Is New York Times Advocating Blowing Up Pipe Lines?

The New York Times wrote: “the idea of attacking infrastructure and closing down new pipelines is a disarmament. It’s about taking down a machine that actually kills people.” [0]. I protested: This is as wrong as it gets. Shutting down the fossil fuel economy would kill billions of people. NYT censored my common sense. After declaring that men who want to be women just have to say so, or that white racism destroys civilization, now the NYT is advertizing for the immediate destruction of the world energy and food production system. That would obviously be the greatest disaster ever. So it makes an excellent diversion from serious subjects… Now that potentially wokism peters out….

The New York Times in a remarkably biased and crime promoting interminable interview advertised Lund university professor, the deranged, terroristic and ill-infomed Andreas Malm. Malm is the author of “How To Blow Up A Pipeline” [1]. 

The Nordic bandit agreed that he had taken illegal actions. The NYT quoted with approbation terrorists acts made in France, where non-French terrorists had attacked local irrigation works made by local farmers! Amusingly, that was the only specific terrorist acts that was revendicated 

I sent comments. The New York Times censored them. The parts between brackets were NOT sent to the NYT. Only the inclined letter parts.

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We should not blow up pipelines: around 85% of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels. This is not just a question of “profits”. Actually most fossil fuels are now produced by state owned companies (the “majors” of a century ago produce now just a small fraction of total production). Canceling fossil fuels right now would create a crisis that would require the world population to decrease by 85%. In other words, billions would die. 

Those who claim fossil fuel production should be destroyed are exactly following in the footsteps of those who destroyed the flour mills in Poland in 1939. 

If that’s what ecology requires, not thank you.

Malm advocates destroying water retention systems in France which are made and used for a variety of reasons by local people. The fact is these are local decisions taken democratically by local workers, and people in accord with local authorities and Malm eggs on anti-democratic criminals.

[We don’t need to blow up pipe lines. Pseudo-ecologists have gone around hysterically promoting Putin’s gas and electric cars… At least in Europe. Enormous subsidies for both have brought crises: Putin was made strong and confident, while the price of cars shot up to the point the lower classes can’t afford them. When asked about this problem, some of the European politicians, who are chauffeured around, answer that people have to learn to do without cars… ] 

Roman industrial production and Roman population peaked around 100 CE. The industrial production then collapsed. By 162 CE, a “plague” started, and lasted 20 years. It is very clear that the epidemics which ravaged the empire afterwards were related to the malnourishment of the population. Horrendous civil wars followed.

There is a serious CO2 crisis and some people are dying from it… But it is a very small number relative to what would happen if the world’s energy system was destroyed, as Malm advocates.
Fossil Fuels have to be replaced ASAP, As Soon As Possible, but not before it is possible. Solution? More solar, more hydrogen, etc.

The New York Times called Trump a terrorist, countless times… But Trump never suggested to engage in acts that would kill billions. The NYT did, and when I attracted its attention to that potential holocaust, the NYT censored me… Meaning the NYT knows perfectly well that I am right.

Patrice Ayme

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No Ecological Crisis Solution, Except For Further Research & More Fusion (Solar)

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[0] Some readers pointed out that the NYT was actually quoting Malm… Yes it did, in many laces, but alos made statements which were not presented as quotes, but as notes… Also the article was immensely long and uncritical… especially when confronted to the advocacy of crimes (like against waterworks… in France!)

[1] Here are extracts from the NYT article incriminated above :

Talk Jan. 14, 2024
How This Climate Activist Justifies Political Violence
By David Marchese Photo Illustration by Bráulio Amado

With the 2021 publication of his unsettling book, “How to Blow Up a Pipeline,” Andreas Malm established himself as a leading thinker of climate radicalism. The provocatively titled manifesto, which, to be clear, does not actually provide instructions for destroying anything, functioned both as a question — why has climate activism remained so steadfastly peaceful in the face of minimal results? — and as a call for the escalation of protest tactics like sabotage. The book found an audience far beyond that of texts typically published by relatively obscure Marxist-influenced Swedish academics, earning thoughtful coverage in The New Yorker, The Economist, The Nation, The New Republic and a host of other decidedly nonradical publications, including this one…

NYT: I know you’re saying historically this is not the case, but it’s hard to think that deaths don’t become inevitable if there is more sabotage. 

Malm: Sure, if you have a thousand pipeline explosions per year, if it takes on that extreme scale. But we are some distance from that, unfortunately... I want sabotage to happen on a much larger scale than it does now. I can’t guarantee that it won’t come with accidents…

But the thing we need to keep in mind is that existing pipelines, new pipelines, new infrastructure for extracting fossil fuels are not potentially, possibly — they are killing people as we speak. The more saturated the atmosphere is with CO2, putting more CO2 into the atmosphere causes more destruction and death. In Libya in September, in the city of Derna, you had thousands of people killed in floods in one night. Scientists could conclude that global warming made these floods 50 times as likely as if there hadn’t been such warming.³

NYT adds: 3
To reach this conclusion, scientists working with the World Weather Attribution research group employed computer simulations to compare weather events today, including the Syrian flooding, with the weather that was most likely to have occurred if the climate had not already warmed, as it has, by 1.2 degrees Celsius above the average preindustrial temperature.We need to start seeing these people as victims of the violence of the climate crisis. In the light of this, the idea of attacking infrastructure and closing down new pipelines is a disarmament. It’s about taking down a machine that actually kills people.

***

Malm advertises the capitalist economy as the solution of all problems (whereas the real solution is publicly financed research)… showing clearly who planted him… major plutocracy:

Malm: “So in this context, the rationale of sabotage is to bring home the message to these companies: Yes, your assets are at risk of destruction. When something happens that makes the threat of stranded assets credible, investors will suddenly realize, there’s a real risk that if I invest a lot of money, I might lose everything.”

The buffoon does not know that the “majors” control very little of the fossil fuel economy, worldwide.

The Oil and Gas Industry in Energy Transitions – Analysis

International Energy Agencyhttps://www.iea.org › reports › th…

But the industry is much larger: the Majors account for 12% of oil and gas reserves, 15% of production and 10% of estimated emissions from industry operations.

… In other words, Swedish academic gangster Malm advocates to go to war against nation states….

How Social Media Fosters Intellectual Fascism

Social media, as presently practiced, is without appropriate moral guidance: no philosopher has come and established what proper behavior ought to be (here I am, like Zorro!)  First, one should avoid alienation. Instead alienation is presently encouraged.

Social media, as presently practiced, encourages intellectual fascism, from lack of wisdom, education, poor mastery of the participants’ own emotional systems, lack of understanding of how one gets to superior knowledge, etc..

Such is the present state of affairs.

It needs to be rectified, otherwise nukes will fly. Can it be rectified?

29 Year Old Attacker Of The Louvres, Son Of An Egyptian General. People Become Like This, Because they Have Not Been Taught Alternative Knowledge From The Hatred, Disguised As Coming From The Great Dog In The Sky…

Yes. Studies such as the one in the Guardian have to be advertized, debated. “Twitter accounts really are echo chambers, study finds

As in ancient human cultures, users of the social media site interact most with those who share their political views, Demos report reveals

When it comes to politics and the internet, birds of a feather really do flock together, according to research confirming the existence of online echo chambers among the most politically engaged Twitter users.

A study of 2,000 Twitter users who publicly identified as either Labour, Tory, Ukip or SNP supporters has found they are far more likely to interact with others from the same party and to share articles from publications that match their views. Ukip supporters are also far more engaged with “alternative” media outlets, including Breitbart and Infowars, two US-based sites identified with the alt-right that have been regularly accused of publishing misleading or false stories.

The research was carried out by the thinktank Demos, which looked at the tweets sent between May and August last year by 2,000 people who have publicly stated their political allegiance on their profiles and who had at some point addressed a member of parliament in their tweets.

Report author Krasodomski-Jones said the behaviour was exacerbated by some media outlets using polarised views to attract audiences. “This attention economy, vying for clicks, eyeballs, pushes people into very confirmatory outlets. The rising popularity of this sort of alternative news is something that caters specifically to a specific group. It’s more than just news – it’s ideologically driven.”

…Tom Stafford, a cognitive scientist at Sheffield University, said that those who had already shared their political allegiance in their Twitter profile could be even more likely to use the articles they shared to reinforce that identity… Stafford added: “Homophily, where we hang out with people like us, is an ancient human trait, resulting from our basic psychology. That applies to segmentation of media as well.”

It’s not just in the matter of politics: after I exposed letters of Marcus Aurelius, showing his burning hatred of Christians, a philosopher in New York, Massimo P. banned and blocked me angrily from diverse sites he commands. (Marcus Aurelius is the Muhammad of “stoics”.)

Another name for homophily (loving the same) is tribalism.

I have observed the social media madness as a personal victim of it in the last six months. I saw individuals who I long considered to be friends engage in public campaigns against me, calling me a lot of things they admitted (even then!) that I was not (such as a “racist troll”). One of them who has a significant management position in New York (plutocratic) media confided he had to do so, because his employers read his Twitter and Facebook accounts! “Nice” excuse. Meanwhile, thousands of people who don’t know me, nor what I write, were told I am a racist, and that’s all they know about me. Those thousands in the public who don’t know me were also informed I am anti-Muslim (I am anti-Literal Islam, and that’s just the opposite! I have at least a dozen very close “Muslim” friends… all of them, like me, critical about the Islamist ideology! Ironically, I share housing with them, especially on vacation. I was educated in “Muslim” countries…)

The result of the campaign of hatred against me was that several social media contacts I had in Academia “blocked” me (some were physicists, other philosophers). Thus my alternative version of reality, which would otherwise have added dimensions to their minds, has been annihilated. I am also now deprived of their views, which, however silly, I often found interesting.

I am not a racist. My family is multi-racial from three continents and Pacific islands. Many pseudo-leftists call people they don’t like “racist”, these days, using the word for whatever, including the weather.

So why is the insult “racist” hurled at me so often these days? Their excuse, beside plain rage? As I said above, some cynically some told me:’my job depends upon it!‘ My superiors, bemoaned the art director in New York, watch my social web activity, so I had to publicly hate you, renounce you, condemn you… I have been told this, and was supposed, me the hated one, to show empathy… to my haters. It sounds straight out of a passage in the Bible, the Last Supper…

Another cause of the rage is plain incomprehension. Not only they do not understand what I say, but when they start to understand a bit, the first thing they understand, is that there are very important things they did not even know existed. These huge gaps in understanding have to do with their (mostly self-imposed) tribalism and their closely related alienation (to reality in this case). Tribalism is an addiction, it probably excites the same rewarding circuits in the brain as other drugs.

If one wants to make war to people, the first step is to alienate them. This is French for cutting “Liens” (bounds, relationships).

The present mentality to insult, block, & not reflectively debate, contradictors on the Internet boosts & teaches alienation, violence, war.

Real damage is done when real debate is made impossible. Worse: alienation is presently viewed as glorious. The damage is not just to individuals, but to the collective. Tribalism makes the collective stupid, aggressive. 

Intellectual fascism consists in being led by only a few ideas. The best way is to tweet like a bird, exclusively among one’s flock.

The arch-typical leading fascist idea is that of Judeo-Christo-Islamist metaprinciple: “God is great, Allahu Akbar”. A friend of his being: “Dieu le veut, God wills it, Inch Allah”.Those are traditionally uttered, while committing the greatest infamies. They excuse them all.

The attacker of the Louvres in Paris tweeted less than 20 minutes before attack:…His last tweet posted before the attack, shows on the account a smiling El-Hamahmy leaning against a wall, a number of angry messages, including: ‘No negotiation, no compromise, no letting up, certainly no climb down, relentless war.’

His father is an Egyptian general. The enthusiastic Islamist rented a $2000/week apartment in the center of Paris. He went to the French Republic from Dubai, to attack the world’s most visited museum (justly so!) Hamahmy was following the most glorified mood of Muhammad, made explicit in the Qur’an, of hatred for the Republic and secular law. Yes, Islamism has to be eradicated, and it’s, first, a philosophical problem: one cannot put soldiers everywhere. All the more as such individuals are not just Islamists, or terrorists, they are TWITTERRORISTS.

Patrice Ayme’

Apple A Criminal Organization?

In 1839, the French government bought the right to the invention of photography, from Monsieur Daguerre (his co-inventor had died in 1831). Then the French government turned around, and offered the invention to the world. Present tech giants are doing the exact opposite: they steal inventors and sell the world to enrich themselves. So doing the violate all and any local law, and ruin the world.

Is Apple a criminal organization? Just asking. Let me roll out a few facts. You judge. Five hundred (500) people were killed or gravely injured in Paris, just because Apple, a tax-thieving corporation, which has weakened the armies of the West all over, is led by crook who cooperates with terrorists. American and French intelligence agree that they would have been able to detect the attacks in California and Paris, if not for encryption they can’t break. The master mind in Paris was a celebrity terrorist of the Islamist State, who had dragged bodies on video. He could come and go in Europe, communicating with accomplices, because of encryption. Last time he came in, that was with ninety (90) others, some in the refugee flow. To organize all this, communications through encrypted phones were essential.

Why Apple And Its Ilk Are So Rich: Because They Are Thieves, Not Because They Are Geniuses

All and any person facilitating the terrorist activities of mass murderers actual or potential, should be arrested immediately (lest spying on them allows to  find their accomplices). There has been enough tergiversation. Certainly the CEO of Apple seems to be such a criminal. In California, where Apple is located, a loser stealing a pizza slice have gone to prison for life, for stealing that pizza slice. Others were not that lucky, and were outright executed by the police for just looking suspicious.

I have myself witnessed several cases of police ready to shoot losers just for a traffic stop. The media has documented fatal cases. That Apple and its ilk are thieves is beyond questioning: it had 1.6 billion Euros in back taxes, in France alone. Fines were applied, because it was culprit. That it got help in this criminal scheme from the British government is besides the point.

Under Obama, the patent system was changed to help the big monopolistic corporations (the so-called tech giants). Now the giant plutocratic corporations can steal an invention legally. Because the inventor who has been stolen has to demonstrate that he or she suffered “economic damage” also irreparable harm”. So if Google steals you car, you now have to demonstrate that it hindered you economically, it’s not just a question of being stolen. This is the Obama presidency for you.

Apple lost at the ITC, a branch of the Federal Government in Washington DC (they were infringing patents of other companies). Then Obama overrode the ITC order, because he thought Apple was all-important, needed the world to have iphones.

Obama flew dozens of times to the San Francisco Bay Area to get money and further orders from his sponsors there, whom he rigged the system for (the head of Apple came several times at the White House).

Make no mistake: I am more pro-tech than anyone. And that’s precisely why I am for protecting inventors and motivating them with potential riches. Instead the present system is rigged towards the growth of plutocracy, at the cost of revolutionary technology.

Global Plutocratic Thievery Rests On Encryption And Secrecy

Terrorist mass murderers as in San Bernardino or Paris should have NO privacy RIGHT, WHATSOEVER. Besides, they are dead (except for one), rightly executed by the police, or themselves. Some have objected that Apple defends the “4th amendment” of the US Constitution. Not so.

What Does the Fourth Amendment Mean?
The Constitution, through the Fourth Amendment, protects people from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. The Fourth Amendment, however, is not a guarantee against all searches and seizures, but only those that are deemed unreasonable under the law.
Whether a particular type of search is considered reasonable in the eyes of the law, is determined by balancing two important interests. On one side of the scale is the intrusion on an individual’s Fourth Amendment rights. On the other side of the scale are legitimate government interests, such as public safety.

The extent to which an individual is protected by the Fourth Amendment depends, in part, on the location of the search or seizure. Minnesota v. Carter, 525 U.S. 83 (1998).

I guess it depends what one means by “people” and “reasonable” and “protect”.

Apple makes its money by paying tiny money for the companies which made its devices in Asia. This is a form of labor, and economic laws evasion. Presidential candidate Donald Trump has suggested a 45% tax on Chinese imports to compensate. That would make a lot of his fellow plutocrats very unhappy.

SILICON VALLEY CATCHES YOU WITH HONEY:

For years the so-called “tech giants” have led a symphony of lies. Some firms are real inventor, for example Intel, and smaller firms you have never heard of. However the firms making the most money are technology integrators which are basically arms of the American government as a worldwide plutocracy. The great opposition of Apple Inc. is part of that act. It’s all a big manipulation to make us believe they are the opposite of what it is. It’s not because the Polar Bear, Ursus Maritimus, is white that it is pure as the driven snow. Actually it is white, and apparently innocent, so it can eat you.

In related news, Silicon valley plutocrats have started to push for a “basic income”, European style. That’s just a smokescreen to avoid the real conversation, which should be that Silicon Valley should be paying its taxes, and should be paying for our services, when it sells our data, unbeknownst to us. It is true that Silicon Valley uses our data. So it should pay us for it. That it does not want to do so, speaks volumes.

Basic income is necessary for the indigent. However, basic income is not a new idea. It is as old as imperial Rome, where it was implemented. Thus, basic income has more to do with a system friendly with slavery.

The argument has been made by Silicon Valley that no one should know our data, thus the need for absolute encryption. That’s hypocritical: as I said, they use our data. Thus they say: fear the thieves, while stealing us.

Paul Handover worries that:”Millions of people with nothing to hide are, nonetheless, deeply concerned about a general loss of personal privacy.” That’s ironical, considering what the tech monopolies are doing with our data.

If people have nothing to hide, they have nothing to hide. They can stand in plain view of the governments. So they should not do what the tech giants want them to do. They should not behave as if they were plutocrats, and had something to hide. If they have something to hide, that nothingness should be exposed. And if the government cannot be trusted, it should be fixed. Right now, as it is, the tech giants of the USA, giants in unlawful profits, of the USA, are completely entangled with the government in Washington, DC. That should be exposed, made transparent, revealed, dismantled.

I have nothing to hide, the government can follow me all day long. What I fear is terrorists: I was attacked several times, and even bombed by right wing fascists in Europe, and got death threats. None of these attacks or threats ever came from a government, although I lived in Algeria, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Mauritania, Niger, Mali, Peru, Bolivia, Iran, Mexico, Canada, USA, the EU, etc. Yet, everywhere I went, I did not keep my mouth in my pocket.

Transparency is not something we should fear. It is something we need. We need it for two main reasons:

1. Organized crime, such as global plutocracy, thrives on secrecy. This is what really worry Apple and its billionaire share holders: once its worldwide cheating shenanigans are exposed, it will not be able to enjoy them anymore.
2. As technologies forges ahead, weapons of mass destruction will be feasible in all cellars. The Islamist State, for example, has made chemical weapons. (It’s not just Assad!)

Our future world will be transparent, or it will not be. The Roman Republic, since inception, was friendly to the rich.

However, the same Roman Republic blocked the rise of plutocracy absolutely, by limiting how much power individuals could control. In particular, the wealth of the richest families was capped absolutely. How did the Roman Republic do this? With the Cadastrum, the registry of all private property.

Right now, there is no world cadastrum. The plutocrats hide their money in various ways, mostly through anonymous companies. Some treasures islands have several times more anonymous companies registered than they have inhabitants. (It’s no coincidence that these treasure islands are often British, or Dutch owned, that is why the UK is so rich. And this part of the reason why it is so hard to change.)

The plutocrats want others to live in misery: this is how they feel like Gods. San Jose, the USA’s richest large city is a place, partly of utmost madness, destitution and people living in garbage. This what the Silicon Valley cool billionaires in jeans organized. Here you go, and it’s the same squalor all over the Bay Area, except in the billionaires’ enclaves:

San Jose, 2014. While Billionaires Fill Their Jumbo Jets At Government’s Expense, Normal People Can See Such Scenes Everyday, A Few Miles Away

[People walk along a thrash-lined trail at the Silicon Valley homeless encampment known as The Jungle, Monday, Dec. 1, 2014, in San Jose, Calif. City officials began posting notices on hand built structures, tents and tree trunks warning the 200 residents of what is likely the nation’s largest homeless encampment that the bulldozers are coming. People living in the Silicon Valley camp had to be out by Thursday, Dec. 4 or face arrest for trespassing. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)]

In the greatest scheme of things, it is plutocracy and the world of organized crime which has brought worldwide instability and terrorism (I have explained how in hundreds of essays, going along many threads; it’s the main story of the twentieth century). Should we not apply the brakes now, things will get much worse (think middle ages with nukes, spaceships and engineered life forms). Nazism was greatly a product of German plutocracy, aided and abaited by plutocrats from the USA. Should we want to repeat fully the performance, it would be much worse. Last time felt like the apocalypse, but it was just a warning.

Ordinary people commit, at most, tiny little crime. The plutocrats who “lead” the world (into the abyss) commit gigantic crimes, they depend upon the lack of transparency to operate. As Quantum encryption (completely unbreakable) is on the rise, it’s urgent to require a transparent world. Moral people have nothing to fear, crooks, plutocrats, and criminals, everything.

Patrice Ayme’

Think Or Sink: Top Jihadist Killed

The fight between French police and Jihadists in Saint Denis was so violent, that part of the building collapsed and carpenters were moved in to hold build structures to shore up the building as the enquiry proceeds (including DNA collect).

It was a gory fight: one Jihadist got an exploding grenade in the belly, spilling his unworthy guts all over. The shootout was so severe, it’s not clear whether 2 or 3 terrorists were killed. One of the corpses was so riddled with bullets, it was not clear who he was. He was identified by his prints.

It turned out to be the most wanted terrorist in the world, 28 year old Abdelhamid Abaaoud.

This Belgian Muslim, native from a Jihad city in Belgium, organized many successful attacks (at least 6) and several were carried out, including the ones in Paris last week. His ascent in the Islamist State was fast. Interestingly he went in and out of Europe in the last few months, although he had the time to drag for Western TV many bodies behind a SUV. That Abaaoud could come and go at will condemns the present European security system. Europe needs a kind of FBI or FSB. Once again, more, and fiercer United States of Europe are needed, here purely for security reasons.

The Republic Protects Its Property, Notre Dame

The commando was planning two attacks against Paris’ largest and most famous department stores (apparently a tip from Moroccan intelligence helped).

French forensic experts are examining remains of the woman who blew herself up. She is believed to be Islamic State’s Hasna Aitboulahcen. The Frenchwoman, aged 26, was heard engaging in an hysterical exchange with police shortly before she triggered a suicide belt. At some point, she screamed: “HELP ME, HELP ME, HELP ME!” to the police, which, in reply told her to come out hands up.

Aitboulahcen, a cousin of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was “extrovert”, “bubbly” and a “bit lost”. “She didn’t look like a suicide bomber and she drank alochol,” one of her young neighbours at the Impasse du Dauphin told the local newspaper Le Républicain Lorrain. “We saw her quite often and we called her the cowgirl because she always wore a large hat.” She was a “tomboy” who dressed in jeans, trainers and a black hat until she began wearing a niqab eight months ago.

Analyzing her patterns from various surveillance led the RAID (French SWAT) to attack at 4:20 am a building full of low lives.

The French Parliament has extended the state of emergency for a further three months. Hopefully things will be taken more seriously than in 1939-1940.

PM Valls admitted that one could fear a chemical, or biological attack. (One more reason to annihilate the Islamist State fast!) At least one, maybe two, of the November 13 terrorists are still on the run.

The Islamist State gets roughly two million dollars a day from selling oil, at half price on the black market (enabled by plutocrats). That was until the Franco-Russian bombing campaign against oil installations. This week.

The Islamist State also makes drugs, and sells them, earning at least half a million dollars a day. One of these drugs is Captagon, an ex-medical drug, related to amphetamines, outlawed since 1986 because it makes people crazy. Attacking terrorists are full of Captagon and cocaine. Makes them fearless. There too, the plutocrats are a crucial link.

A few months ago, a Saudi prince was arrested in Beirut, Lebanon. He had six tons of Captagon in his private jet. Captagon costs nothing to make, but sells around fifty dollars a pill.

Meanwhile the French Prime Minister received the PM of Qatar. Qatar, at the very least, enables the Islamist State, and, at worst, finances it. Saudi Arabia and the likes of Qatar have to be told, strongly

The novelist Michel Houellebecq struck hard in a commentary on Corriere de la Sera, and the New York Times. What he says is part of what I have long said, for example in:

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2015/05/21/war-versus-direct-democracy/

“The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor

Michel Houellebecq: How France’s Leaders Failed Its People

By MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ, NOV. 19, 2015  

Paris — IN the aftermath of the January attacks in Paris, I spent two days transfixed watching the news. In the aftermath of the Nov. 13 attacks, I hardly turned on the television; I just called the people I knew (no small number) who lived in the neighborhoods that were hit. You get used to terrorist attacks.

In 1986, there was a series of bombings in various public places in Paris. I think Hezbollah was behind those attacks. They occurred a few days, or maybe a week, apart; I’ve forgotten exactly. But I remember very well the atmosphere in the subway that first week. The silence inside the cars was absolute, and people exchanged glances loaded with suspicion.

That was the first week. And then, soon enough, conversations resumed, the mood returned to normal. The prospect of another imminent explosion was still there in everyone’s mind, but it had retreated into the background. You get used to terrorist attacks.

France will hold on. The French will hold on, without even needing a “sursaut national,” a national pushback reflex. They’ll hold on because there’s no other way, and because you get used to everything. No human force, not even fear, is stronger than habit.

“Keep calm and carry on.” All right, then, that’s just what we’ll do (even though, alas, there is no Churchill to lead us). Despite the common perception, the French are rather docile, rather easy to govern. But they are not complete idiots. Instead, their main flaw is a kind of forgetful frivolity that necessitates jogging their memory from time to time.

There are people, political people, who are responsible for the unfortunate situation we find ourselves in today, and sooner or later their responsibility will have to be examined. It’s unlikely that the insignificant opportunist who passes for our head of state, or the congenital moron who plays the part of our prime minister, or even the “stars of the opposition” (LOL) will emerge from the test looking any brighter.

Who exactly weakened the capacities of the police forces until they were totally on edge and almost incapable of fulfilling their mission? Who exactly drilled into our heads for years the notion that borders were a quaint absurdity, and evidence of a foul and rancid nationalism?

The blame, as one can see, is widely shared.

Which political leaders committed France to ridiculous and costly operations whose main result has been to plunge Iraq, and then Libya, into chaos? And which political leaders were, until recently, on the verge of doing the same thing in Syria?

(I was forgetting: We didn’t go into Iraq, not the second time. But it was close, and it looks as though Dominique de Villepin, then minister of foreign affairs, will go down in history for that reason — which is not nothing — for having prevented France, for the one and only time in its recent history, from participating in a criminal operation that also distinguished itself for its stupidity.)

The obvious conclusion is scathing, unfortunately. For 10 (20? 30?) years, our successive governments have pathetically, systematically, deplorably failed in their essential mission: to protect the population under their responsibility.

As for the population, it hasn’t failed at all. It’s unclear, at bottom, exactly what the population thinks, since our successive governments have taken great care not to hold referendums (except for one, in 2005, on a proposed European constitution, whose result they then preferred to ignore).

But opinion polls are allowed, and for what they’re worth, they more or less reveal the following: that the French population has always maintained its trust in and solidarity with its police officers and its armed forces. That it has largely been repelled by the sermonizing airs of the so-called moral left (moral?) concerning how migrants and refugees are to be treated. That it has never viewed without suspicion the foreign military adventures its governments have seen fit to join.

One could cite many more examples of the gap, now an abyss, between the population and those supposed to represent it. The discredit that applies to all political parties today isn’t just huge; it is legitimate.

And it seems to me, it really seems to me, that the only solution still available to us now is to move gently toward the only form of real democracy: I mean, direct democracy.

MH

(Michel Houellebecq is the author, most recently, of the novel “Submission.”)

Funny how the Main Stream Media (MSM), usually busy censoring me, when not outright banning me, is calling to a market certified writer of bedtime stories, instead of a real philosopher. Funny, but typical. In France the wildly respected “La Grande Librairie” shows an unending parade of success authors who are as dumb as they are imagination deprived (I record the show, but find it more boring than washing dishes, a time when I can listen to myself, instead of rich, fashionable idiots).

This being said, I approve much of Houellebecq’s message above (although I disagree 100% about Libya. The problem in Libya was no follow up; and it’s not too late for that; I also disagree about borders). I sent the following comment (it was immediately censored: NYT has faithfully censored me about terrorism, it’s the apparent religion there; if I  made a comment about olive oil, The Guardian censors me, better safe than sorry… If you preach the Qur’an, they love you, if you preach the truth, they hate you, it all fits very well together):

Patrice Ayme: We have to change our philosophical attitude relative to reality. “Radical Islam” is, as its name indicates, and as the Islamist State forcefully insists, the roots (that’s what radical means) of Islam.

There are literally hundreds of verses in the holy Qur’an, which guide the Islamist State. Moreover, both taqiyyah (lying for the faith) and the doctrine which says that older verses are overruled by more recent ones, established the hierarchy of values which guide radical Islamism.

More precisely, Islam out of the Qur’an, direct and literal is, clearly a call to war against most categories of people. This is neither known, nor, a fortiori, understood. Why? My personal experience is revealing: I quoted the Qur’an many times in comments to the Main Stream Media, and was censored, every single time. This is extraordinary: let’s imagine that I quoted the Bible. Would I be censored? Even the Islamist State does not censor the Qur’an! Instead, the Islamist State applies a strict interpretation of the Islamist doctrine.

Thus, one must recognize that Salafism (that is, the way of the old ones), literal Islam out of the Qur’an is not acceptable (not anymore as a strict application of the Bible would be tolerable). Instead of has to promote an Islam submissive to the laws of the Republic and Democracy. As “Islam” means “Submission”, one has just to say Islam is Submission to Republic and Democracy. “Democracy” = People-Rule. It does not mean that an oligarchy of politicians rule.

The West has rotten by the head. Plutocracy, austerity, terrorism, the destruction of the biosphere, are just consequences of this general failure.

Meanwhile, I will revert to listening to the congenital opportunist morons who take themselves for leaders. Especially the way the presidential idiot ends nearly every single sentence as if he were a little girl of a particularly weak disposition, on the verge of bursting in tears. My own daughter, who just turned six, has a much firmer voice.

And the weakness of Hollande and the “congenital moron who plays Prime Minister” is not just cosmetic: since the attacks against Charlie Hebdo, they did basically NOTHING. The rector of the Paris Mosque is indignant and astounded that NO Salafist mosque was shut down. Ever. He says it’s a police problem, a non-respect of the law of the Republic, and he calls for the shutting down of Salafism (which he class “Non-Islamist”: I would say the same if I were him, just as he would say what I say, if he were me!)

Think. Or sink.

Patrice Ayme’

Killing According To Qur’an In Paris Again

Salafism Is Murder

At least eight simultaneous attacks in Paris by Allah Akbar. GOD IS GREAT people. I have said it for years. Salafism is murder. What is Salafism? The literal interpretation of what is in the Qur’an. The Qur’an is literally a hate book. One does it to be known, weirdly. Let me refresh memories:

Sura 5 Verse 9:

“But when the forbidden months are past,
then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them,
and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war);
but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them:
for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.”

In the sacred texts of Islam, there is much worse. Some “verses” order to kill ALL Jews (in the Hadith). Only then will Allah do the Final Judgment.

Paris, 13 November 2015. The War Of Europe Against Muslim Fanaticism Is 13 Centuries Old

The defenders of Islam are ordered to lie about the faith, within the faith. That is why Islamists deliberately lie by omission about Islam’s sacred texts. This lie by omission is in plain sight. The following verse is part of the “governmental” charter of Hamas, a criminal organization which rule in Palestine:

Hadith 41;685: …”Allah’s Messenger… : The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will FIGHT against the Jews and the Muslims would KILL them…”

But few with intellectual pretentions in the West, and, especially France, wanted to look at such mass hating trash. It was just not “Politically Correct” to do so.  This is how that cancer of the mind, this adoration of terror was allowed to grow. That malignancy consisted in a grotesque allegation: that not adoring “verses” threatening to mass murder innocent people was “racism”. Indeed if criticizing the preceding was “racist”, then adoring this sort of lethal mass hatred was anti-racist.

So here, cretins, villainous cretins, you have it. Jihadists did as the Qur’an prescribed. Is that anti-racist enough for you?

Who is culprit here?

The FALSE philosophers who told us, and insisted, and imposed, for years, that “Islamophobia is racism“.

Christianophobia founded The Enlightenment. Voltaire wrote a play called: “MUHAMMAD OU L”INTOLERANCE“. (Muhammad or intolerance.)

The play was played… In the Eighteenth Century. Now it is FORBIDDEN.  So what toi do with this erroneous philosophy? DESTROY it.

The Aztec religion was destroyed, because it was incompatible with civilization. What was so incompatible? The Aztecs’ religion organized human sacrifices.

The Celtic superstition also organized human sacrifices. So did Carthage’s superstition. The Romans, wisely, outlawed ALL religions which organized human sacrifices.

Literal Islam also requires human sacrifices. This is exactly what “verses” such as the one above, say. It says to kill all “pagans”. Human sacrifices “all pagans”. Islam confuses state, civilization, religion, superstition (Mahomet flew on his winged horse to Jerusalem), and mass murder. Then some ponder” what’s wrong?

Literal Islamism, just as literal Christianism has to be outlawed. This is a war. Barack Obama said “Liberte’, Egalite’, Fraternite’” in French. He said more, very appropriately.

 

All schools and universities are closed from now on in France. All school trips are cancelled . A state of emergency has been decreed. Like in a vulgar banana republic.

This post will be updated later.

Patrice Ayme’

 

 

 

 

What If God Is Nuts?

A Moroccan Jihadist climbs on a High Speed European train in Brussels. It is easy to get weapons in Belgium, less so in France. He is armed with a full automatic machine gun, a Kalashnikov, AK 47, nine magazines for the AK47, a handgun, a knife. He has been told, and believes, that, as the faithful, he should obey god’s writ. And even more than that, he will fight racism.

How come?
If Islamophobia, the fear of Islam, is racist, does not that mean that Islamophilia, the love of Islam, is anti-racist? Thus by believing Islam to death, are not Jihadists fighting racism? Jihadists believe that, to the bottom of their all consuming hearts. When god is nuts, nuts are gods.

And What If God Is A Crazy Homicidal Maniac?

Notice that France is the most atheist country (thus number one targets for Jihadists). From my point of view, France’s healthy skepticism about the morality of god, is directly traceable, not just to Clovis and his Franks, but to the election, in Paris, more than a century before that, of Julian as “Augustus“ (supreme Roman emperor, in 360 CE). The Catholic bishops hated the all too moderate and philosophical Julian, who was derided as “the Apostate”. The Franks organized a flurry of anti-Christian coups, during the Fourth Century.

The High Speed train enters France. The Jihadist goes to the toilet to equip himself (for a slightly different version, see the New York Times). He comes out, a Frenchman in his fifties confronts him, grabs the Kalashnikov AK47, and runs away with it. The Jihadist shoots the Frenchman, the bullet enters next to the spine on the left side, in the lumbar area, through the entire left lung, and comes out through the clavicle. Alerted, two young American soldiers, and a friend, an Afro-American, plus a British businessman, and a French conductor, jump the killer. The lead American hero, Spencer, loses his thumb to the killer’s cutter (it got re-attached in a French hospital, right away). Everybody survives, because the would-be assassin’s gun jams. As related in the Times:

“Mr. Norman [UK Consultant] and Mr. Sadler [Afro-American student] had joined in the efforts to subdue the gunman, who “put up quite a bit of a fight,” Mr. Norman recalled at the news conference in Arras on Saturday. “My thought was, ‘I’m probably going to die anyway, so let’s go.’ Once you start moving, you’re not afraid anymore.”

Mr. Stone [large Martial Arts expert, Air Force First Class] wounded and bleeding, kept the suspect in a chokehold. “Spencer Stone is a very strong guy,” Mr. Norman said. The suspect passed out. Mr. Norman busied himself binding him up with a tie.

Mr. Skarlatos [22 year old Oregon National Guard soldier, back from Afghanistan, friend with Sadler and Stone] , the AK-47 in hand, began to patrol through the carriages, looking for other gunmen. He made a series of startling discoveries: The suspect’s guns had malfunctioned, and he had not had the competence to fix them.

“He had pulled the trigger on the AK. The primer was just faulty, so the gun didn’t go off, luckily,” Mr. Skarlatos said. “And he didn’t know how to fix it, which is also very lucky.” In addition, the gunman had not been able to load his own handgun: “There was no magazine in it, so he either dropped it accidentally or didn’t load it properly, so he was only able to get what appeared to be one shot off,” Mr. Skarlatos said.”

In the fifties, George Orwell wrote excellent books where he introduced, and condemned, the notion of “thought crime”. Actually he had invented nothing, the USSR had condemned people to death for “Thought Crimes” before.

Roman law itself distinguished the notion of “Mens Rea” (mental act). To be culprit of voluntary homicide, it’s not enough to kill somebody, one has to have thought about it (mental action). Orwell may have thought too fast, and too superficially: fast and shallow thought crime.

We live in a world where human thoughts are increasingly capable of enormous amplification. So what people think about matters.

Legislators recognized this after the Nazi fiasco. Nazism was an ideology of hatred. Once allowed to rule, it programmed tens of millions of Germans into exterminating others. Ideally, such hate ideologies ought to be outlawed. But the lines are hard to draw between fantasy and thought meant to program people into killing robots.

So legislators, starting in France and the USA, decided that hatred of an ideological character, if one could legally prove that it was present, would be an aggravating factor in the commission of a crime.

Another approach was tried earlier. With Christianism. In the Middle Ages, Christianism played an horrendous role. It started with the Fall of Rome to which it contributed heavily (said Gibbon, and I  agree, in part). Then Clovis and his Franks mitigated the Jesus superstition, and things went well, until the rise of nationalism, tribalism, plutocracy and Crusades in the late Eleventh Century (also the time of the break between Rome and Constantinople: all those phenomena are related). After that, Christianism became a force for the worst… Until the last execution for heresy in Spain in the Nineteenth Century, if not the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, where the Church and its Opus Dei, were on the side of fascism (Franco, Hitler, Mussolini).

In the New Testament, Jesus orders to kill unbelievers: Luke 19-27. Thus Islamism is just a parrot, if not a parody, a parroty, of Christianism.

Luke 19:27: “But as for these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me.”

Please compare with the Qur’an “Verse of the Sword” (Sura 9, v5):

“9:5 When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them. If they repent and take to prayer and render the alms levy, allow them to go their way. God is forgiving and merciful.”

Islamophiles, like pedophiles, are hard pressed to explain that one away. Muslim terrorists revolve around this verse, doing what it orders. The Qur’an, a very short book (83,000 words, I counted) contains many other verses, to the same effect.

Christianism, obeying Christ, killed millions, if not tens of millions. Still, in the end, it was made to submit: any priest teaching Luke 19:27, the core of Christianism in the Middle Ages, would now be fired. So how was Christianism forced to submit? Asking Louis XI, Henry VIII, or the French Revolution, brings the same answer: Christianism was FORCED to submit.

Forcing Christianism is not new: the Franks forced Christianism to submit to their state, most notably in the Sixth and Eight Centuries. In the former case, the Vatican had to submit to the nomination of Frankish bishops, and when the Pope threatened to have them burned for teaching secularly, the Frankish authorities pointed out that Pope “Gregory The Great” had no army. In the Eight Century, the Church underwent nationalization, to pay for the war against Islamism. Then the Popes, on their knees, begged the Franks to come subdue the Lombards (Charlemagne did so, once the Church agreed to recognize him as Roman Emperor). (And I am not even mentioning Philippe Le Bel’s accidental execution of the Pope in the Fourteenth Century, followed by the incarceration of the Papacy in Avignon, among many similar exploits of anti-clerical type…)

There is one religion, always: that of the state (in the generalized sense of religion I use). Superstitions can be tolerated, as long as they are compatible with the state. So make Islam compatible. And that means some Islamist texts ought to be viewed as the Thought Crimes they are, and being ignored as well as Luke 19;27 (and other statements of Jesus to the same effect) are ignored.

If we, who believe in an ever wiser civilization, could submit the fury of Catholicism (“universalism”), we can certainly submit the meekness of submission (what “Islam” means)… Civilization is rising: time for the savages to realize that the gods must be crazy.

Patrice Ayme’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Banksterocracy

The Champagne region was proclaimed a world heritage site by UNESCO today. Champagne, a method to make sparkling wine, was created by a cleric, Dom Perignon, four centuries ago.

Mr. Yannis Varoufakis, Greek finance minister: “Why did they force us to close the banks? To instil fear in people. And spreading fear is called terrorism.” Indeed. That is what I was saying before: arguably the demons of High Finance, the shills of the IMF, Goldman-Sachs, the ECB, etc, are the main force deep behind Islamist Terrorism, because they cause misery, while weakening enormously the military capabilities.

Added Varoufakis:”The EU will have no legal grounds to throw Greece out of the euro, and then the real negotiation will start with creditors.”

Unbelievably, the European Central Bank has put the entire Greek economy in a deep freeze, with a very low ceiling on the Emergency Loan Agreement (ELA). What for exactly? With which authority? Just because its (ex) Goldman-Sachs head, Draghi, is used to make a profession from dragging people in misery?

Bait & Switch, Or How The Public Was Made To Pay For Being Ruled By Banksters

Look at these numbers above: how come France, Germany, Italy, etc. invested in Greece? Of course they did not. What they did is that they “lent” Greece money so that the Greek plutocrats then in command of Greece could refloat the French, German, etc. bank subsidiaries which had gone bankrupt lending to fellow plutocrats they had met earlier, taking champagne baths, all together. Now we are supposed to drain the bath, and serve them more champagne.

Meanwhile, Christine Lagarde, the Marie-Antoinette who proposed that, because gasoline was to expensive for them, the French ought to switch to biking, hangs tough about “Greece”. A buffoon shilling for plutocracy with a misleading French accent. Just look at her shifty eyes: she knows how dirty she is.

As Oxford economy professor Simon Wren-Lewis puts it, the IMF was “captured” by the banksters: “the Troika made a huge mistake in using their citizens’ money to lend to Greece so Greece could partially repay these private sector creditors – that is where most of the Troika’s rescue package went.”

(Yes, apparently, 92% went to banksters; but thanks to propaganda, most people believe We The People of Greece splurged, whereas, it is the banksters who splurged).

The first order of plutocracy, nowadays is banksterocracy: bankster-power. Let me quote extensively from Atrios, a USA citizen originally from Australia, with a PhD in economics. Atrios writes a wildly successful blog, taken seriously by major economists. Quoting others extensively, Atrios comes below to the conclusion I reached more than six years ago, about the nature of who rule us, and this is most pleasing:

“Saturday July 4, 2015: What’s It All About Then

Greece’s Euro “membership” isn’t about using the currency, it’s about having access to various loan facilities and support from the ECB, which it already doesn’t have.

Bloomberg reports that Bulgaria, which is not a Euro member but backs its currency with Euro reserves, has just been allowed to borrow from the ECB at the same rate as Euro members, thus enabling it to firewall its banks from Greek contagion. This is a privilege normally only accorded to Euro members – and it has been WITHDRAWN from Greece. If this is true, then Bulgaria (non-Euro member) can obtain Euros from the ECB while Greece (Euro member) cannot. It is hard to see what benefit Greece’s Euro membership confers, apart from redistribution of seigniorage receipts.

And finally someone gets the logical endpoint of central bank “independence.”

For the central bank of a currency union to deliberately restrict the money supply in regions within the currency union is bizarre. No other currency union central bank on earth does this. It would, for example, be unthinkable for the Bank of England to deny liquidity to Scotland’s banks. But the ECB has denied liquidity to Greece’s banks, not because they are insolvent (which is a reasonable reason to deny liquidity to banks) but because the sovereign won’t toe the fiscal line. It has taken on a political role that it should not have.

Of course, the ECB’s shareholders are the member state governments. But those governments have bound themselves by laws and treaties that prevent them interfering with or in any way controlling the ECB. So the Eurozone is in reality a financial dictatorship run by bankers. I struggle to see why anyone would voluntarily join it, let alone want to stay in it. But that’s democracy for you.

Whatever it is, it ain’t democracy. It’s banksterocracy. The concept of central bank independence was, once upon a time, thought to be necessary to prevent irresponsible governments from doing, or being perceived as doing, irresponsible things with the money supply. Now the point of central bank independence is to hand immense power to a bunch of unelected unaccountable people engaged in revolving door careers with the banking system. Let’s continue laughing at the silly Greeks and their silly corruption.  

by Atrios.”

***

The European Economy Is Led By Traitors With Hitler Derangement Syndrome:

What is happening is indeed quite remarkable: not only are all the appearances of democracy violated, but even the basic statutes of the European Central Bank, as German robots with political authority outright come out to proclaim that Greece ought to be kicked out of the Euro. They don’t even have this power… Except if they want to behave like Hitler, or Putin, but that’s precisely, not constitutional.

The first irresponsible thing to do with the money supply is not to provide enough money to run the economy. This was a major problem during the Roman empire’s Fourth Century (due to a dearth of precious metals and not enough police powers to insure the value of the Fiat Currency). By 300 CE, the imperial government instated a massive command and control system to insure the core functions of the economy.

The problem we have now is different: so-called austerity is actually a refusal to finance important sectors of the economy, including not just basic decency, but also science and education. Meanwhile China has boosted its science budget to a nearly incomprehensible 192 billion dollars (more than all the West combined).

China is right. 100%. (Then the land of Confucius gets accused of “ethical breaches”, by professional bleaters, for pulling ahead on genomic research)

On the other hand, those who have starved, and are starving the European economy, from sheer lack of currency, are not just betraying their birthplace, but civilization itself.

Patrice Ayme’

 

“JE SUIS CHARLIE”

PARIS — Masked, military trained gunmen in heavy bullet proof military garb, expertly using fully automatic Kalashnikovs, and a bazooka (RPG), burst into the Paris offices of a French satirical newspaper on Wednesday and methodically killed 12 people, including top journalists and two police officers, before fleeing in cars. The gunmen are still at large 12 hours later, as police operations extended all over a traumatized France.

The French president declared that several mass terrorist attacks were blocked in the last few weeks.

Islamists Assassinating Wounded Cop in Paris 1/7/2015.

[Dialogue:”Je vais le tuer!”… ”C’est bon chef!”. “I’m going to kill him!” says one terrorist, as the other covered the street with its AK-47. The wounded police officer, hit by the AK47 in the groin, showed he was unarmed, raised his hands, and added:”It’s good, chief!”… Then the terrorist killed him.]

Five very famous cartoonists and authors were killed. Among their countless satirical activities, they had lampooned Islamic terrorists and the Prophet Muhammad. The gunmen screamed various Islamist slogans:

“Allah Akbar! On a venge’ le prophet Mahomet! On a tue’ Charlie Hebdo! (“We avenged the Prophet Muhammad! We killed Charlie Hebdo!”).

Apparently one journalist, facing the muzzle of an AK-47, was spared by an assassin, when she recited verses from the Qur’an. Another woman, a psychoanalyst, was assassinated.

An hour earlier, Charlie Hebdo had published a (quite innocent) cartoon on the Islamist State, where the founder was represented, wishing a happy new year, and good health.

A few weeks ago, the magazine “The Economist“, to which I have been a subscriber for many years, wrote an article on radical Islam. “The Economist” pontificated that “Islam” had nothing in common with “radical Islam”.

Salman Rushdie produced a statement, originally posted on English Pen:

“Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today. I stand with Charlie Hebdo, as we all must, to defend the art of satire, which has always been a force for liberty and against tyranny, dishonesty and stupidity. ‘Respect for religion’ has become a code phrase meaning ‘fear of religion.’ Religions, like all other ideas, deserve criticism, satire, and, yes, our fearless disrespect.”

Rushdie had been condemned to death by Ayatollah Khomeini, and was protected for years by Western Secret Services. His crime? He had called attention to the “Satanic Verses”. This was a part of the Qur’an which was deemed “Satanic”, generations after it was published. (The passage mentioned too favorably the old Moon-centered polytheist religion of Mecca. So a later “Caliph”, or religious dictator, had it removed.)

Original Danish Cartoons Offending The Prophet (Who Died 13 Centuries Ago).

I begged to differ with the good Islam/Bad Radicals of The Economist. I wrote a comment which consisted in four verses from the (official Saudi Arabian translation) of the Qur’an. “The Economist” removed it, and sent an email threatening to ban me forever.

“The Economist” Hates The Qur’an

The question then is this: if mainstream media censors “the Qur’an“, while bemoaning “Islamophobia”, is not that a contradiction? And why this contradiction?

Radical Christianism was dealt with during the Enlightenment: it was stridently pointed out that it was highly immoral, and illegal to implement all what was in the Bible. Yet, nobody accused the “Enlightenment” of “Christianophobia”.

Christianism and Islamism are closely related religions: they both derived from Judaism, and the former contains lethal statements, later duplicated, and multiplied, in the sacred texts of Islam. Around 400 CE, the so-called “Founding Fathers” of the Church admitted that the Bible was not to be taken literally.

By contrast, around 850CE, the Caliph decided, under the threat of death, that the Qur’an ought to be interpreted literally.

This is all the more striking that a war about the Qur’an, started immediately after the Qur’an was written by another Caliph, 20 years after Muhammad’s death. This war is still going on, all over the Middle East (between Shiah, Suni, Druze, Kurds, Sufis, and all of the 100 sects of Islam).

Muhammad, the Prophet, or “Messenger” himself had broad, open, progressive, anti-sexist views (we know this from his life). Muhammad was made to understand that his wife Aisha was sleeping around. He shrugged. As if it were her business: a very modern attitude.

The progressive attitude of Muhammad was grotesquely trampled when Uthman’s Qur’an was written, said Aisha, Muhammad child bride. She pointed out that Muhammad’s family members, such as herself, and Ali, knew the Prophet better than those who had decided what the Qur’an was. She led a war against what she viewed as a travesty of Muhammad’s message. Unfortunately she lost the “Battle of the Camel”.

Solution? No more tolerance for intolerance.

(And no, I don’t hate “Muslims” on a personal basis: I spent most of my babyhood, childhood and youth surrounded by very nice Sufi Muslims… And to this day, the people watching over my 5 year old daughter the most, are, you guessed it… “Muslim” friends… And they were not spared my observations about Abraham.)

The ideology in the Qur’an, as it is, fosters lethal terror and intolerance. For a full version:

https://patriceayme.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/some-violence-in-holy-quran/

This has to be addressed, as it was addressed with the (related) Nazi ideology. The Qur’an, a short book, has more than 109 context-free passages calling for deadly violence, as deadly violence was an intrinsic good. Here is the first such verses of lethal violence in the second Sura of the Qur’an.

Quran (2:191-193) – “And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief] is worse than killing… but if they desist, then lo! Allah is forgiving and merciful.   And fight them until there is no more Fitnah [disbelief and worshipping of others along with Allah] and worship is for Allah alone. But if they cease, let there be no transgression except against Az-Zalimun (the polytheists, and wrong-doers, etc.)”

The failure to address this since Voltaire, has caused much mayhem.

Patrice Ayme’

Not To Corral Islam Is Racist & Exploitative

Abstract: Both the present Middle East and the way one interacts with Islam it are failures that grew from a racist bias. Islam has not been treated as well as Christianity. Christianity was domesticated, educated, and given strict guidelines to become compatible with civilization. As a result, at least in Europe, after a joint attempt with the Nazis at killing most Jews, Christianity has been made irrelevant, except for the pretty monuments it left behind, a propensity to charity, and a consolation for some of us who believe we are more than star dust.

It is racist not to extend the same courtesy to Islam.

Universities Grew From Cathedral, Under Government Forcing

***

Two Frenchman were immediately identified from a Daesh (“Islamist State”; ISIS/ ISIL) video showing the beheading of 18 prisoners, November 17, 2014.

One of them is Maxime Hauchard from a French family of French descend. He got a Catholic education. After a few lousy little jobs, Maxime converted to Islam, starting to wear a robe and shaggy beard.

The other terrorist is pretty similar: same age, 22 years old, also converted out of the blue from a Catholic background.

A prominent, even dominant movement of Catholics, in the Middle-Ages and Renaissance, over a period of seven centuries, caused great mayhem in Europe, and the Middle East, killing millions, spawning dozens of wars.

Fortunately, nowadays, the Christian superstition has been nearly exterminated as a force in Europe. So it is only natural that those who want mayhem should turn towards its untamed daughter superstition, Sunni Islam, especially in its Wahabbist variant.

So back to our frustrated Catholic know-nothing, do-nothing Maxime. Let me recognize, at the outset, that the state, and the philosophy which guided it is at fault, and at fault in two ways: with neither providing jobs, nor the education to go with it. A better look at contemporary China, or the European past, is in order here.

So a French low life is told about the Qur’an where it is said that one should kill the enemies of the Faith (sometimes rather painfully). Not to be able to kill one’s enemies with Catholicism is obviously frustrating. Christ made some statements where he apparently said he wanted to kill the enemies of the Faith, but modern Catholics insist he did not mean it.

In the Qur’an, some verses suggest one should not force Islam upon non-believers. But there are three sorts of “non-believers”.

One can be a “non-believer”, but still from the “people of the Book” (whatever the book is!). Or one could be a total heathen, a polytheist (but sometimes Christians, because of the Trinity, three gods, are put in that category). And the worst type of “non-believer” are the “Apostates”.

“Apostates” used to be Muslim, but then they were found not to be Muslim, after all. Those have to be killed absolutely, the greatest severity has to be deployed against them.

That’s why, when a Muslim writer has a sudden need to expose shortcomings of Islam, they end up dead, or on the run.

Who decides who is an “Apostate”? Well, that’s the beauty of Islam: just join, and then you can.

Take the case of these French punks. Remember: they are plain French punks to start with, and cannot do a thing. They have no power. Everything is forbidden. Then they convert to Islam, something that takes two minutes. Then the punks are free to decide who is a Muslim, and who is an ex-Muslim, that is an Apostate. So they take a ticket to Turkey, Turkey let them get in contact with very well financed terrorists, and let them enter Syria. Once inside Syria, our ex-Catholics and Two Minutes Muslims are free to kill whoever they are told is Apostate. Hey, they can nominate their own apostate, like all these Syrians and Americans to behead.

If one is a born beheader, it’s wonderful.

Girls? Girls are hard to get for Catholic punks. Yet, as a Muslim, you will be able to acquire a “battlefield bride”, any female human “whom you right hand posses”. Yes, that’s in the Qur’an, the perfect excuse for those who want to violate Human Rights and the Geneva Convention.

The Quran, chapter 4 (An-Nisa), verse 24:

“ 1.And (also forbidden are) all married women except those whom your right hands possess (this is) Allah’s ordinance to you,

2.and lawful for you are (all women) besides those, provided that you seek (them) with your property, taking (them) in marriage not committing fornication… surely Allah is Knowing, Wise.

— translated by M. H. Shakir

The term “those whom your right hands possess” is considered to refer to prisoners of war, or more broadly to slaves in general, according to the classic tafsirs. Bernard Lewis proposes the translation “those whom you own.” Slaves are mentioned in at least twenty-nine verses of the Qur’an.

The general term ma malakat aymanukum (literally “what your right hands possess“) appears fourteen times in the Qur’an.

In all civilized countries, education is mandatory and this means not just that children ought to go to school, but that they ought to learn enough secular material to be civilizationally compatible.

This element of civilized behavior was first implemented by the Franks in the Sixth Century. Frankish bishops were often Frankish nobles made into bishops with a three weeks course. The Vatican hated them. A confrontation finally happened when the Pope Gregory the Great threatened to burn alive the bishop of Dignes, France. The latter was culprit of secularly educating children in his diocese.

Of course, the Pope had no army. The Frankish State told the bishop not to worry. Two centuries later, the Imperium Francorum actually forced all and any religious establishment to teach secularly, or be eradicated. By then the Pope had figured out not to argue with the Franks. The Church submitted.

Out of that mandatory secular education grew the European university system (the “Cathedral schools” became universities, as happened in Paris even before the present Cathedral.

In general, nasty religions have to be subdued, or stamped out. Such is the way of civilization. Leaving People in a state of subjection to nasty systems of superstition is human right abuse.

Tolerating vicious systems to thought and moods is not just about letting other been victimized. It’s also about civilization not been under threat.

Take the example of North Korea. A committee of the United Nations found that North Korea was a Nazi-like state, and recommended sanctions. (That, of course delighted Putin.) North Korea, being a nuclear armed state, represents an immense danger: it could bring the death of 50 million people, much faster than Hitler.

Civilization needs to be defended, lest it be destroyed.

What to do?

Nowadays, the Christian Church cannot do what it wants. If the Church hierarchy decided to burn alive some Church authority, as it did with Hus in the Fifteenth Century, the Carabinieri would take over the Vatican, disarm the Swiss Guard, and sent the Pope and his accomplices to a mental asylum, for treatment. (I would enjoy the sight, but that’s besides the point.)

The Vatican, as a State, was created by Charlemagne. What was the fundamentally Pagan Charlemagne up to, is an interesting question. He may have created the Vatican as a state to allow Venice, say, to pursue its semi-autonomous existence as a Republic (and thus allowing the potential for more Republics (Genova, Firenze), and attempts to establish some (as happened in Rome herself in the 11C). Within two centuries, a Muslim army actually seized the Vatican, and was then dislodge by a Frankish army.

If Christianity is tightly corralled, why should not Islam be tightly corralled too?

That question was not answered by the Franks, and their successors the French. In the case of the Franks, the reason is simple: the Franks were essentially secular (although their leaders evoked their made-up Christian Saints and Jesus, when not King David or the Trojans, all day long). Frankish armies annihilated the main Muslim Arab and Berber armies in 721-750 CE.

As the Franks extended religious tolerance to Jews, Pagans, and Catholics, they may as well have extended it to Muslims, too. And that’s what they did. Thus, no Muslim was discriminated against (massacres against the Jews started, much later, in Germany with the First Crusade, in 1099 CE).

That worked well. So it became a habit. When the Franks and Normands took over parts of Italy and Sicily which had been invaded by Muslims, that policy of religious tolerance was pursued: Crusaders were astounded to see thousands of Muslims praying in their peculiar way on what was nominally Roman ground (although the Arabs called the Franks “Franji”, namely Franks, the Franks considered themselves “Romans” officially since 800 CE).

Emperor Frederik Barbarossa’s personal guard was Muslim.

Meanwhile, the French State had, de facto, split from the rest of the Roman empire, although it was considered that the “French king was emperor in his own kingdom”. Western Francia was the strongest piece of said empire, and kept seeing the Church as something submitted to it. Clashes between the French State and the Vatican were numerous.

Some of these clashes were funny: a French king was excommunicated for 12 years (he had divorced his Danish wife, and remarried, without the Pope’s approval). Others were less amusing: Philippe IV Le Bel, cracked down on the Vatican, arrested the Pope, who ended dead. Soon, Philippe arrested, and annihilated the army of the Church, the Templar Monks.

For centuries to come, the French State went back and forth, most of the times cracking down on the Church. However three spectacular counter-reactions occurred, at the times of the seven religious wars of the late 16C, under the Medici queen, or, of course, under the usual suspects, Louis XIV and the Slave Master Napoleon.

In the end, the French State made a tight deal with the Catholics, Protestants and Jews… But not the Muslims! (Although it had plenty of Muslims, more or less under its jurisdiction in Algeria; I say more or less, because a deal had been made about the freedom of religion with Abd El Kader, to end the war in Algeria).

In all these matters, the rest of Europe more or less followed France, however belatedly (for example the Prussian anti-Jewish laws re-instituted all over in 1815, were finally destroyed in 1945).

France herself has been following her philosophers… Who were clueless about Islam.

The last philosopher to dare criticize Islam was Voltaire, and his theater on the subject was censored recently… Although it was not censored under the Ancient Regime! And although, in the guise of criticizing Muhammad, Voltaire was criticizing Christianity, as everybody knew.

So one can say that now Islam has become more of a sacred cow in Europe, than Christianity was in 1770 CE!

Why is Islam treated more leniently in 2014 than Christianity in 1770? Well, it’s a case of reverse racism. But reverse racism is still racism, just like antimatter is still matter of sorts.

Patrice Ayme’

 

 

 

a transexual look fashionable in Europe, sometimes with high heels and feminine manners, see Wurst; amusingly we have a rant from Charlemagne himself on the subject: the emperor declared that only short skirts, or long pants made sense for real men, as anything else got in the way).

 

 

 

 

Strikes Against Civilization

Dramatis Personae: Obama, Tyranosopher, and assorted characters meet in hell to discuss Obama’s “Signature Strikes”, the bombing by killer robots, of crowds of unknown people, on the chance an enemy would die.

***

 Obama, face contorted by contradictory emotions, affects not to understand the strikes in Boston: “Why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence?… We will determine what happened. We will investigate any associations that these terrorists may have had.”

 Tyranosopher: The deepest association is with the breakdown of the spirit of the State of Law. In the West, now, as it happened 2,000 years ago, the spirit of republican law, equality, has broken down. Galla Placidia, made the “association” that counts.

Galla & Socrates: Absolute Power To Law Only

 Galla reigned as a Roman empress, for more than three times as long as you will be president, and in much more trying times. She was acutely aware that the notion of State of Law was the fundamental bedrock of the State, and wrote eloquently about it.

 She explained that it is the Law, not individuals, who should reign. Equal law. Thus the law should apply absolutely, even to the absolute sovereign. The embodiment of the enforcement of this is the International Criminal Court.

 Treat people unequal, they will treat you unequal.

 Brainy Salafist: Obama, you have shown us the way. Killing civilians, you know nothing about, calling assassination of the innocent fighting terrorism. Hiding perfidiously, but ineffectually, behind the CIA to commit acts of wars against Pakistan, as the sedate New York Times’ editorial board pointed out in April 2013. 

 While you, in your unfathomable stupidly, advertized worldwide that you approved every single strike, as if you were anxious to be the first ever Nobel Peace laureate prosecuted for war crimes.

 Obama: I am the leader of the Greatest Nation on Earth, under God. That makes me infallible. Plus we the leaders of the USA have been careful to refuse to recognize the International Criminal Court.

 Brainy Salafist: Thus you, Obama, are just a mafioso leveraging “A Secret Deal on Drones, Sealed in Blood“ (New York Times, April 2013 again). These “Signature Strikes” and “Crowd Killing” your National Security adviser and now CIA head, Brennan, obliquely confirmed their existence in front of the Senate. Many of your associates, Obama’s associates, have confirmed the existence of an association, the Assassination Panel at the White House. So we, the Salafists, imitate you, and kill people we know nothing about. Thanks for teaching us. We call it fighting terrorism too.

 Tyranosopher: Yes, an official assassination panel is something unparalleled in the history of all and any known states. Yet, after the Boston bombing you, Obama, declared that any bombing of civilians was an act of terror. But that’s what your “Signature Strikes” and “Crowd Killing” are all about. 

 Obama: I was shocked  when I became president, and I found out about “Signature Strikes” and “Crowd Killing”. But that’s the only game in town, and I am a team player. It works. We killed thousands of terrorists, using them.

 Tyranosopher: Try to pay attention to your own sick sport semantics. It’s not a game. Killing people does not make you player in a team. You were right to be shocked. Now you are shocking.

 Napoleon, Corsican dictator: “Even in war, moral power is to physical as three parts in one.” “Signature Strikes” bomb the USA’s moral power. The more you use them, the weaker you get. Your “Signature Strikes” are an anti-American strategy.

  Brainy Salafist: Obama you told us terror is the way. We want to be like you when we grow up. We want to do hundreds of “Signature Strikes“, on your territory, as you did, on ours, the House of Peace.

 Tyranosopher: Mr. President, I am afraid Salafists have been associating with the own past behavior of the USA, “Signature Strikes” its latest symbol. This is what a full enquiry would reveal.

 The notion of military-industrial complex was introduced by Eisenhower, as the greatest danger for the USA. At the height of the Cold War! Now we have something worse, the notion of enemy-industrial complex. It looks as if some in the government of the USA consider that to make sure of having enemies is the best way to have an industry.

 Obama: I did not start the violence in the Middle East.

 Tyranosopher: You sure did not. Arguably, from his own declarations, Muhammad started it, for the present period, in the sense that he revealed to his followers that the Persian-Babylonian-Zoroasthrian and Greco-Roman empires were exhausted, and could collapse if struck vigorously, hence allowing the Arabs to re-instigate the raiding they had been deprived of for more than a millennium.

 Young Salafist: Watch it, Tyranosopher, don’t you insult the Prophet! The Prophet is all I dream about, all the time, wet or not.

 Tyranosopher: You know very well, Young Salafist brimming with uncontrolled hormones, that this is what the fundamental Muslim texts say. Muhammad’s analysis was astute. The Greco-Roman and Persian empires were culprit each in their own way, of the tremendous war they made to each other, and they were on their knees. Muhammad’s hatred of the Jews grew from the Christians’ hatred of the Jews.

 By the way, if I want to insult long dead characters, I have the right to do so, according to my own religion.

 Young Salafist: You don’t have a religion, you believe in nothing, you insult everybody, even your friend Obama.

 Tyranosopher: Quite the opposite, I am helping everybody, by telling the truth. I believe in truth, and I believe in desperately searching for truth. That makes me a follower of the second most fundamental religion of man. And I subscribe to the first one, too, love.

 The truth is that Muhammad came from a prominent family in Mecca, but differently from the rest of them, was an analphabet. Somebody less charitable than me may think that had to do with his tough youth, and attending neurological problems he may have suffered from, PBUH! 

 Young Salafist: Spare me the sarcasm. Peace Be Upon Him, that man I dream about all the time.

 Tyranosopher: Are you gay? I find you rather sad. In any case, Muhammad gave too much of a military mien to Islam. But then, he had to, or Islam would not be on the map. After all, it’s the Roman military dictatorship, that decided to put Christianity, or, more exactly “Orthodox Catholicism”, on the map, and in command. They did so in a disastrous way. Later, the Franks found the right way: use the Church, to impose… progressive secularism.

 Obama: Can you guys come back to the subject at hand? Why such violence? Why couldn’t they all just play basket ball? That’s what I did, look where I am!

 Tyranosopher: Don’t worry the reservoir of potential Salafists inside the USA is a small fraction of that it is in a country such as France. One will hold them back with the idea of the republic, not by taking their rights away, even before judging them.

 You, Obama, could afford to not take your studies seriously. You were the missing link. Your life experience was, from the start, out of the ordinary. You lived in a mansion in Indonesia, with servants’ quarters. You went to the top private school in Hawai’i, Punahou. You also went to Harvard, same as your father, and, because your father had been there (“legacy admission“). Harvard is where the leaders are selected, and the spider web of worldwide leaders is set-up. Most recent USA presidents came from the Ivy League. Aka the Evil League.

 Even the guy who organized Pearl Harbor, the head of the imperial navy, admiral Yamamoto, went to Harvard. Speak of a guy who “studied here”! And let me exceptionally not mention the Nazis.

 It’s not about smarts, but about connections with wealth, as an owner, look at the Bushes, Kennedys, or… as a servant. For compliance, look at Bill Clinton, who did exactly what Goldman-Sachs told him to do, in a Faustian contract. Clinton went to Yale, still Ivy League.

 The contract made him swear. But he did what he was told to do, namely to deregulate finance in a way never seen before in the history of civilization. The total devolution of the public to the private. OK, something like that happened to the republic in Florence, when it turned into “The Prince”, plutocracy, basically a few private banks. (But then notice that Italy fell off civilization for several centuries.) So now here we are, neo-feudalism coalescing.

 Harvard plays into a form of violence. Its connection with various bloody dictators were left unpunished, even unpublished. In economics, many of its professors have published academic papers claiming that transferring more assets to rich people was what the Harvard doctors recommended (allusion to austerity propaganda from famous Harvard professors: Reinhart. Rogoff, Alesina, Ardagna).

 Under the guise of fair, balanced, learned, equal opportunity, extremely stealthy methods of vicious exploitation have been invented. They are different from those denounced in the past, in the period from 1648 (year of parliamentary revolutions in England and Paris, La Fondre) until Proudhon, Marx, etc.

 Obama: Once again Tyranosopher you are drifting through an immense historical landscape that seems to have nothing to do with the Jihadists in our midst.

 Tyranosopher: The most important connections are the ones that have not been made explicit yet, because they are deeper.

 As I was saying, the USA outsmarted the Western European powers, partly deliberately, partly by serendipity, in a sort of selection of the most effective behaviors, however devious. Devious support, by the USA, for the worst of Islam was crucial, in the rise of the present day Jihadism.

 Young Jihadist: See, Obama, you are devious, even though you don’t know about it.

 Tyranosopher: A preferred devious method, has been the traditional one of dividing to conquer. To enact these divisions, support was given to extremely violent enemies of “American” values. Including various fascists, in particular the Soviets, the Nazis, and violently regressive Islamists. Those enemies of the USA turned out to be its best tools. 

 Such fascist embodiments are unsustainable, making them valuable. The mess they create leads to divisions, hence easy pickings. Since 1945, contrarily to the cautious policies of Britain and France, Roosevelt’s USA threw its mighty support to Salafists, starting with the Saudis. (For comparison, the Brits annihilated the fiercest Wahhabist army, not even two decades prior; most of the 9/11 highjackers were Saudis.)

 CIA support was given to Khomeini’s followers, in 1953, and still later to Pakistani Fundamentalists, then to bin Laden (and the SIA), etc.. Thus we see it was more than a plot. It was a plotted strategy, that unfolded over 60 years (the support of Bush II for various Muslim extremists in Iraq was a continuation of that strategy: let the museums and archeological sites be looted, help the fanatics, bury the secularists).

 This strategy is coming to an end for diverse reasons. Terror by drones the way practiced presently by the Obama administration tries to extend it, but it is not sustainable. However, it’s causing, long term, tremendous civilizational damage. The West is losing credibility.

 Obama: “Civilizational damage”? What kind of weird notion is this?

 Tyranosopher: Civilizational standards are not just what make a civilization worth defending. They constitute a fundamental military asset, as Nap said. Civilizational standards are how the Athenians won at Marathon, or Salamis against the immense might of the giant Persian empire. On the verso, uncowed Sparta vanished from history, because its civilization was racist and plutocratic, something that leads to unrecoverable stupidity, among other problems.

 The drone program may have killed only a few thousand people, but the bombing of civilization itself it wrought is unequalled. (Although it may still be reverted at this point, should one be contrite enough about it.)

 Faisal Shahzad, USA citizen of Pakistani origin: “I entered a 2010 guilty plea, to try to set off a car bomb in Times Square, and I justify targeting civilians by telling the judge, ‘When the drones hit, they don’t see children’.

 Obama: I am the leader of the Greatest Nation on Earth, under God. I say this all the time. Pay attention. I am not your average terrorist.

 Tyranosopher: You call the ones you killed, terrorists. Just like in Vietnam. However, the law says that people are innocent, until proven to be terrorists. So you do not respect the most fundamental pre-condition to law, namely that punishment never precedes conviction.

 We know for example that a 16 year old USA born citizen was killed on a beach in a USA drone attack (apparently with a number of other teens), in one of the “Signature Strikes”.  Such an assassination, in the name of civilization, is the signature of a failed civilization. For such a crime, in old republican Rome, you would have been executed the “old fashion way“. (The one Roman president Nero was condemned to by the Senate.)

 Where are the excuses for that, killing boys having fun on a beach? Where is the enquiry? Or do you, Obama, president of the USA, consider, justify and order, killing teens on beaches on the other side of the planet? Explain to me why this is not much worse than the worse pedophilia?

 Obama: As I always say, I am the leader of the Greatest Nation on Earth, under God. I am not a terrorist, by definition, but the very definition of respectability. Fear me.

 Young Salafist: If we killed you, Obama, you, and your followers would not be as respected. However we will not kill you, because you are our best agent. We kill for the Greatest Religion on Earth, in the name of the one and only God. We are not stuck in one nation, our house is the House of the rising Sun, the House Of Peace, the Ummah. My universal God is better than your national god. Watch me and other martyrs die for it.

  Obama: You can’t kill me, I am invincible. Wherever I go, there is an army protecting me. Same for my family. Taxpayers will support me and my family forever, making me forever invincible. As they did with other great USA leaders.

 Tyranosopher: Our Salafist friend here is correct, Greatest Religion beats “Greatest Nation”.  Mr. President, you are too fond of calling the USA “the greatest notion of Earth”. This does not serve the country well. Not at all.

 Obama, laughing: Nation, not notion. Keep your words cogent.

 Tyranosopher: Calling the USA “the greatest nation on Earth” is not just a ridiculous notion. It is also extremely dangerous. There is a plethora of examples in history about the extreme lethality of nationalistic hubris. Athens went down that road to hell.

 Obama: I will remember you for the next drone kill list. See who is lethal.

 Tyranosopher: You feel lethal, as a child, but supreme thoughts kill better. All you are doing, is messing up civilization. Killing crowds, just because some enemies may be there, is the end of any pretense to civilized behavior. Flaunting it, is an attitude that aggravates the practice. 

 The USA is not the first democracy proclaiming, urbi et orbi, that it had a right to kill innocent civilians. It never ended well. it’s a philosophical red line. When a civilization crosses it, it dies. Such a murderous hubris was the proximal cause of Athens’ downfall.

 “Signature strikes” the killing of civilians associated by mere physical proximity, is as low a notion as humanity ever got. You do not even pretend to hate them, or that you want to eat them.

 In the hierarchy of anti-civilizational values, “Signature Strikes” are lower than torture, because torture comes from giving some value to the person one tortures. One values the knowledge that person may have, or one appreciates the pain one inflicts to them, or one values theirmind enough to break it.

 Signature strikes are lower than hate crimes. Signature strikes are lower than even cannibalism. Signature strikes are all about smitting people utterly, as if they were insects.

 Signature strikes makes the president of the USA in a devil Picasso, signing horror with pride of office. It’s beyond terrorism. It enrages people worldwide so much, it does not even bring terror. It only brings horror for the absence of values you embody. It deserves a new name, horrorism. 

 American historian of the racist type: Tyranosopher, I would hate to call you naïve. Yet, face the facts: in WWII, we imprisoned citizens of the USA of second and third generation, if they had some Japanese ancestors. It was brutal. But the reputation of the USA as a brutal power serves the USA well. If, centuries ago, the European colons in North America had not killed nearly all the Natives, the USA would be like Bolivia or Peru. Look even at Mexico: by 1600CE, there were basically only a million natives left. Too many. Now Mexico is like half Indian.

 Tyranosopher: I am not naïve, just the opposite, you are. What worked before, to establish an empire, against naïve Neolithic Natives, can have the exact opposite effect, trying to grab resources from the rest of the world. each “Signature Strike” may kill one hater of the West, and create ten thousands. Better get your anti-missiles working well against Pakistani ICBMs…

 Herodotus, Greek historian: A more general problem is that, by deciding who, among citizens of the USA, would live or die, at your own whim, Obama, you have made yourself, symbollically and practically, into what the Greeks called a tyrannos, a tyrant. As I said of the Athenians under tyranny: …”they let themselves be beaten, since they worked for a master…” To establish new wisdom as Tyranosopher does, one has to be unique. But when a politician reigns as one, that’s a tyrant.

  Obama: Signatures strikes are effective. They show the power of the USA. Not only we can do it physically, but we have the moral strength to do it.

  Tyranosopher: Tyrannies are always short term effective. You do not know what “moral” means. It means: “sustainable”. A traditional war, although with supersonic bombers, drones and smart bombs, as the French republic does in Mali, is indefinitively sustainable, fair and square. But the French fight warriors, on the battlefield. They are not killing crowds of unknown people, not fighting anybody. That earns them respect, even from their enemies.

  Whereas Carthage, long a top civilization, was undone by its immoral morality, killing innocent children. You are making the USA into a modern Carthage.

  Obama: Carthage was defeated by Roman armies, not morals.

  Tyranosopher: Conventional wisdom, the seduction of the superficial, that’s what you want to overcome. Instruct yourself, young man, lest you came to be known as Obabad. The Greeks called barbararians ba-ba, because they thought like children. You add badness to the mix. Obabad.

 The planned annihilation of Carthage in a Third Punic war, was hotly debated in the Roman Senate. Many, including the imperator put in command of the destroying army, were fully aware that Rome was crossing a philosophical red line. That transgression could, and even would, bring Rome’s destruction. This was said explicitly at the time (source: Polybius). The tough-as-diamond Roman imperator cried, as he saw the great metropolis burn under the extermination assault of his crack legions. he knew Rome was sealing her fate.

  Yet, it was foreordained. The fact that Carthage had sacrificed children to the fire made the difference, in the minds of the Roman senators and the military. It was the excuse that allowed to forget the real reason for wanting the annihilation of Carthage.

  You, Obama, sacrifice children to the fire, including the occasional, highly symbolic American child. Killing other people’s children, on the other side of the earth, does not make it any less so.

  Don’t deny.

  If you insist to deny that you are flaunting child killing as a new bedrock for civilization, then make full light about who, among your drone people, decided to kill that 16 year old American born boy, and how. And if it was a honest mistake, so to speak, let’s confront it. Only then can you talk to history with an honest face.

***

Patrice Ayme