launched many of the Russian state’s worst traditions. The growth of the Muscovite state was spectacular. Many who were in the way died horribly at the hand of special secret services. Unsavory ways got enshrined as normal, or destiny (in particular torturing to death and otherwise killing individuals next of kin to the ruler). That was all more terrible, because Ivan was successful, making sure that those ways would become forever the ways of the Moscovite state. Horror, terror and autocratic madness had triumphed, creating an enormous empire, and ensuring itself as a superior moral system.

Ever since then, Russian rulers come to rule, persuaded that Ivan’s terrible ways are intrinsically Russian, intrinsically good, and on objective grounds, how to have a successful nation. Indeed, which nation is bigger? Ivan is now being rehabilitated under Putin.

Russian propagandists now say that official history about Ivan the Terrible, was only terrible “Western” propaganda against Russia.

Why such bad faith? Another Russian tradition is the West’s bad faith. The fall of Ukraine and elements of Russia, to the Mongols, in the Thirteenth Century, without any West European attempt to save it, is still resented.

According to the Mongol generals themselves, they could not beat the Franks in Western Europe, in part because of the unfavorable ecology, which did not allow the Mongols to use their bows to their best, or to maneuver around the heavily armored knights. (The Franks were on top of all things military. Once the Franks/French got their hands on gunpowder, they quickly evolved field guns… That is how the “English” were thrown back to the sea… All the more as the knights had previously surprised and annihilated the Welsh archers.)

The fact remains that the Franks were (mostly) allied to the Mongols (!) and an expedition to free Ukraine from the Mongols was not suggested.

Moreover, the conquest of Constantinople by the Franks in 1204 weakened Kievan Rus. The Mongols attacked in 1236.)

In some ways, Putin is more xenophobic than the worst leaders of the USSR.

Stalin treated Crimea very badly: he threw out most of its Natives, the Tartars, and exiled them far away. Yet, Putin dared do what even Stalin had not dared to do: invade and annex Crimea.

Putin has created trouble in many zones peripheral to his supergiant empire. Not just south of the Caucasus (where he occupies parts of Georgia, a nation much older than Russia), but all the way to the Carpathians (West of Ukraine).

The obvious reason is that Putin’s regime is unstable if not united by the fascist instinct of rising against a common enemy. So Putin’s regime is stable, if, and only if, it has enemies.

Thus, the more one tries to accommodate Putin, the more one reduces the enmity he faces, and thus the more anti-Putin one is. That therefore requires Putin to attack, threaten, and invade more, to re-establish the enmity he needs to reign.

So it has been with many tyrannical regimes in the past. However, Russia has profited from this, so far. This is why it is Earth largest empire, by far.

Just like Hitler was the more popular, the more Nazism he engaged in, because the Germans thought they did not have a choice, but to abandon themselves to hatred, expect the same with the nationalist regime in the Kremlin.

Putin said in his call-in that the USA “doesn’t need allies, they only need vassals” and that Russia would never accept that role. Too often those who mention a notion embrace it.

Well, the Republican Congress just gave full powers to is president Obama full powers to negotiate fast (“fast track”) the TPP, the Trans-Pacific-Partnership. From what I hear, that treaty, which excludes China, in its present version, would allow corporations to sue the government of the USA (something corporations cannot do now).

So who is the boss, Putin? The “USA”, or the plutocrats and their corporations? And tell me how your crony plutocracy differ from that?

Some would argue that Russia became Russia, that giant empire, well, precisely because it had all the traditions of an empire, and that means the ability to get down to the hard and dirty. American traditions say the same. This is why both Russia and the USA ended with forts in California. Since then the American power has grown, propelled by the will to empire, and helped by more democracy than in Russia.

Democracy is not a luxury. It’s a weapon. Just go ask the Spartans (the Lacedaemonians and their civilization mostly disappeared… from too much discriminating against others). Or just ask the giant, multi-ethnic plutocracy of plutocracies, Persia. At Marathon, the giant Persian army was charged by the Athenian phalanx. Athens was a direct democracy, with around a tenth of one percent of the Persian empire directly charging, the elite units of the undefeated, largest empire in the world. And Athens won. Not just that day, but that way. The way of democracy, that became the way of the world.

It would be smarter for Russia to get over its Mongol complex, and join the way that wins, instead of embracing the desperate way of losers.

Patrice Ayme’

Putin’s Mad Revenge

100,000 persons marched in Moscow in honor of Boris Nemtsov. Nemtsov was once seen as Yeltsin’s heir apparent (when Putin was still an obscure KGB officer).

Now the top opposition to Putin is either assassinated, or in prison (see Navaltny). What did Putin think when he learned that his main opponent on the invasion of Ukraine had been shot below his windows, in full view of high definition video surveillance, in a Red Square area crammed with security and secret service?

(The excellent videos kept secret means that Putin knows who did it; only a very bad quality tape was revealed, with action blocked by a lonely truck, another insolence of the tyrant?)

Michel Eltchaninoff, a French philosopher specialist of the Russian Soul, just wrote a book about Putin (after one on Dostoyevsky). “Dans la tête de Vladimir Poutine“. Eltchaninoff believes that the fundamental problem is indeed all about the Russian Soul (just as I exposed in the preceding essay, and that philsophers, including of the pernicious type, are leading the dance, just as I said).

Fanatically nationalist Russian ideologues, not even translated in the West, guide Putin.

Some Of Nemtsov Memorial Banners: We Are Not Afraid! Heroes Never Die! We’ll Not Forget, We’ll Never Forgive!

Eltchaninoff believes that Putin was immensely pleased to be rid of Boris Nemtsov, the chief of the opposition with the greatest freedom of speech. The opponent called Putin a liar. He was getting ready to reveal documentation showing that it was the Russian army who invaded Ukraine, and how Putin hid it. Nemtsov had revealed corruption of Putin and his inner circle. Revealed them to be plutocrats second to none.

In 2012, running for his third presidency of Russia, Putin, in an interview with young people, answering questions, called those who opposed him “TRAITORS… They want the destruction of Russia. It is a national betrayal.”

Eltchaninoff: “The aim of the assassination of Nemtsov is to terrorize the opposition. Opponents, and their families will now have to think twice, as one can die from opposing Putin. This political assassination means that the war in Ukraine has been transported inside Russia. “

Boris Nemtsov, on Radio Echo of Moscow, 27/02/2015, a few hours before his death: “Putin is the specialist of lying. I am telling you the truth, I can only tell you the truth. The crisis we are confronting is caused by this aggressive, insane, murderous war that Putin is leading in Ukraine. When power is controlled by just one person, as it is now in Russia, it leads only to catastrophe.”

Eltchaninoff: “Nemtsov was publishing documents revealing corruption, that was extremely dangerous for Putin. The aim of the assassination is to prove that someone who has free speech can be eliminated.”

Eltchaninoff: “Putin is not an intellectual, he prefers sports. However, his advisers tell him to quote a lot of Russian hyper nationalist philosophers. Ivan Illin, invented the concept of “democratic dictatorship”. Constantin Leontief is even worse.

They are now very well known in Russia. Putin call them conservative, however I call them ARCHEO-CONSERVATIVES, as the brand of conservatism they advocate is very hard. It is obsessed by homosexuality, and is obsessed by hating the Occident. It is on the margin of a Russian fascism. The Leader is then perpetually re-elected, according to Benito Mussolini’s model.”

[Nota Bene: 1) Mussolini, an ex-socialist, got to power a decade before Hitler; the “fascismo” which he created under the guidance of dedicated fascist philosophers then inspired the Nazis in detail. Hitler himself insisted that Mussolini was the embodiment of fascism as the Nazis practiced it.

2) Putin is financing archeo-conservatives throughout Europe, including the French Front National, to the tone of dozens of million of Euros, just in the FN case!]

Eltchaninoff: “For Putin, philosophers such as Leontieff represent the future of Europe.

For Putin, the Occident is in decadence. The Occident forgot its Christian roots. Putin is all about vengeance. Putin has suffered enormously as the Soviet Union fell. Putin started as a servant of the USSR, in the KGB. All he knew until he was 40 years old. Putin has wished to re-unite White Russia and Red Russia.

Annexing Crimea is the symbol of this. It is the first act of the Russian revenge.

Putin wants to be unpredictable. However he is less and less hard to forecast, as he created an ideology of vengeance, anti-Western. He is becoming prisoner of it.

A democratic alternative to Putin exists but its nearly impossible. Opponents are either put in jail, or assassinated. Political parties are forbidden.

Corruption: Russia is 136 out of 175 from Transparency International.

Some day, the Russians will realize that the Imperial dream which Putin offers to them does not replace a decent way of life.”

Someday…

But we could run out of time. When a gang of criminals such as those who confiscated power in Russia, is in command, it has no proximate interest to let go. The only way to get them put out of order peacefully is by making them an offer they cannot refuse, because otherwise they would get exterminated. Thus the cannibalistic (and human flesh gourmet) Idi Amin Dada was enticed to flee to Saudi Arabia, and then Syria. That method works well with the leaders of small powers (typically African).

In the case of super powers, such as the Third Reich or today’s Russia, the leaders do not believe that they face extermination.

And they observe that, the more war they bring, the more in power they are.

So watch Putin. He may try Estonia next. Yes, Estonia is in the European Union, and in NATO. Because of NATO Article V and an equivalent article hidden inside the European Union Constitution, that would mean war with the West.

But is the West ready?

Not that much.

So Putin may feel he can push a bit more, and then another bit, as he pursue his frantic armament program. Yes, the USA spends seven times more in defense. However, USA planes are obsolete. Moreover, we have seen this before: on paper, Hitler did not have a chance to win militarily against France, let alone France allied with Britain. Still, one thing led to another.

And then, for a week, or so, the French and British military piled up an impressive series of blunders, and Hitler got very lucky. The result? 70 million dead, about 3% of the world population.

Dictators in peril, like the cornered rats they are, will try anything, especially Lady Luck. Witness the explanations floated by the authorities to explain Nemtsov’s death: either a love story gone wrong (after all he died with a 25 year old Ukrainian model), or the opposition himself having killed Nemtsov, to relaunch protests against the Dear Leader.

So, don’t corner him, say the young and naïve, or old and cowardly. However, like all prime tyrants, Putin is self-cornering. Don’t pass below his fortress: he is ready to shoot.

Patrice Ayme’

Russian Soul Weak From Weak Literature

What makes Russia led by the Kremlin, strong, makes Russian culture weak. And reciprocally.

Boris Nemtsov, main opponent to dictator Putin, was assassinated next to the splendid Saint Basil Cathedral. He was going to lead on Sunday a march against Putin’s war in Ukraine. Nemtsov, an ex-Vice PM, and ex-Vice Speaker of the Duma, Parliament, was killed below the Kremlin’s windows, a place full of police, and state security. As if to show that the killers had nothing to fear… from the Kremlin.

Four shots in the back, each lethal. Nemtsov’mother had told her son that “if he kept cursing Putin, Putin would kill him.”  Putin promised her justice would be served. However an underling on the investigative committee immediately suggested that the assassination may be related to the Charlie Hebdo massacre (!). I have a more prosaic approach.

Pretty Catherine, Soon To Make A Lethal Coup Against Her Spouse, The Czar. For Starters. Putin Wants To Recover What She Invaded.

Russia is a place where opponents and critics keep getting killed, for purely political reasons. The tradition is not new. Ivan the Terrible had some differences with his son. He killed him. Peter the Great had the same problem. He had his son torn with red hot pincers. That son also died.

How are those unable to communicate, led alone love, their children, these terrible Czars, some of the great heroes of the eternal Russian soul?

Russian leaders keep on reminding us that they have nuclear weapons. Putin keeps on reminding us he mourns the “Big Country” (Imperial Russia… not the USSR, which had devolved some power to its constituent republics…). Now the ex-head of Mi6 in Britain is admitting that:

“Russia has become a danger to Britain and the country must be prepared to take steps to defend itself and its allies”, the former head of MI6 says.

Sir John Sawers, who recently retired after five years as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, told BBC Radio 4’s Today program that Russia poses a “state to state threat“.

Sir John said such threats would require more defense spending. But called on “increased dialogue”.

Body of Nemtsov, St Basil. Kremlin Behind. So Far, Only Bullets Talk

Here I am, dialoguing. The Russian intellectual class has failed, all too smothered by its own nationalism, not say laziness, to erect a robust critique against its masters.

And this mood of intellectual pusillanimity has been long in power (I am thinking not just of the irritatingly conservative Alexander Solzhenitsyn, or Gorbachev, here). True, as Peter The Great confronted the “Old Believers” with a maximal ferocity I approve of, he was no doubt confronted to the fiercest critique. However, in Russia the dialogue tends to be between ultra-conservatives, and those conservatives who are for some progress.

All the fiercest criticism is always coming from the savages (notice that this covers not just the “Old Believers’, but also Lenin, Stalin and their ilk).

Sir John said he was disappointed how, after the end of the Cold War, Russia’s and Europe’s paths had failed to converge. “[Russia] keep on reminding us that they have nuclear weapons,” he said.

How come Russia did not join the West readily?

Atavism.

Look at the immensely wealthy Count Tolstoy and other famous Russian authors. They are all about a subtle propaganda: Russia is a traditional place. Count Tolstoy, in Anna Karenina and other books, is all about the Russian soul being conservative. And the triumph of conservatism. Dostoevsky satirized revolutionaries and endorsed the Tsarist autocracy (one absolute ruler) and faith in Christ and the Orthodox Church.

The truth about the greatness of Russia is more geographical than moral. Russia was successfully led, for centuries, by a cruel, determined and highly imperially efficient plutocracy. It’s too effective to be all that conservative. Or then one should call the Dark Side “conservative”. This is (partly) why Russia ended as the largest empire on Earth. Europe was unable to reconquer North Africa, but Russia was able to set up forts all the way down to the California coast. (And conquer half of Eurasia.)

That different truth is what constructed the empire, and thus what has to be hidden. At this point, Russia is proceeding on mental inertia, doing what it knows best: do whatever it takes to cruelly grab more territory. Even if it means killing dozens of critiques inside, and risk total war.

But why no books on historical Russian figures? Where are the Alexandre Dumas of Russia?

Dumas did not hesitate in depicting some of France’s figures in pretty drastic, not necessarily flatering, situations. Think about what he wrote (all true) about Marguerite de Navarre.

De Sade directed his worst critiques to the Great Leaders. He presented the great leaders anointed by the Lord, as monsters who needed to kill… sadistically all and any, especially the innocent, just to relax during their vacations (incensed, the Ancient Regime and Napoleon put De Sade in prison. Still, in between De Sade launched the Revolution of 1789… from the Bastille! Don’t expect conventional history books to relate this).

The tradition of fierce critique among literary figures is obvious in France by the time of Rabelais. Rabelais made an entire parody of the Bible, complete with grotesque names and the most disgusting habits. Thanks to the disgusting Francois I, three philosophers were burned alive. Rabelais, the son of a lawyer, who endowed himself with an overall education second to none, not just as a philosopher, philologist, translator, lawyer, but also as a Medical Doctor.

Very similarly to Abelard, Rabelais fought the church tooth and nail, in a constant, unending war. His collaborator Étienne Dolet was burned alive, for atheism (and being relapse, the technical charge against Johanne of Arc). Obviously the sort of mentality obvious in Abelard, and the early Franks, travelled across the ages.

In the Thirteenth Century Dante had put a contemporaneous Pope in hell. No less. (No wonder, shortly thereafter Buridan publicized his heliocentric theory, which he deduced from new mathematics and new physics. The Church had Buridan work destroyed 130 years later: another proof that the intellectuals were at war, in Western Europe, with the powers that be.)

Even earlier, Abelard wrote the book “Sic and Non” (“Yes And No” ) about the main theses of the Church. That was in the early Twelfth Century, and the war between the philosopher and the fanatical Saint Bernard became absolute.

It is not a question of winning. It is a question of having a tradition of daring to engage into war against religious and political authority.

Where are the terrible, pitiless Russian literary descriptions of Russian autocrats?

Russia, since Ivan the Terrible, has had the bloodiest, most cruel leaders ever known. They killed, their children, spouses, and other close relatives. They should have allowed to write juicy books, the sort Roman authors have accustomed us to.

And what do Russian writers write about?

Anything but.

So now enjoy Putin.

A nation with a non-examined soul is not worth admiring. To say the least.

Patrice Ayme’

Note: Meanwhile the Western powers ought to give the Ukrainians counter-strike radar (the Ukrainians were only given radar warning of incoming shells, but not the software to direct counter-strikes; in the 1990s the French broke the siege of Sarajevo, by striking rogue “Serbian” artillery with radar directed counter-strikes)

Don’t Feed the Bear: All Putin Needs Is Comfy War

YOU WANT PEACE? MAKE WAR COSTLY

The French and German leaders are meeting again with Putin to make him recover reason: it reminds me of Munich, 1938, when the French and British leaders were trying to make Hitler reasonable.

France and Germany together have a slightly larger population than Russia, but three and a half time the GDP. (By the way, what happened to Britain? Well London is full of Russian plutocrats and banking institutions keen to make Assad and Putin possible; hence the British discretion.)

An Ukrainian in the street interviewed by German TV said it was out of the question to give territory to Putin: if one gives him a finger, he will take the entire arm.

Putin Wants “The Big Country” Back, & Its Prospect of Endless War

In the West, cowardly pacifists say: do not provoke Putin, do as he says, he has nukes and will attack, if lethal defensive weapons are sent to Ukraine. That makes them collaborators of evil.

This is rather curious that pacifists use a fundamentally bellicose argument: don’t try to stop the mad man, he may get offended, and kill everybody.

Indeed, a mad man’s madness with criminal insanity overtones, makes the case for the greatest severity. So the essence of the pacifist whining call for the greatest severity to be applied on Putin, right away.

Because what are pacifists saying? Putin is the most dangerous Leader, ever. So let’s be nice to him.

It is now known that, had the USA and Britain be as firm as France against Hitler in the 1930s, Hitler’s own generals would have made a coup against him.

But, instead, Britain and the USA made concession after concession to Hitler. So Hitler flew from success to success, undermining any mood critical of him. How can one criticize a winner? Clearly, it was unpatriotic. It made the top German generals and marshals who thought that the dictator was completely crazy, and a danger to Germany look like traitors.

Something similar is developing with Putin. As he occupied and annexed territory in Georgia, Moldavia, and now Ukraine, and the West proved incapable to stop him, he looks ever more like a winner. Putin’s avowed goal is to bring back what he calls the “New Russia” (half of Ukraine) and the “Big Country” (the USSR). Pacifists say that the fundamental strategic interest of Russia is at play, so . di, Putin flies from success to success.

So where does Putin stop? This is what pacifists have to know, if they do not want to be simple collaborators of evil.

But of course, they don’t know.

Should we then keep our fingers cross, and hope for the best?

Why?

Because Putin killed only 100,000 in Chechnya? Because Catherine the Great stopped 80 kilometers from Berlin? Not a safe bet: Catherine did not have nukes.

Behaving now as nothing will stop Putin, but for the application of overwhelming force is not safe, but it is the safest strategy. If Putin is completely crazy, overwhelming force won’t stop him. But nothing will anyway, especially after he has fully armed himself, as he is presently doing, Hitler-like.

If Putin is not completely crazy, the threat of overwhelming force will stop him.

Not trying to stop him, if he is not completely crazy, will certainly make Putin completely crazy. Be it completely crazy with greed.

As I tried to explain, Putin, like Hitler before him, and Napoleon, and many (not all) conquerors before him, has discovered that war unites the People behind him, and make all the People think as one, and the name of that one, is Putin. This is what I call the fascist instinct. It is crucial to enable a (relatively) weak primate, far from any tree, to conquer the Savannah and Steppe, heretofore ruled by formidable predators.

Putin’s rule has been a disaster. Thus he needs to activate the fascist instinct in the Russian People. Thus he needs war.

Thus, if pacifists give him Ukraine, Putin will be deeply unhappy: he did not want Ukraine. He wanted war. War gives him fascism, thus the ability to rule. In this light, the reign of Louis XIV of France can be better understood.

After millions of Protestants had left France, and France has lost considerable territory in continuous wars, Louis XIV of France, the self-described “Sun-King” (“Roi-Soleil”) feebly bleated that his advisers had poorly advised him about Protestants: it had not been a good idea to have harassed, despoiled, and submit them to “Dragonades” (occupation of Protestant households by elite troops called “Dragons”).

However, Louis XIV, a dedicated fascist, hater of the “Republic”, lied (as fascists are wont to). Louis XIV had continual wars, and particularly against innocent civilians, because he needed continual wars, because that justified his fascist, personal rule.

Louis XIV was not afraid of war, he was afraid of peace, because peace meant the Parliament may want to re-establish the Republic again (which is what the “Fronde” was all about).

Napoleon faithfully executed the same scheme (because De Sade, one of the Revolution’s principals, had criticized the aggressive, expansionist war making, Napoleon put him in a mental asylum).

The same exact mechanism caused the First World War, with the Kaiser playing the role of Louis XIV. The Jews played the role of the Protestants under Louis XIV.

Soon Stalin would institute continual internal war, to justify the dictatorship of the Politburo which he headed. Hitler repeated the method.

So are we condemned to repeat history? Not so, if we learn how it works.

Putin got his 85% approval rating, from his activation of the fascist instinct.

However, the very latest polls show that the Russian People is getting wary of Putin’s protest of innocence about the war: 70 percent stated that Russia was assisting the breakaway rebels of Donetsk and Luhansk. Good. However, the same polling show that now most Russians think that establishing “Novorossia” (“New Russia”) is a good idea.

In other words, Russians are turning t the Dark Side: they know their dictator is making war in a foreign nation, but they are starting to approve the invasion of that nation, and its annexation.

Why?

Same story as what happened in the German collective psyche after Hitler annexed the Republic of Austria. Then the Germans became favorable to other annexations (Czechoslovakia, some Baltic states, much of Poland, etc.) Because Hitler had proven to be a winner.

As far as the Russians are concerned, Putin is a winner, so he has got to be right. Not right on the facts, but morally right: Ukraine, like Georgia or Moldova, is Russian property.

Want to turn Putin into a loser? Do it on the battlefield. And do like him: play dirty, send efficient weapons stealthily first.

Patrice

Pacifist Disease: Kneeling To Evil

Merkel and Hollande went together to see the president of Ukraine and the Russian dictator, in a last ditch effort before Putin sends his tanks across southern Ukraine (after a barrage of Russian rockets killed scores of civilians in the large Ukrainian town of Mariopol).

The meeting with Putin was icy. Defeated by the Russians, the Ukrainians have to negotiate. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees are evacuating. Putting requested a meeting with Merkel and Hollande alone. He wants the large city of Mariopol (so that, in a few months, he can dash towards Crimea, and then Odessa). Putin also wants twice the territory his agents control in Ukraine. We have seen this sort of methods in Munich, 1938.

OK, let’s be the devil’s advocate. Let’s talk in the name of peace. What does peace fear? War. The president of France just said there was war in Ukraine (the definition of a war is 1,000 killed; more than 6,000 were killed in the war in Ukraine, so far).

What Putin Wants: Russia, the Big Country. World War Would Be Even Better

“Pacifists” pontificate that no French, German or American, should die for Ukraine: Putin wants Ukraine, let him have it. Who cares about Ukraine? Sounds good, elevated. Peace will follow. If it sounds good, peace ought to follow: that’s pacifying logic. Logic done with a pacifier.

Then “pacifists” preen, deeply self-satisfied with their own goodness, friendliness, generosity, and general standing as higher human beings. They look themselves in the mirror, they love what they see. They call themselves progressive, and view others as imperialists, hopeless colonialists, violent serial offenders. If only the rest of humanity could be so detached, as they, the pacifists, themselves are.

But then the job of the philosophers is to be critical. It is never to opt for the easy way out. Philosophers never follow the herd, stampeding towards happiness. Philosophers ask: why does Putin want Ukraine so much? Putin says Ukraine was always Russian, that Russia owned all of Ukraine, or, at least, half of Ukraine, etc.

These are enormous lies: Ukraine was highly civilized, a millennium ago, and owned Crimea then, when Moscow was not even on any map. Moscow literally did not exist then. Descendants of Ukrainians and Vikings had not gone that far to the east.

In truth, it’s the other way around: demographically, civilizationally, linguistically, historically Russia is a colony of Ukraine. Russia is a poorly educated brat.

And not just that: Russia is, arguably, a degenerate form. Ukraine resisted the Mongols, and got defeated and devastated by them. Moscow then made peace, and collaborated, with the Mongols, and became like them. Just look at Putin, and in particular his slanted eyes: obviously his ancestors were in the sack with Mongols. Maybe Putin is so anxious to show himself a Russian patriot, because, like Lenin, he has slanted eyes? Maybe he wants to show that he is of pure, Russian, white essence?

This mock racist argument is not funny anymore when Putin’s most savage behavior is contemplated. Annexing territory is exactly what Mongols did.

If pacifists want to give Ukraine to Putin, they have to answer this: why?

Just because he wants it? So when the next Mafioso comes along and wants to kill ten million people, just because he wants it, they are going to agree?

At this point, our friends the pacifists look rather criminal. Let’s press them on. Let’s ask: ‘Does Putin wants all this property for the same reason as Hitler wanted the property of the Jews in 1938?”

What, say our friends the pacifists: history is not their forte. Indeed, Hitler attacked the Jews because his massive militarization program had impoverished Germany. He needed wealth and to look victorious.

So Putin is stealing Ukraine, because he wants to look like the one who brings, gifts, the one who augments. This is so true, Octavian, Caesar grand nephew, and heir, was named “Augustus”, the one who augments.

Putin augmented Russia, already Earth’s largest country, by a very long shot, by annexing Crimea. That made him “Augustus”. And 85% Russians now love him, because Putin has augmented their tiny minds. In part thanks to relentless propaganda.

We have seen that before, when all Germans loved Hitler, the more he used his propaganda on them. And even after millions of Germans had been killed, thanks to Hitler.

To be loved more, maybe Putin should kill more people, and even more Russians.

What else? Putin is remaking his entire military, all the way to nuclear forces, as if he knew world war was coming. It cost a gigantic amount of resources. So Russia is getting impoverished, and Putin has to look as the “Augmenter” the hard way: through massive theft.

This is exactly the politico-psychological process Hitler went through.

“Pacifists” said: let Hitler have the Jews, that’s what he wants. No French, British, let alone American, should die for Jews.

Hitler wanted the Austrian Republic? Let him have it. After all, Austria spoke German. Austrian Jews such as Freud could always go live in England. Less fortunate ones could go to Italy, or France.

So hear this, pacifists: there was a matter of principle: can we let the leader of a great nation use massive lethal force to steal massive property? Can we tolerate crimes against humanity?

And think a bit, pacifists: if stealing other countries alleviate the pain the attacking dictator would otherwise suffer, where does it stop?

Putin is the first to annex territory in Eurasia, since Hitler.

Some warn: don’t make Putin mad, he is Hitler, with nukes. Those who give the mad man a reason to attack are maniacs, culprit of war mongering.

Such pacifists are not really even arguing they are pacifists, just that they are cowards, and that cowardice is a most admirable strategy. Those peace mongers are not just dumb and self-satisfied, as usual pacifists are, but they aggravate their case by being cowardly, to the point of unreason.

Not provoking a mad man is no strategy. The question is why is the mad man becoming ever more mad? As I said above, it’s because the economy of his militarizing dictatorship is going down. He has to militarize, to create the impression that Russia, by far the largest country on Earth, is under attack: that activates the fascist reflex. All the Russian baboons then gather behind their chief, and do exactly what their chief is telling them to do. This insures the power of the chief.

Putin is sick, he has to be cured.

Question: why was Putin not acting like Hitler before? Because, before, he was afraid. Afraid of the power of the West. Now he is not. (I explained it had to do with not eliminating the criminal Assad personally; that too, let to the rise of extreme Islam fanatics; but there are other factors, such as a diminution of the military capability of the West, greatly caused by USA stealth planes not working, and Europeans doing austerity on defense… Except for neutral Sweden, which noticed Putin’s madness).

Thus, to make Putin stop, one has to scare him.

Pacifism means to look scary. The Romans put it this way: Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum.

Some will say it’s too scary to try to scare Putin.

Why?

Because, because, because, well, Putin behaves like Hitler, whine the “pacifists”.

Then the question is this: did appeasers not learn history? Trying to make friends with evil does not just endanger peace, it’s a crime.

ELECTING EVIL IN ISRAEL? NOT CLEAR:

Israel is a case in many ways opposite to Russia. Israel is tiny, Russia 70% larger than the three largest countries after it (Canada, USA, China). Israel was founded by people whose country (Israel) was stolen by the fascist Roman state, as punishment for rebellion… But then the Catholics, such as “Saint” Augustine made a morality from what was meant as non-permanent situation.

Netanyahu (nicknamed “Bibi”) is running for re-election, and may well win. With his reassuring baritone. His brother, a crack commando commander, was the only fatality in the hyper daring Entebbe raid he led. Bibi is sort of extreme, he tends to King David’s Israel, the Greater Israel, with all the pesky Palestinians somewhere else. If wars come long and thick enough, the Greater Israel may well become a reality.

Differently from Putin’s mad dream of reconstituting what he calls the “Big Country” makes survival sense. Israel, as it is, is 1,100 times smaller than the empire Putin dreams aloud of.

Bibi can be a baby, as long as Arabs stay even more infantile. As it is, this cannot end well, so the party of Armageddon may as well rule. As long as some participant(s) is(are) looking for a final solution, the others may as well. One cannot make peace alone. But one can make war alone. Bibi is occupying a vacuum.

As long as Israel has good reason to fear for its survival, Bibi and, or, his ideas, and moods will rule. It’s a matter of survival, the best reason there ever was, for most people, most of the time.

Jordan got seriously angry against Daesh (aka “Islamic state”) and conducted air raids against it, after its young F16 pilot with green eyes got burned alive.

Jordan’s anger is healthy. It’s a change of values. The Middle East will bloom, if it aligns its values on the best ones the West ever offered. Look at China: why does it do so well? Because China adopted the high performance aspect of learning long championed, and monopolized, by the West.

Ultimately, the Chinese effort will fail, or, as in Germany a century ago, will have horribly deviant consequences, if it does not embrace the learning of criticism, that is, the learning of going meta, relative to the knowledge we have.

In either case, the West has to remember history, and roll back an educational system where real data is shown, and absorbed (especially at the meta level).

Much of the rise of plutocrats (including increasingly crazed maniac as Putin) is caused by an overall lack of education and a decrease capability to ascertain causation.

When pacifists believe that burrowing their heads in the sand works best to remove threats, they just lack education. There cannot be moralization without education.

Patrice Ayme’