Posts Tagged ‘Tyranny’

Hypersonic Missiles From Tyrannical Gas!

February 20, 2022

HYPERSONICS from EU Revenues:

60% of the revenues of the Kremlin nuclear tyrant comes from fossil fuels sold to the West. And what did that bring? Hypersonics! Monster missiles shrieking through the air at two miles per second… Is that the famous “energy transition” European propagandists have been talking about obsessively? Transition to tyranny? 

Transition from nuclear power plants to nuclear tipped missiles we can see only in the last ten seconds? Transition to doing what Putin wants us to do? Watch as he reconstitutes the largest empire Russia ever had? To start with? And what does the imperially obsessed tyrant do with these colossal revenues from the West?

Similarly to Hitler, Putin builds weapons. But… Putin is smarter than Hitler. Putin’s weapons have a real, serious qualitiative advantage on the West.  

Contrary to legend Hitler did not have a qualitative advantage in weapons in 1940. The French had way better tanks, superior in range, power, and armor… And much more of them. In aviation, the best British and French fighters, the Hurricane and the Dewoitine, equalled the best Nazi fighters. The only advantages the Nazis had were a practice of tactics, integration of aviation and tanks, radio in all the tanks, massive usage of amphetamines, and fanaticism (Nazis used suidical engineers with explosive backpacks). 

Over all, the French and the British had weapons the Nazis did not posses, or in numbers so low as being irrelevant and ridiculous. Basically, in five days starting May 10, 1940, the Nazis took the French by surprise. Once the French learned, they had lost the Battle of France and the French C in C had been fired (May 17). The situation with Putin is different. 

Putin really has  a new type of weapons that the West doesn’t have. Hypersonic missiles, at least hundreds of them, some long deployed and in improved versions. 

A ballistic missile goes up thousands of kilometers above the atmosphere, and enjoys a fully visible and predictable trajectory… predictable from classical mechanics. “Ballistic” means weight. Hypersonic missiles instead skirt low over the ground, at speeds of the same order as that of ballistic missiles. That makes those missiles impossible to see from ground radar until it’s too late. Those hypersonic missiles evade existing defenses, and reduce warning times before impact to… ten seconds. That those hypersonic missiles violated de facto the Medium Range ballistic missile treaty has been blatant for more than a dozen years, and I wrote about it. Much later, in 2014, the Obama administration woke up, and Trump pulled out of the treaty in 2019. 

However, neither France nor the US, the two leading Western military powers, have developped hypersonic missiles. US research tests have been pathetically few and generally dismal failures… The French do not even have seemed to understand something is going on, and they don’t know wha it is. One must admire Russian engineers, who are a decade ahead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=299pbdH9XhY

We don’t want to criticize Hitler, or anyone else, when that’s not deserved. Hitler was not ready to wage a world war in 1939, because he did not choose, or want, a war with Britain and France in 1939: the French forced him into it. An increasingly aghast Hitler believed the democracies to be weak and lacking in will to fight. Surprised from the French and the Bbritish is why Hitler was so unprepared. UK PM Chamberlain outsmarted Hitler by gaining time at Munich, while building an air force that Hitler could only dream of.  The French would have been better off attacking in 1938… With only Czechoslovakia as an ally. But then France would have been accused by the US of war mongering… Choices, choices…

Now we have a Kremlin tyrant, who has wunder Waffen, wonder weapons… but nothing else to show. So he is anxious to use them, you know, otherwise it will be too late, and he is old anyway, so he may as well destroy something out of sheer frustration and making good entertainement that he will the first to watch. We will have to resist, as yours truly said for well above a decade. But then it is going to be painful and scary. Choices, choices… 

With more advanced electronics dictator Putin made hypersonic missiles which can destroy his enemies, who don’t have them. So now he can attack. Advancing technology was always empowering. How to use that power is the moral question.. Morality has to advance with tech. It didn’t.

Let’s keep it simple: when a fascist tyranny is in a Kaiser Trap, democracies should treat it as a possible extinction event, and treat it accordingly.

Putin delendus est!

Patrice Ayme

Tsirkon, aka Zircon, probably because of use of Zirconium, a metal found in nuclear fuel bars because of its high temperature resistance, is just the latest hypersonic Russian missile. For well above a decade, the US failed to make fly significantly a US version of the idea. The energy of the missile is such that, on impact, it has kinetic energy equivalent to 2.2 tons of TNT.

Affordable Care Act Neither Affordable Nor Caring.

May 7, 2021

Inflation is measured in contrived ways, mostly to undercount it where it really hurts. Hence the housing and educational crises in the USA (and also in Europe: when France, and the rest of Europe, “deindustrialize”, this is caused, in part by the collapse of the educational system relative to Asia).

In the USA, healthcare inflation is gigantic. Somebody commenting Paul Krugman in the New York Times noticed:

Joe Arena from Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey wrote:

For the love of God, healthcare prices have been going up above and beyond the rate of inflation (5-6% per year), and a family insurance plan that cost $7,000 annually (just in premiums, excl. out of pocket) in 2000 now costs over $20,000 in 2021. Has anyone’s wages tripled in that span? Nope. How is there not more anger over this? Even from corporate America, who has to pay employer sponsored insurance…I would have expected a major call from them to solve the issue yet nothing. Why isn’t this discussed more???

I replied and Paul published my comment right away (!):

Healthcare price inflation is not discussed anymore, because Obamacare is venerated, and the official name of Obamacare is the “Affordable Care Act”. Those who do not understand that healthcare has become “Affordable” would be suspect, because they would systematically pretend to not understand  that Obamacare saved the US. Fortunately, most “Democrats” see that Obama has made healthcare “Affordable”, and thus without inflation. 

The real reality is completely different: the problem of basic healthcare in the USA is that it is all too much for profit, whereas it should be viewed 100% as a human right. Thus US healthcare costs 50% more than in comparable countries in Europe. Those 50% are pure profit for the few and the greediest. Once Obamacare was passed, US life expectancy went down. My brother in law died from a heart attack in a parking lot, because the first hospital he drove to refused to treat him at 2am. They had implanted a stent a few weeks before, but he was very poor. He died on his way to a less greedy hospital in cold Anchorage. 

Obamacare, or then Obama’s policies, were a disaster for US life expectancy. I am a registered Democrat but not one who lies to me and others. That the average Dem leader refuses to admit the truth shows they are not… democrats. They are DINOs, Democrats In Name Only, laughing loud all their way to the bank.

The problem with democracy in the US in particular, and the West in general has been that it will only progress if ideas progress, and that requires perceiving real reality.

I keep falling across philosophers singing the praises of Aristotle. Aristotle himself was aware of the problem of reality: he sent students to make an inventory of living species (there was a lot of confusion from myths and fossils). However in practical philosophy, politics, Aristotle was sure of himself: the universe was organized by a supreme being, the great fascist in the sky.

Aristotle said the Macedonian king Philip II of Macedon was good. It was a false problem to believe Philip was bad. Then Aristotle had to flee Athens to save his life.
Later Aristotle’s friend Antipater became the installer of tyranny in Athens, and ordered the execution of Demosthenes. Demosthenes said: “The easiest thing in the world is self-deceit; for every man believes what he wishes, though the reality is often different.”[Third Olynthiac, section 19 (349 BCE). ]
Demosthenes: “Whatever shall be to the advantage of all, may that prevail!”
Speech against Philip II of Macedon (351 BCE)
Why do we insist upon listening to Aristotle, as he contributed, perhaps more than anybody else, including Antipater, or even Philip, in destroying democracy? Aristotle had the power, the mental power to tell his friends, Philip, Alexander, Antipater, Craterus, how advantageous democracy was.
Aristotle probably could have persuaded them: Alexander was notoriously ambivalent about what to do with democracy and freedom, and did not want to use force against Athens.
However, Aristotle was much less in doubt: he called Demosthenes a politician. In truth Demosthenes was an advocate of democracy, and Aristotle a good friend to his best friends, the Macedonian tyrants, many of whom he had taught himself in person.

One of his friend, a fellow who was not too bright, was sent to arrest Demosthenes, who had taken refuge on an island off invaded Athens. The friend had been mandated by the fascist Macedonians who occupied Athens. The not so bright fellow conversed with the philosopher, who, knowing he faced torture before execution, thanks to the executor of Aristotle’s will, Antipater, was carrying poison. Demosthenes took the poison. Aristotle had been dead a couple of years, by then, but this was his greatest victory, the victory of monarchy over democracy.

Telling the truth to power, the possible truth to power, is the essence of democracy. But talking is not enough. But talking is not enough. One needs a society opened to listening. The case of the Affordable Care Act is typical: if one is for progress in the US, one is not supposed to criticize it, if one does not want to be called terrible names, and then cancelled.

Democracy is not just an institutional system. It has to be more than that. It has to be a mood connected to the open society. And what that society has to be the most open to is intelligent, tolerant debate.

Patrice Ayme

Debate Is Human, Tyranny Is Not

March 11, 2016

FUKUSHIMA, NAZISM, SYRIA: FOR LACK OF DEBATE

“Tyranny” means the rule of one.

For example Obama decided not to intervene in Syria. All alone. He thought it was smart. Now hundreds of thousands more civilians died there. The point is that he decided that all alone, which a herd of sycophants bleating around. He is The One. An Augustus for our time.

The world is decided by a few. That’s the so-called “Representative Democracy”.

For example, British MPs decided to deprive PM Cameron of the authorization of intervening in Syria. That in turn, undermined the confidence of The One who leads the USA from-behind. Who made these few so knowledgeable? Right, they were elected. So were many kings and emperors, and the members of the Roman Senate. Hitler was elected, and won plebiscite.

Maybe We Should Elect Artists To Lead Us? Oops. Tried Before

Maybe We Should Elect Artists To Lead Us? Oops. Tried Before

The king of Bavaria, who refused to participate in the grandiose German militarization to finish the French Republic (and then master Russia), diverted spending of his state towards the construction of immensely expensive, fabulous castles, such as glorious Neuschwanstein above. But look at this painting better: it’s actually signed.

Most of those few who decide everything are remarkably ignorant. That comes with the function: how can one who spends most of his/her time telling artful lies to be elected, have artistic capability for anything else?

Adolf Hitler thought he did: “I am an artist and not a politician. Once the Polish question is settled, I want to end my life as an artist.” (A lie said to a British diplomat in 1939) Hitler’s painting (above) of Neuschwanstein sold for more than $100,000 in 2015. One day soon, it will be worth millions (don’t tell me it’s worse than what passes for most of modern “art”, for once I agree with The Guide).

Five years ago, the nuclear plant at Fukushima was hit by a thirty meter wave, towering menacingly over the security cameras. The reactors resisted successfully (they had already SCRAMed during the 9.1 Richter quake), but the electricity feeding the cooling pumps was out. There should have been mobile energy generators, but they were in Florida (!) In the absence of circulating coolant, the reactors overheated and melted down in the next few hours or days.

The blowing up and melting of the reactors at Fukushima was a completely, easily avoidable accident. A national, popular, even international debate would have avoided it. Secrecy enabled it. TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power COmpany) had hidden all it was doing:

  1. Putting at sea level (by destroying a cliff), nuclear reactors.
  2. Not having an emergency mobile electric generating system
  3. Ignoring the similar tsunami which had happened 12 centuries earlier (and that was written all over, including on warning monuments inside the forest).
  4. In the last two centuries, Japan enjoyed many tsunamis. The largest one was more than 100 meters tall, the second largest, 85 meters. Nearly all Japanese nuclear reactors are located in places where tsunamis will be maximal (weird… but it makes sense!)

The preceding points should (have been) debated. Point 4) is understandable (cooling by sea, access by road, long debate; but, once understood, countermeasures should be devised). Points 1), 2) and 3) have no excuses.

The less nuclear power, the higher the sea. Pseudo-ecologists will probably get that, when Miami has been transformed into an aquatic park.

As we wait for president Trump to be the Trump card trumping all, it is good to ponder that the very principle of representative politics is not representative of humanity.

Whether greedy Clinton and her cortege of professionally greedy vampires is better than greedy Donald with a similar cortege of exploiters is besides the point.

“Politics” is about the city: “polis”. Politics should not be about just one greedy persona and his/her second rate philosophy. Being all about one guy, that’s called “TYRANNY”. Obama, Hollande, Merkel, Cameron, Renzi, Abe, Trudeau, are basically tyrants: the systems they lead are similar, and are actually perfectly well oiled versions of The Roman Imperial System set-up by emperor Augustus. One man at the top, a small oligarchy below (the Roman Senate had more than 600 members, and they were elected…)

Meanwhile “The Atlantic” produced “The Obama Doctrine”.

Obama believes that G. W. Bush invaded Iraq because he was stupid, surrouded and advised by stupid people who blundered into invading Iraq. “The Iraq invasion, Obama believed, should have taught Democratic interventionists like Clinton, who had voted for its authorization, the dangers of doing stupid shit.”

Obama is naive: he thinks human behavior is all about smarts. (Amusingly, I know a classmate of his, much smarter than he is, who believes exactly the opposite.) But, the reason for the invasion of Iraq was not avoiding “the dangers of doing stupid shit”.

It was the exact opposite.

The invasion of Iraq was doing stupid shit, knowing full well everybody in the know knew it was stupid shit. And it’s rather stupid of Obama not to have figured that out.

Patrice Ayme’

HUMANISM IS FORCE. No-Fly Over Libya.

March 8, 2011

THE LYING GATES OF HELL: WORLD WAR TWO, AND NOW.

Democracy Has To Use Force Against That Major Plutocrat, Gaddafi. Because against ultimate evil, only ultimate force works.

***

Abstract: Qaddafi’s aviation just bombed the main water tank of the major city and oil terminal of Ras Lanouf, depriving the city of water. Ras Lanouf is held by the freedom fighters struggling against Gaddafi’s tyranny. French TV crews on the ground have witnessed, and filmed massive bombing raids by the planes of the tyrant. The freedom fighters find very difficult to hold the front, because of those aerial assaults (they have no defensive anti-aircraft missiles).

Khadafy is one of the world’s top plutocrats. Thus his friends are many, mighty, and they know how to hide their wealth and power.

Qaddafi controls directly 140 billion dollars, mostly in the West (that corresponds to such a hole in official Libyan finances). Just as one does not know how to spell Gaddafi’s name, nor how many people he tortures everyday, one does not know where his financial web is (part of it could be in a TV station next to you, and certainly all over Hollywood). 140 billion dollars make Qaddafi one of the West’s most important masters. Kadafi does not just own Libya, he owns you.

Gaddafi became great friend of the Western leadership under George W. Bush, because plutocrats love each other. Takes one to love one. Especially in these days, when plutocrats lose so many friends among the many, the small, credulous and naive.

Moreover, the USA knew nothing much about the Arab-Muslim world (and still does not, hence the obsession with syrupy celebration of Islam). After 9/11, the government of the USA purchased the Libyan Gestapo to help in these matters, in the best tradition of fascists lending a helping hand to fascists, wherever they are, whatever they are doing.

So it should come as no surprise that the US Secretary of “Defense” Robert Gates, an old hand of the imperial fascist rule, has been lying about the difficulty of establishing “No Fly” zones over Libya.

According to the trembling Gates, “No Fly” over Libya is too shocking to consider. Why? What happened to your stealthy, supersonic F22s?

Or is it because Khaddafy is the devil Gates knows, and appreciates, part of the worldwide plutocratic conspiracy he serves, and has always served? Or because Gates aspires to cash in with said worldwide plutocracy, within a few months, as many of his predecessors in the Bush and Obama administrations have done?

Cashing in only works in the framework of the established order. If revolution keeps on spreading, even mainstream plutocrats in the USA could come under examination, and the entire corrupt system could find itself attacked by the middle class…

Moreover Khadafy is destroying the Libyan People, and that can only be useful for those who only love oil, and love even more peoples of the oil rich nations to understand that their reason for being is to respect the oil dictators who send the oil to the West. Those who love order can only love order to re-establish itself. Gaddafi was one of Bush II’s strong elements.

We have seen the will to submit peoples before. OK, the entire Second World War was about that, and this is why the USA waited for the Japanese and German fascists to attack; the devastation the fascists were visiting was as much weakening of potential competitors… of the USA. OK, not all American officials may have acted on this. But only idiots would not have thought about it.

The extravagant aerial “Allied” bombing devastation visited on France in 1944 was another aspect of the same will to submit potential competitors, and extend the reservoir of slaves and freedmen: the bombing of France was not directed at the, by then, completely impotent Nazis, at least inside France (by August 1944, the Nazis were bottled up in ports such as Toulon, Marseilles, Nantes, Brest, La Rochelle, etc… With no submarines able to sneak out, and no boats left, they had only isolated Nazi garrisons watching over the ramparts, besieged, unable to go out, armed just with guns).

So the massive American bombings on French ports and other industrial installations was directed towards the French People, French cities, French industry, should they revolt, or just thrive. Rebuilding out of the rubble should, and did, keep the French busy in the next few decades. And a bit more respectful: if I bomb you, you kowtow thereafter. Well done.

This subject is never approached in this brazen way in France. Except by a close relative of mine, sotto voce, in confidence. He used to be an admiral, and commanded French vessels, including an aircraft carrier. Certainly the complete destruction of, say, Saint Malo, was an anti-French act, not an anti-Nazi act. Saint Malo was in no sense a military asset of the Nazis (Saint Malo was rebuilt identically, stone by stone).

American plutocratic strategists have long thought that not helping democracy was in their best material interest, and they were proven right. It brought on the entire so called “American Century”. But past acts have future consequences, even if delayed.

OK, the “American Century” lasted 56 years… until it fell flat on his head from the towering, tottering, crumbling heights of plots within plots, in great clouds of smoke and destruction.

So the American Century is over. It turns out that it was perverted by plutocracy, as plutocracy has been doing what it always does best: gut the core of the empire, so that no revolt of the rabble at the core, can topple it. Riddled through its core, the empire is imploding, as it did not protect its workers, exactly as plutocracy contrived it. And always does. This is the difference between republic and plutocracy; republic is sustainable, but not so the rule of wealth.

The People of the USA is now in need of all the help it can get from democracy. But, whether the Americans understand this enough or not, the Europeans themselves should understand that it is in their best interest that their own sea, the Mediterranean, the cradle of the civilization we have, would know democracy all around.

It is not a question of making the Libyan revolution in place of the Libyans. Democracy needs to make it a fair fight, just as a matter of justice. None of the fascist air force should be allowed to attack the freedom fighters. France and Britain, or France alone, have the means, and should gather the will to do so, and attack. They should remember what happened when they did not intervene in the (mislabeled) “Spanish Civil War“.

When an army attacks a People, other peoples should intervene. That is what happened in Spain in 1936. That is what is happening in Libya, in 2011.

But there is more than justice involved. It is time to remember that the famous Roman emperor Septimus Severus was born in Leptis Magna (modern Lebda in Libya). His father was of Punic-Libyan origin. Under his son, Roman citizenship was given to all free men.

clip_image001Roman Amphitheater in Leptis Magna (Libya).

*

Rome ended in Libya not out of empire as much as out of survival. Rome had to fight Carthage, and, later, Jugurtha. There is indeed much more a stake. Democracy around the Mediterranean is actually a matter of survival for Europe.

With nuclear bombs, and other WMDs, anything can happen, and real fast. Having fascist regimes a few miles away is not a viable option. The Libyan dictator proved, long ago, that deliberate war crimes were one of his tools (the same argument was made against Saddam Hussein, but the case against Saddam was very murky, to say the least, as responsibilities were shared with the West who was allied to him, and had armed him, when not outright fought for him).

So the Europeans need to intervene in Libya. And that means with more than sending French Direction de la Défense de la Sécurité Civile teams on the ground (which is already happening in Benghazi).

Athens was rid of its tyrant by an intervention of the Spartan army (which is ironical, considering what happened later). The Athenian people could not do it itself. Why? Because armies are made of professional killers, with all the resources necessary to kill multitudes and peoples are not, and do not have the resources. When an army attacks a people, and other peoples just watch, they become accomplices to the mayhem.

The United Nations was initially a French intellectual idea from 1916 as the Société des Nations, the SDN. The United Nations has a lot to learn: Khadafy was put on the Human Right Commission, and was even elected to lead it! More grotesque than that, there is not; by the same token, Hitler would have been elected to head the commission on minorities, and human rights. But calling plutocrats “philanthropic’ is how it’s done, in the USA, and God knows how influential the USA is.

It is high time to remember that the United Nations is an instrument of civilization, but is not civilization itself. The UN is a tool of world governance, and a big classroom, and a place of instruction, but it does not replace civilization. Civilization is a greater force, and it rules because it has a greater force. Brains without force are only the ruin of hope. When civilization forgets that, that the mind thinks, but force rules, not only is the way harder, but it may well bring annihilation.

Go back to 1939: it’s Britain and France which declared war to Hitler. Not the USA. Time for France and Britain to defend democracy again. Make haste.

***

***

GATES OF HELL:

Lies are often technical. That gives them the appearance of truth. Thus, they generally appear, masquerading as the result of expertise to the naive populations, giving them, through an appearance of technicality, an excuse to believe them.

I give here an example: the lying of the US Secretary of Defense, Gates. Gates claimed that to establish a “no fly” zone over (some part of) Libya would require a total attack on Libya, Iraq style. That’s a lie. A related lie is to say that it would be useless. (Well, then give the insurgents SAMs.)

“Let’s call a spade a spade,” Gates said at a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing. “A no-fly zone begins with an attack on Libya to destroy the air defenses.”

Meanwhile Clinton gave a warning that a lot of Al Qaeda fighters came from Eastern Libya. Thanks Hillary for reminding us that Qadafi is on your side in Afghanistan, and presumably, other places! (In other relevant news, white fighters from Eastern America scalped people… and Boston municipal authorities used to pay for said scalps. Is Clinton going to warn us about that too?)

Clearly American ‘leaders’ have probably been reminded by their wealthy masters that what we are observing is the end of the American protectorate in the Mideast, if regimes keep on toppling.

Could that toppling of plutocratically useful regimes extent all the way, all over? Imagine: no more oil from Chavez, or then, oil paid in euros. Imagine: China cracking, and American plutocratic corporations unable to make stuff there, using slave labor there, while killing labor in the West. Imagine: no more so called American order, and next thing you know, the American people could rise in revolt against their true masters (the concept of masters of mankind is from Adam Smith, not Karl Marx).

American oil companies pushed to “normalize” the relationship with Gaddafi. Never mind that was “normalizing” relationships with a regime which had grossly violated human rights, and never mind that the human rights of the Americans and the French (among others) had been violated. For some of the corporate aristocracy, human rights enter no computation.

***

BARBIE & KHADAFY, CRIMINALS AGAINST MANKIND:

Many close to Khadafy have pointed out in the last few weeks that Khadafy personally ordered the bombings of American and French jumbo jets, which were clearly crimes against mankind. No, I am not forgetting the shooting down of Korean and Iranian jumbo jets by Russian and American military, respectively: these were (lamentable) errors, which showed an (abominable) disregard for the possibility of killing civilians. But they were not the deliberate killing of civilians to achieve that aim and that aim alone. So they were not crimes against mankind.

Crimes against mankind show up in the detail. They do not show up in their full glory, because those who commit crimes against mankind want to spread an aura of terror, without provoking enraged despair. Enraged despair would mean desperate resistance (what we have in Libya now). Even tyrants can be damaged by such, so tyrants don’t like to provoke it. Whereas an aura of fear means paralysis by analysis, and ruling with little effort. Only decerebration beats it, as a tool of submission.

Klaus Barbie, who tortured to death about 5,000 people in the Lyon area during WWII, as SS-Hauptsturmführer (rank equivalent to army captain), was later captured by the French in Bolivia. He was condemned to life in prison for the murder of 44 children (and 5 adult supervisors).

The children had been deported, and then gazed on arrival. The reason? They were children of Jewish refugees in France, and Barbie’s forces raided the secret orphanage where they were sheltered. Jewish origin was good enough a reason for the Nazis to kill people, and even children. Now, of course, in Nazi semantics, Jews were not “people” but “Untermenschen” (under-men), or “Unmenschen” (nonhuman).

***

IT’S ABOUT DEMOCRACY, NOT ISLAM:

To those who scoff about me dwelling on Nazi semantics: those classifying Arab speaking people as “Muslim”, are on the same slippery slope, as the Nazis were.

Most so called “Jews” were not Jewish at all: see Albert Einstein, or Hannah Arendt, who were pretty typical of Western European Jews: 100% “Jews” who never practiced any superstition (hence no Judaism). Is a Jew who never practiced Judaism a Jew? Is there such a thing as a Jewish race, as the Nazis believed, and is it defined by religion, even if people do not practice it? The Nazis answered yes, because they were out to kill people, so they grabbed whichever reason they could contrive. It was enough that it made sense to them.

The Nazis defined secular people according to a superstition they did not practice, so that they could paint them with the excesses of the Bible (and traditions attached to the Jews by “Christian” manipulators, such as poisoning wells, killing Jesus, and spilling the blood of Christian newborns). Those defining Arab speaking people according to a religion that they may, or may not feel define them, are on the same exact slippery slope of defining essence by appearance.

So Muslim this, Muslim that, thus “Muslim civilization”, naturally opposed to “Christian civilization”. Those two variants of the same superstition, Judaism, have gods with a different number of heads, so they hate each other. Defining secular Arabs according to their superstition (if any), the Nazis did that before (actually Hitler did: just as he despised the Jews, he admired the Muslims who he imagined as intrinsic warriors, thanks to Islam).

Neither Christianity nor Islam are civilizations. they are just superstition. Democracy, on the other hand, is about the nature of man, there is nothing superstitious about it.

***

DIFFERENT REASONS FOR KILLING CHILDREN:

French justice did not bother to pursue Barbie for the 5,000 he tortured to death, because there would have been arguments back and forth whereas the questioning of so and so tortured to death, was justified or not, or happened by accident or not, (in his memoirs, Barbie gloated about torturing to death secret service agents and resistance fighters, male or female, including some he displayed, dying in his office, draped on an armchair, for days, including Jean Moulin, head of the French resistance, a prefect and excellent artist). George Bush recently argued in ways nearly identical to Barbie, that torture against “terrorists” was justified.

Barbie was employed by the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) of the U.S. Army in occupied Germany, and became later a prominent employee of the CIA in charge of secret financing through drug procurement and sale, or even smuggling weapons to Israel: fascism has no Vaterland.

As far as French justice was concerned, killing children was clearly a crime against mankind. This was also another occasion to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that Nazis were scum. By the way, contrarily to what the American web sites have it, the orphanage was for children of Jewish refugees in France. Those children were NOT French and should have been in the USA, but were refused admission in the land of the free-to-be-selfish.

Barbie’s attitude is in contrast with a “deeply sorry” General Petraeus who apologized for the deaths resulting from a dual helicopter assault that mistook a group of 10 children for insurgents. Petraeus apologized to the Afghan government, people and victims’ families for the strike President Karzai condemns as “merciless”.

Nine of the children, aged 8 to 14 year old, were killed in the attack, which took place on Tuesday March 1, 2011, in a remote area of Kunar province. The only survivor, 11 year-old Hemad, hid beneath branches blasted from a tree.

I don’t care about the apology,” Mohammed Bismil, the 20-year-old brother of two boys killed in the strike, said in a telephone interview. “The only option I have is to pick up a Kalashnikov, RPG [rocket-propelled grenade] or a suicide vest to fight.”

In Afghanistan, the West is fighting the wrong war, in the wrong way. The impudent argument has been made that the West should not fight for the Libyans by helping to fight mercenaries paid by oil money. So why should it fight “for Afghans” by bombing whoever is in sight in Afghanistan?

Is it because a strong democratic Libya would bolster Europe, and thus weaken plutocracy?

***

WHEN WAR IS WAGED, BUT NOT AGAINST THE OFFICIAL ENEMY:

Who can blame Mohammed Bismil for wanting to avenge his siblings? So it is, when waging war from the air, against a civilian population, for no necessary reason: one is one step away from war criminality. Aerial bombing does not make peace, nor even war, it makes hatred, so it has to be engaged only when reasons are overwhelming. Aerial war on potentially innocent targets, is excusable if and only if:

1) those, or their ancestors, or descendants, are collectively culprit, and

2) the aerial attacks are necessary to win the war, and, last but not least,

3) said war putting democracy at risk of being extinguished.

Those preconditions of mine would mean that massive British raids on German cities during WWII were justified and excusable (with the exception of the attack against Dresden, since, at the time, the Reich was already defeated, violating 2) and 3) above). But the Nazi attacks on Dutch, French and British cities were not justified, because the Nazis’ self described “total democracy” was not a democracy. It was just a madness (see the definition of Jews above.)

Nor, by the way, were justified the massive attacks on French cities by the “Allies”, in 1944. Then all the preconditions above were violated; the French were not Nazis, they had started the war AGAINST the Nazis, the attacks had no military value, and the war was already won.

Rue Championnet, near Montmartre, on April 22 1944 after an “Allied” bombing raid:
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Other views of Paris after “Allied” bombing:

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Entire areas of greater Paris were flattened out, by said “Allies”:

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Notice that this is a Simone De Beauvoir photo. The famous philosopher knew that preserving the memory of these ravages was important. 80% of that particular suburb, Athis-Mons, was reduced to rubble. There were thousands of devastated French landscapes such as these.

***

WE BOMB YOU, THEREFORE WE ARE ABOVE YOU, AND RICHER BESIDES:

Was this aerial bombing butchery, all over France, really necessary? To win the war against the Nazis, of course not. The war was already won. By June 1944, the Nazis were finished. In France alone, about 17 divisions were necessary, just to fight the French resistance (and the situation was somewhat similar in Yugoslavia); on the eastern front, the Nazi armies could not resist the Soviet juggernaut whatsoever: in a few weeks the Soviet armies advanced hundreds of kilometers, and stopped just in the Warsaw suburbs, to give plenty of time, many months, so that the Nazis could kill all the Polish patriots, intellectuals, etc.

But the Second World War was not just about crazed Nazis. Crazed Nazism was a way to hide the truth, just as an apparently crazed Gaddafi is a way to hide several very rational, deeper truths. Gaddafi is not crazed at all; he just plays one on TV. Nor are his plutocratic sponsors crazed either; they just play ignorant on TV.

The US Air Force systematically flattened out the French ports. Toulon, Le Havre, Saint Nazaire, and many others were completely destroyed. More exactly, they used the excuse of the ports to flatten the cities.

Since, at the time, the Nazis had no more fleet, at least in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, the only explanation is that some strategists in Washington viewed France as an enemy capable of future hostile action, and had to be destroyed when she was incapable of defending herself (this is why many of these French cities are full of ugly shabby high rises, because they were rebuilt very fast). At least so think Bernard Rue, a retired French admiral (who commanded French carriers). I concur.

The same American strategists had anticipated to occupy France, strike coinage, nominate American made prefects that they were training specially… If Hitler had not succeeded to conquer France durably, the Pax Americana would. Flattening France like crepe batter was a good first step, in that plutocratic recipe. (A similar plan was attempted, and engaged, in Germany, for a few years; in France the plan failed on day one, because the French army was too strong and did not play by American rules.)

I digress not: these same strategists are those who had brought Nazism to start with, and were busy collaborating with the Nazis they could find, as the Reich collapsed. They were serving the system many of the richest “industrialists” (as they used to be called) and financiers had connived with their pawns, Mussolini, Franco, Hitler… And they even helped Stalin, and not just its oil industry. Never saw a fascist they did not love. Mussolini exposed a theory of organic relationship between corporations held by the richest, and the state. It was applied, and not just in Italy and Germany (but also in the USA, and has been central to the “rescue” of Wall Street from itself, in the last few years).

This bombing of French cities could qualify as a crime against mankind, and also a conspiracy. But the subject has been too hot for anyone to come close to it. Even the French will not touch it. So the lessons were not drawn, condemning me to write a lot.

However, deliberately ordering the shooting down of civilian airliners, as Khadafy did, is definitely a crime against mankind, when it is committed by a state.

This is not legalistic: someone who has accomplished such monstrosities is doubly dangerous, as a perpetrator, he may have accomplished worse, unseen. As an example, and a beacon of horror, unpunished, he is an shining beacon of evil triumphant. And this is exactly why, in this inversion of all values, Gaddafi was made chair of human rights at the United Nations, voted in by more than 100 nations (all led by dubious characters, who were delighted to vote for one of themselves, thus normalizing horror).

***

THE “SPANISH CIVIL WAR”; AN ARMY AGAINST A PEOPLE:

An example to remember, a warning to meditate. In 1936, the most ferocious part of the Spanish military, the army from Africa, which held the Spanish Sahara, full of professional African mercenaries, from a land of tribes surviving only by constant war, declared war on the Spanish republic. (The Spanish Navy did not betray, and blockaded the Africans, so Texaco and Hitler flew them over.)

The Spanish African army got help from the Nazis, the Italian fascists, and their puppet masters, the American automotive and oil  companies (the later to befriend the Saudis and Khadafy). The Nazis supplied an air force to bomb the republicans with. Italy supplied a tank army. France did not intervene: the Gallic chicken were too anxious to please, or at least not contradict too much their overlords in Washington, who were much more pro-Nazi, at the time, than they are pro-Chinese now.

The ambassador of the USA to Spain wrote to president Franklin D. Roosevelt that the war will be long, because it’s the war of an army against a people. This is of course exactly what is going on in Libya: an army against a people. But the analogy in horror does not stop here.

Franco and his henchmen finally won in winter 1939 (making the UK a firm ally of France against fascism). Franco killed much more people after winning his war than he killed during the war itself. Keep that in mind with the fascist Khadafy.

 

For more than 50 years, the institutions set up by the tyrant Franco, stole children (yes, up to the 1990s!) The idea was to prevent the potential opponents to have children. Besides there was money to be made, by selling those children. As Neo Conservatives would say, where there is money to be made, there is justice. The Spanish fascists stole up to 300,000 children (and at least 100,000).

After getting away with the atrocities in Spain, the fascists thought the sky was no limit, and that the democracies were so corrupt and cowardly, that they could do whatever they pleased. Hitler was saying so, discourse after discourse. His contacts in England assured him that Britain would never side with France. He found differently on September 3, 1939. After contemplating in enraged silence a soon to be devastated Berlin skyline, Hitler turned around to his ministers, and barked: “NOW WHAT?” His alliance with Stalin and American plutocracy would not save him.

These are as many warnings to heed when thinking about what to do with Libya. The planet is a global village, and global fascism can be as much encouraged as dispirited. If fascism sees that the West has not enough spirit to defend its values, it will come to feel, just as Hitler did, that democracy is a corrupt paper tiger. Fascism will be encouraged. and fascism is not just a political phenomenon, but also an intellectual one: the more fascism develops, the more the fascists obsess about a few, increasingly violent impulses.

Well, let Washington wallop in corruption and confusion: being guided by money is not all it takes. It is time for France and Britain to remind themselves that they pack more of a wallop than in 1939. And to remember 1936.

***

THE NO FLY ARGUMENT DOES NOT FLY:

We hear that some in the Bush Obama administration will push for reform of existing dictatorships rather than pushing to do away with them. No wonder: there is only one god, its name is empire, and Washington is its prophet. The way old hands see it, the American protectorate is being destroyed in plain sight, with the help of Obama.

But they are wrong. Washington better be careful; so far the anti-fascist revolution did not have a whiff of anti-Americanism, but this could change. After all, most weapons sold in the world are sold by Washington, and most dictatorships depend upon them. People know how to observe, and think. Remember the Internet. Washington tried to stop WikiLeaks, but it did not do so fast enough. Amusingly many leaked analyses of American diplomats revealed the extent of plutocracy (The US ambassador to Tunisia compared the ruling clique to a “mafia“).

Gates, an old hand of the American empire, has been subtle about it all. To help his associate Gaddafi, he posed first as a peacenik. He told an assembly of cadets at West Point that “In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it.”

 

Having thus qualified as a no non sense rebellious youth, Gates then used a technical argument to help out old Khadafy, friend of the oil companies, and the best hope to stop the Arab spring before it spreads to, say, Saudi Arabia.

Gates argued that a “no fly zone” over Libya would require massive bombing of SAM sites and radar. In other words, another attack reminiscent of “Shock and Awe” against Iraq.

This is crafty disinformation: we are talking about interdicting the largest liberated zones, where there are no SAMs. To interdict would be easy to do, with AWACS planes staying very far away, with their radar sweeping over Libya (AWACS can be defended, have their own defenses, and would be too far anyway). The refueled fighters could attack. The beauty is that France alone could do it (a fortiori do it with Britain).

***

LET THE FRENCH AND THE BRITS DO IT:

Indeed it’s not all about the USA. If the US navy does not feel up to snuff, with its old fighter-bombers, it can operate Rafales, stealthy supersonic fifth generation fighters. The Rafales M(arine) are equipped with mach 4+ MICA missiles, with a range of more than 60 kilometers. So whatever what Gates is talking about is irrelevant. The MICA missile flies at nearly a mile per second, plenty enough to catch up with Khadafy’s bombers (which fly subsonic when bombing and strafing).

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A French Navy Rafale M performing a touch and go on the deck of the American carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74). Most French Navy pilots have their US Navy wings: they can operate off US carriers, just as if they were regular US Navy pilots. They even speak English.

As soon as the pilots of the pseudo crazy Libyan dictator know that Rafales are flying unseen in the distance, with AWACS help, and MICAs 40 seconds away, they will stay on the ground. And carriers are not even needed since Rafales could fly from far away, France or Italy, and refuel in the air.

Notice the refueling probe ahead of the cockpit above; notice also the anti-radar pod on top of the stabilizer: Rafales make electronic anti-noise, an active stealth system to add to the passive one; that allows them to fly much faster than the (future) joint Strike fighter, and carry a huge amount of weapons outside.

How hard is it to shoot down Khadafy’s air force? A French TV team was on the front line at Ras Lanouf, headed by intrepid reporter Martine Laroche Joubert. By the way, here was a French woman, hair flying free among the warriors and massive gun shooting, and there was not a trace of Islamism in sight. So much for Clinton’s snide remark about Eastern Libya being a source of Al Qaeda’s warriors.

So the French TV crew was on the frontline, headed by its fearless woman, and a Libyan bomber showed up, apparently a some sort of supersonic Sukhoi. It was looking for ground targets, that was clear from the French (state) TV footage. The anti-aircraft guns of the rebels fired wildly on its second pass, and soon an enormous mushroom cloud loomed in the sandy, murky skies, not far from a giant refinery. The plane had been shot down, and the French TV crew rushed to the scene, among flaming wreckage, and two freshly killed, bloody pilots on the ground. One of them was Syrian, according to his papers, that the French TV crew inspected.

The white haired fighter who had shot down the plane was feted, kissed on the head. He looked like a happy, well fed grandfather. He exulted as he confessed to having no training, and that only one of the guns of the multi-barrel anti-aircraft battery he was using was in working order. He sounded like a real man, capable of honest work, not a weaselly character such as Gates.

***

SO WHAT TO DO? TAKE OUT GADDAFI’ AIR SUPREMACY.

What Gates is saying is that he does not want the oil dictators go the way of Ben Ali, and Mubarak. If they did, Gates is saying the American protectorate will go down the drain. That protectorate works for the worldwide plutocratic web. Gates, a veteran of Iran-Contra, Fidelity Investments, the CIA, Harvard, and countless boards, is little wheel in that vast machine of wealth and taste.

There is another effect at play, namely that the colossal amounts of dictators’ money, and the consequential dictators’ possession in, and of, the West, are part of the worldwide plutocratic system. For example Khadafy owns 7 % of Italy’s largest bank. And 7.5% of the Torino Juventus, one of the world’s most famous soccer club.

If one seizes plutocratic ownership, from one plutocrat, and one starts to dismantle the extremely elaborate shadow banking systems at the heart of the dictators’ web of possession, where does it stop? Is plutocracy going to go? How will Gates cash in? As the Clintons, and countless others, did before him? Even Britain’s Prince Andrews has walloped in the hay with Seif Al Islam, the most notorious of Gaddafi’s sons. They are friends (beats under-age prostitutes).

Thus corrupted, plutocratic forces will do whatever it takes to protect their initiate, and accomplice, Gaddafi, and will try to stop the gnawing away at the dictatorial system at the heart of worldwide plutocracy. Looking foolish by claiming Libya has to be ravaged to be saved does not cost much to Gates. It sounds deep, and humanitarian, to those who don’t know enough. Hitler was very good at sounding human (that’s why Germans goose stepped behind him).

However, in a greater scheme of things, not doing anything against the Libyan tyrant, is not an option: the entire planet is watching the top democracies. Remember; for that most of the planet, Gaddafi is the leader of human rights. Who is going to teach a lesson to whom?

Weakness now relative to the Libyan dictator, and it means, in particular, that the Pakistani miscreants will be ready to go the whole way, before they try to make sense. The whole way, with Pakistan, means thermonuclear war. Pakistan is a mostly insane country led by criminals, where comparing favorably Jesus to Muhammad leads mothers to be condemned to death, and criticizing this will get you killed.

Weakness now relative to the Libyan monkey in chief also means that others, even larger than Pakistan, may get very unsavory visions of the future. In that frightening future, those emboldened ones may go get oil in the South China sea, and project force to do so. China has been boasting that it could destroy US carriers with ballistic missiles.

Of course, some of the very old, very wise plutocratic hands in Washington may scoff that last time that the plutocrats supported fascism big time, and that the USA did not act in the most timely fashion to help France and Britain, it turned out very well for the USA.

Well, this was then. The USA was a giant, self sufficient island. Untouchable. The world’s largest economic and industrial power. As Europe was wrecked by war with the fascists, Europe became too weak to keep on going as the world’s top imperial power, and the USA displaced and replaced it, bringing great wealth to the USA. The reign of the dollar was just a small aspect, a small consequence of that.

Now is very different though: the day when Pakistani thermonuclear warheads can reach Washington is not so far removed. At some point Washington will have to address the real problems. Financing Pakistani nuclear warheads as the plutocrat Bush II did, was a grotesque and criminal decision, especially in light of 9/11. It was doubly criminal; intrinsically criminal, and criminally encouraging further the crazed maniac in the Pakistani military and Pakistani ‘intelligence’.

In recent years, France intervened unilaterally in several wars all over the Sahel, and in Rwanda (stopping the civil war by dropping a paratroop division), or Ivory Coast. French heavy guns were the first to fire counter-battery at Serb criminals during the siege of Sarajevo (then only France and Britain represented UN muscle).

Actually France, contrarily to her ill deserved reputation in the USA, is the world’s most militarily aggressive country, closely followed by Britain (which dispatched a frigate and ground troops to Libya already, however transiently!)

France and Britain have a glorious past of intervening together, using force (except for their common invasions of Crimea, China, and Suez, or the nascent USSR, which were not well thought out, and of dubious morality). Glory has been invented for some reason.

When Great Britain decided to put back in its place the Argentinian dictatorship, it attacked, facing overwhelming odds. Argentina had plenty of much more advanced weapons, many of them French. The French trained the Brits to defeat them. The Stanley airfield of the Falklands was bombed heroically by a big British bomber refueled by others, which had flown forever. That put the airfield out of order, and so on.

Well, time to renew with these old traditions. Out with fascism. First take the sky away from the Libyan tyrant. don’t tell me he would be harder to defeat than the Argentinian tyrants.

Fighting the Libyan tyranny is an excellent occasion to teach the United Nations what human rights are, and that they are worth fighting for. An occasion to show that those who fight for human rights are invincible, because they are more human, and thus more splendid, strong, and intelligent. And an excellent occasion to show savages who disagree with human rights that savages are irrelevant, and should go back to (primary) school, to learn about the notion of mediocrity, and how bad it is, that they incarnate it so well.

***

Patrice Ayme

***

P/S: China and Russia have proven hard to persuade to neutralize Qadafi’s aviation.  How come so friendly to perhaps the world’s richest man who just killed more than 6,000 of his compatriots?

Distance Beijing to Lhasa: 2559 kilometers. Distance Rome to Tripoli: 989 kilometers. Distance Beijing to Tripoli: 9260 kilometers. So why is Beijing opposed to putting an end to the dictatorship in Libya? Well, could it be that it makes sense that China, which occupies Tibet, is worried when a tyrant is thrown out?

Could the same reasoning apply to the presence of Russia in some places in the Caucasus?


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NotPoliticallyCorrect

Human Biodiversity, IQ, Evolutionary Psychology, Epigenetics and Evolution

Political Reactionary

Dark Enlightenment and Neoreaction

Of Particular Significance

Conversations About Science with Theoretical Physicist Matt Strassler

Rise, Republic, Plutocracy, Degeneracy, Fall And Transmutation Of Rome

Power Exponentiation By A Few Destroyed Greco-Roman Civilization. Are We Next?

SoundEagle 🦅ೋღஜஇ

Where The Eagles Fly . . . . Art Science Poetry Music & Ideas

Artificial Turf At French Bilingual School Berkeley

Artificial Turf At French Bilingual School Berkeley

Patterns of Meaning

Exploring the patterns of meaning that shape our world

Sean Carroll

in truth, only atoms and the void

West Hunter

Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat

GrrrGraphics on WordPress

www.grrrgraphics.com

Skulls in the Stars

The intersection of physics, optics, history and pulp fiction

Footnotes to Plato

because all (Western) philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato

Patrice Ayme's Thoughts

Striving For Ever Better Thinking. Humanism Is Intelligence Unleashed. From Intelligence All Ways, Instincts & Values Flow, Even Happiness. History and Science Teach Us Not Just Humility, But Power, Smarts, And The Ways We Should Embrace. Naturam Primum Cognoscere Rerum

Learning from Dogs

Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.

ianmillerblog

Smile! You’re at the best WordPress.com site ever

NotPoliticallyCorrect

Human Biodiversity, IQ, Evolutionary Psychology, Epigenetics and Evolution

Political Reactionary

Dark Enlightenment and Neoreaction

Of Particular Significance

Conversations About Science with Theoretical Physicist Matt Strassler

Rise, Republic, Plutocracy, Degeneracy, Fall And Transmutation Of Rome

Power Exponentiation By A Few Destroyed Greco-Roman Civilization. Are We Next?

SoundEagle 🦅ೋღஜஇ

Where The Eagles Fly . . . . Art Science Poetry Music & Ideas

Artificial Turf At French Bilingual School Berkeley

Artificial Turf At French Bilingual School Berkeley

Patterns of Meaning

Exploring the patterns of meaning that shape our world

Sean Carroll

in truth, only atoms and the void

West Hunter

Omnes vulnerant, ultima necat

GrrrGraphics on WordPress

www.grrrgraphics.com

Skulls in the Stars

The intersection of physics, optics, history and pulp fiction

Footnotes to Plato

because all (Western) philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato

Patrice Ayme's Thoughts

Striving For Ever Better Thinking. Humanism Is Intelligence Unleashed. From Intelligence All Ways, Instincts & Values Flow, Even Happiness. History and Science Teach Us Not Just Humility, But Power, Smarts, And The Ways We Should Embrace. Naturam Primum Cognoscere Rerum

Learning from Dogs

Dogs are animals of integrity. We have much to learn from them.

ianmillerblog

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