Painting Change

Will Kemp Art School: How to Paint Over an Acrylic Painting

Posted by Tessa den Uyl, with Pi

We all arrange the world in our minds. I should say, our world in our minds. I am a painter – so let me speak rather of 'painting' our world in our minds. 

We paint our village streets in our minds -- to remember them and make sense of them. We paint our supermarket shelves and bus routes there. We paint social networks and personal schedules. We even paint university curricula and religious beliefs there. In short, we paint a vast number of things, which we place upon the easel of our minds for easy reference.

Yet as we paint this painting, we find that everywhere the subjects of our painting are changing. From year to year, even day to day, the painting no longer matches the world we are fixing in paint. The ubiquity of the word 'change' in our language says it all: 'The times are changing,' and 'We change with the times' – it's 'a change of tack,' or 'a change of pace' – 'Let's change the channel,' and 'Let's change the subject' – 'Ring in the changes!' and 'Plus ça change!'

And even as we paint our world in our own minds, we are aware, too, that other people have other paintings of the world in theirs. While my painting is my own – their painting, too, is theirs. This becomes a problem both for me and for them, in equal measure. Let me explain.

This morning, in a small village in Morocco, I went out to buy a washing powder called 'Tide'. Ilias understands 'tête' (which is paté) instead of 'Tide'. Now why would one buy tête in a shop where they sell products for the home? For more than two years, Ilias and I have continued our dispute over misunderstandings surrounding pronunciation. His French is not my French, and my French is not his French. I try to apprehend his pronunciation, I speak slowly – but we’re still on the same track where we started off.

Now what does this small situation have to do with 'change'? It goes to the heart of the problem of change, insofar as to communicate profitably, both parties need to pay attention, not to pronunciations of 'Tide' or 'tête', but to the painting of the world in the other one's mind – to different cultures and perceptions, different languages and foci. They have to look at another painting, instead of their own.

How overly simplistic this example might sound – but it presents the difficulty of finding mutual understanding, to change something in each other's understanding – so that my lack may become his lack, and his lack may become mine. Ilias thinks that I should learn to speak better French – which means, from my point of view: his French. It is the problem of who will leave the territory in which the 'proper' conviction lies.

There is always a defence of the 'proper' vision. We think that one painting is more preferable than another. How then can we change? Change probably only can come about through the genuine awareness of diversity. To put it another way, truth does not have common ground. A change – or rather, a transformation of attitude – always faces the problem of 'property': the 'ownership' of truth. To change something means to let go of the ownership of the painting in my mind, and the effects that it has on me.

An example. A Yemeni woman exclaims: 'Sometimes I hope a missile will just blow us all away' (meaning her and her family). The woman’s desire for the impossible, to resolve her suffering, is the desire to obtain consolation over a painting of the world which is lost. And this present desire is based on the same painting which the woman painted back then. It is a double painting of the same scene – a painting painted twice.

We recognise it when we lose control of something – that it is about a painting of our world in my mind. Losing control is due to a present idea that doesn’t correspond to the first idea any longer. This is what makes change difficult. Change poses the problem of a reconstruction within a previously painted painting.

No thoughts are uprooted while change is based upon the logic of some existing principle. Such 'change' merely serves the function of that principle. We desire change without the desire to discard the painting we painted previously. We want to continue to recognise something, while including within that something the yet-to-be experience of change – forgetting that change cannot happen that way.

Change is not adapting to previous notions. Perhaps this is why the Yemeni woman 'desires' death. She senses that only through death can real change come to be.

Can change be thought? And if change is something that does not conform to the world that we know, then where is it found? That which is changing, we do not yet know. It can only exist in an unknown space in our psyche. One might say that our nature evolves continually in 'the instability of our stability'. How contradictory our being is!

And yet, if change needs to be something truly new, then how wonderful it may be – meaning: full of wonder. Because change is about more than we can subtract. It is not about painting over an existing painting, or obliterating it. It is about new colours and composition, new moods and perspective, new connections. It is everything new – or it cannot be called 'change'.

While we cannot forget all the previous strokes of the brush, we can understand the brush's potential for more. We can come to see new directions, new perceptions, new affections – destabilising the old, as we look not so much to the painting which we had, as to intuitions which lie within. And when there is a meeting of hearts which so desire change, it is the beginning of all possibilities.

NEW VERSION How the Body Keeps Human Nature in Check

From Bauentwurfslehre, 1936, by Ernst Neufert

Posted by Eugene Alper, with Pi

One of the greatest problems of our time is the problem as to how ethics may be incorporated into metaphysics. The problem was first brought to the fore by David Hume, and became acute with Ludwig Wittgenstein, who famously wrote, 'Whereof we cannot speak, we must remain silent.'   He was referring to ethics.  

Yet beyond Hume and Wittgenstein – beyond Plato, Immanuel Kant, George Moore, and many others – beyond ethical naturalism, objectivism, rationalism – beyond all philosophy and all theory – it may be as simple as the human body. 

Imagine, with me, a man (or a woman) who is dropped into this world from the sky – not knowing anything at all.

He would very quickly discover that his body needs to be fed every five hours, and put to sleep every sixteen.  His skin, he would notice, is sensitive to cold, heat, and many kinds of pain.  He would find that food is not readily available – that it is dangerous to have to fight for it with other people and animals.  He would find that it is helpful to cultivate plants and domesticate animals – and counter-productive to wantonly destroy them.

He would find that blankets need to be of a certain size and thickness – being predicted, too, by the size and function of his body.  He would find that door handles need to be mounted at a certain height, and made for fingers such as his.  He would find that his body predicts the dimensions of many things: the size of a soccer ball, the shape of a boat – even the location of a university, or the power of rocket boosters.

He would find that it is troublesome to anger others – and to find a new shelter every night, to evade them.  He would soon guess that it is more energy efficient to get into a peaceful exchange with others, where he could trade for food something of his own – a thing or a service, or even a promise to be fulfilled in future.  He would find that his own body, with its vulnerabilities and frequent needs, force him to cooperate with others rather than destroy them.

He would find that, even if he were the biggest and strongest of all, he could not be big and strong twenty-four hours a day. For some eight hours daily he would be as defenseless as a baby, and would have to have someone trusted next to him not to get hurt. Even the meanest tyrant with the worst kind of human nature could not be bad all the time under these circumstances. The vulnerability of his own body in sleep and its dependence on non-poisonous food would make him be good at least to his closest circle.

In short, personal ethics, social ethics, political ethics, aesthetic values – building codes, agricultural norms, communications networks, and everything under the sun – would be governed by the body in which this man found himself at the start.  And not only that, but whatever his nature may be – whether 'good' or 'bad' – he would find that his needy body kept it under control.

It is not a new idea.  Theologians proposed it many centuries ago – namely, that a person is designed for certain ends – of whom Thomas Aquinas was the pre-eminent proponent.  Yet it may be precisely because it was a theological idea that it did not gain much traction.  The theology – whether true or false – may be set aside, yet the situation of this man remains the same, who fell from the sky.

We make no moral prescriptions here – no judgements, no commands, no commitments.  We simply leave a description of what a man (or a woman) is.  And whatever it may mean that he has a body or a soul, it finally comes down to this: 'Don't be too cocky', says the body, 'or you will get hurt.'

Not Really a Picture Post

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'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t what 

they seemed to be, neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

Command prompt

I can't help thinking that this one is philosophical, but my mind is a complete blank ... I took it at a parade.

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Understanding the Geneva Convention

“No physical or mental torture may be inflicted on prisoners of war
to secure from them information of any kind whatever.” – Article 17,
Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War ”

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A poem by Chengde Chen 

Yugoslavia, sometime in World War II. A refugee family in Serbia

Understanding the Geneva Convention

We are enemies –
why can we kill in war but allow no torture?
Does physiology regard death better than pain –
the struggle for survival is a race to the end?
Or philosophy holds ends higher than means –
loving God requires rushing to heaven?
Anyone who can prove either of these
proves Geneva is larger than the world; otherwise,
aren’t the Conventions like the RSPCA of carnivores –
protection ensures slaughtering only the undamaged?

This humanitarian law, solemn and noble as it is,
is just a desperate supplement to a Platonic maxim.
Although “only the dead have seen the end of war”,
let’s conduct barbarity in the most civilised manner –
seeing the gaps between battles as peace, or the seconds
between drawing the sword and striking as kindness.
War, however, has to be the war animal’s way of life –
no matter how we pursue “off-battlefield humanity”.
Part-time animals are animals still, hence a red cross –
to acknowledge the bloodiness of humanitarianism!

Words can’t redeem the mountains of white bones,
because ideals can’t domesticate genes.
Our ability to idealise ourselves
can only deepen the tragedy of civilisation.
Oh, the ever extending ripples of Lake Geneva,
you are not leisure waves by wind flirting with water,
but man’s unending hopelessness about human nature.
If you aren’t the longest sighs of the hopeless,
you must be the deepest sadness of the sighs.

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Chengde Chen is the author of Five Themes of Today: philosophical poems. Readers can find out more about Chengde and his poems here

Rationalism and Relationality in Roman Catholicism

The Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Posted by Thomas Scarborough

Thomas Scarborough unravels links between metaphysics and theology in the writings of Fr. Cornelis (Kees) Thönissen.

About the size of a modern A4 sheet of paper, a painting of Benozzo Gozzoli (1471) hangs in the Louvre in Paris. Titled The Triumph of St. Thomas Aquinas, it depicts St. Thomas, seated with a completed metaphysic on his lap, flanked by Aristotle on the left, and Plato on the right. At his feet lies the Arabic philosopher Averroes.

It happened chiefly through the influence of St. Thomas Aquinas. Through Aquinas' writing, the thought of the Roman Catholic Church was tainted by barren metaphysics – which further opened the door, in time, to Enlightenment rationalism and scientific-technological reason. Such reason is linear, mathematical, geometric, and finally, analytic. It is epitomised by Newtonian logic, which works on universal laws. This means that everything rests on experiment, and thus the (observing) senses.

Such rationality, while it is rightly a part of the universal structure of what we are and who we are, has limitations of narrowness. Reason in its fulness, wrote Pope Benedict XVI, is far larger than that. It is the all-meaning logos, which is the reason of the mind of God. This includes the reason which asks: What is the meaning of all things? Why do things ‘hold together’ in the way that they do? Why are we here? To what personal purpose, and what end?

We may approach such questions in two ways:

1. By broadening our idea of what reason really is, and
2. By taking into account our human relationality.

THE FIRST APPROACH: Is our reason really capable, through the mind alone, of finding the ‘big’ answers tolife? The Roman Catholic Church has traditionally held: Yes. Yet what kind of ‘reason’ might this be? It cannot be the same as the narrow reason we have just described. Or does the Church's ‘reason’ really include insight as intuition – into and behind reality? Such a human capacity would lie beyond linear reason – beyond physics – a capacity which was partly perceived by Aristotle in his Meta-physics.

What then should we call this capacity or faculty ‘beyond reason’ – this something that we naturally, innately possess – this capacity which is somehow tied back to the ‘Being’ behind the universe: the religious spirit, the Jewish heart, the Greek pneuma, the breath of life, and the Christian soul? Aha, now we have passed further than the ‘mind alone,’ so that we need to rethink how we are constituted by our anthropological capacities, which are more than just a brain and a body.

The Roman Catholic tradition, when it speaks of reason, has failed to adequately distinguish reason in its fulness, as logos, from narrow Enlightenment reason or scientific-technological reason. Yet ‘reason’ clearly includes the insightful, spiritual capacities, or spiritual intuition. And there’s the debate set out for us! If we are content with rationalism coupled to our brains, we fool ourselves into shallowness. And such shallowness, as postmodernism has pointed out, cannot save us, or our planet.

What, then, is ‘the more’ of me and you about?

THE SECOND APPROACH: Most of all, each of us is heavily involved in relationships – or relationality. We find that what is most precious to us is our relations, which is the foci (persons!) that consume our energies. Aristotle and St. Thomas were more involved in things. So was Kant. Thus the category of relation was downgraded. So why has the Church pressed so heavily for thinkingourselves towards God (although this is valuable as far as it goes)?

We can think about relationships, but we do not think them. Those who are ‘in love’ don’t start there. They start with the experience of self-giving. The Judaeo-Christian religion begins with the Revelation of God, set in human history – above all through the Son of God on earth. A fresh, ‘humble’ metaphysics begins, not so much with God in himself as we think about him, but with God who is in relationship with me. It reverses the Church's traditional path. Through reason in its fulness, as logos, we may know God directly. This even a child can do. We’ve only made it hard because we double-think everything.

Relationality holds everything together in meaning. Therefore relationality has to be an essential category of our existence. Relations, then, occur in our experience – which makes experience an essential category, too. And we need to be able to intuit these relations, which requires a spiritual intuition or capacity beyond the brute force of narrow reason. Spiritual intuition, therefore, is as basic to our existence as scientific-technological reason.

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A seven-hundred page dissertation by Fr. Dr. Cornelis (Kees) Thönissen OFM Cap. may be accessed (free) at:  Thönissen C.J. 2015. Foundations for Spirituality: A 'Hermeneutic of Reform' for a Church Facing Crises Inspired by St. Francis of Assisi. Pretoria: UNISA.

Terrorists, Secret Services and Private Incomes

Sceptical reflections and conspiracy theories relating to the politics surrounding the killings at Charlie Hebdo and the recent massacre in Saint Denis

 

The shooting at the start of this year of the cartoonists at the Parisian satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo has all the hallmarks of a CIA inspired brutal incident. November's massacre at Saint Denis looks much more like an attempt to replay, in the center of European social life, similar deadly outrages to those committed in towns and cities across the Middle East. Colin Kirk* teases out the links.

That most of the perpetrators of these atrocities were known to French secret services is now admitted. There are even several indications of what may have been secret service and police assistance to the Charlie Hebdo incident. Help apparently given to the get-away vehicle and discovery of the driving license dropped by the driver recalls some aspects of the slaughter of over 3000 people on the ninth of November 2001 in New York.

Charlie Hebdo was a satirical magazine before it got its current name after an atrocity in Northern France that resulted in over a couple of dozen deaths was reported in Paris as 28 dead in Northern France. It caused little stir compared with mourning for De Gaulle, who died a few days later. Un homme mort à Paris was the bold, black cover of what was thereafter called Charlie Hebdo.

President Charles De Gaulle founded the Fifth Republic in his own image with draconian rights of state surveillance of its citizens that are not dissimilar to those afforded by the American Patriot Act. The State of Emergency currently in force allows police entry without warrant and arrest without charge. There really isn’t any further to go in state legal rights of citizen control, is there?

The CIA is known to have funded media to promote certain political messages in America, Britain and France in particular. On his own account, Stephen Spender, the editor of the British literary magazine Encounter, originally founded by the poet Stephen Spender, resigned  when he discovered the source of much of its 'well-wisher' donations.

Satirical media and those critical of the state were important to western democracies to demonstrate state toleration of dissent in comparison with actions of totalitarian states. Egalité and Fraternité were far less important to politicians than the sacred notion of Liberté.



Heads of State who linked arms with President Hollande to lead the Liberty March in Paris the Sunday following the Charlie Hebdo massacres included central African dictators not to mention Prime Minister Netanyahu. The simultaneous attack on a Jewish supermarket was the reason for his presence and for President Hollande’s ostentatious attendance with him at the central Paris synagogue that evening.

Anti-Semitism is the most serious taboo in France, Semites in this context being Jewish rather than Arabian Semites. Charlie Hebdo itself dismissed a journalist for writing a somewhat anti-Israeli article not long before the murders of some of its staff for drawing cartoons of Mohammad.

The murder of cartoonists horrified people who had adored Charlie Hebdo in its glory days, although it was, until the early January murders, a spent force. Je suis Charlie was displayed in posh shops. The t-shirts didn’t catch on. Here in the Normandy town where I live the Charlie Hebdo March was of elderly and middle aged lefties. And two weeks later it was all forgotten.

'Plantu', the cartoonist of Le Monde, the guy who always has a little mouse observer of the scene, made a film of international cartoonists (Caricaturistes, fantassins de la démocratie) that was released two weeks after the Charlie Hebdo killings. It was a brilliant film with world-wide coverage of cartoonists’ art, except from the sacred monarchies of Britain and Japan for some reason. Brilliant as it was it was not a box office success. Surely after the dreadful incident everyone would want to see it. But that was weeks ago, according to the local film projectionist when asked why such a small attendance in mid-February. Not here the spirited defence of the right to lampoon.

France is not unique in being media led. It certainly is media led. Flavour of the month has become flavour of the week as span of attention has contracted. The same tune is played in all the papers, on all the television channels, in almost all social gatherings; much as elsewhere world-wide.

Only the issues of immigration and Islamic terrorism are here to stay in France, as in the rest of Western Democracies or Civilisations or the International Community or any other feel-good appellation appropriate to smug arms manufacturing countries, which have caused mayhem in the Middle East and are beginning to do so in Africa. The CIA will see these issues retain top billing.

The CIA’s sundry billion dollar budget is not accounted for other than in the most general terms. The last 'almost serious' presentation to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was by Professor George Tenet, who himself had long been a member of it. President Clinton made him Director of Central Intelligence when they turned down his earlier choices. President George W. Bush kept him on as 'A charming diplomat liked by all '. Director Tenet admitted that hidden in the accounts somewhere are colossal expenditures on Hollywood films, computer war games, and subsidisation of all branches of the media on a grand scale. His wording was rather less transparent than here.

The question of the appropriate national reaction to atrocity has to take account of the reaction imposed by the media. Under and overlaying that reaction are ancient religious prejudices in a country where political prejudices have the psychic force of religious ones, not least because they tend to be interlinked. Bourgeois Catholic and Protestant Christian beliefs inform and are informed by the mainstream media feed, which is conformist and conservative. Since President Mitterrand’s second term most all politics in France have become conformist and conservative.

President Hollande, in his inaugural Presidential address, appeared to be about to break the mold: his only enemy was capitalism, which he said he was determined to release France from. He was quickly overcome by the same machinery that engulfed President Obama and will no doubt have the same success with Prime Minister Trudeau.  Shortly after, Trudeau informed Washington that Canadian planes were no longer available to the coalition, President Hollande authorized massive revenge air attacks on Islamic State (ISIS) for its agents’ revenge attacks on Saint Denis. When will we ever learn?

France, in the days of Freedom Fries, condemned the war on Iraq and subsequently fêted President Gadhafi, the key proponent, along with President Mandela, of Pan African government. These were when there were right wing governments in power. French oil interests are given as reason for government action whoever claims to lead the country. Right wing leaders have always tended to an independent line to Washington’s. In the Middle East French and Russian interests are at variance to those of the Anglo-Americans.

By and large the popular mood in France remains that of La Marseillaise - perhaps the most jingoistic and racist national anthem in the world. The French Third Republic, which led the world in consumerism, self-indulgence and free thought began with murder in 1870 of 20,000 communards and ended in 1945 with murder of a similar number of collaborators, all in Paris, and all without any legal process.

This is the country of the Dreyfus Affair, fire at the Charity Bazaar, loss of a million soldiers in the First World War, capitulation at the beginning of the second and loss of empire that was never as glorious as was made out. France has been a wounded beast ever since the Battle of Waterloo. Indeed, since Régis Debray published his Loués soient nos seigneurs; un education politique in 1996 there has been very little serious dissenting intellectual voice in France. He gives as explanation:

We are forced to witness the death throes in France of Marxist Socialists; a proud species that emerged in the nineteenth century from the crossing of the Revolution as myth with the Book as instrument but is now a technical anachronism, doomed to disappear in the global ecology of the videosphere.

These days, it seems to me that the Christianist and Christian Zionist control freaks are truly in control by means of the New York Council on Foreign Relations This private body links the State Department, Wall Street and every other power house in America. It was founded with $1000 donations of the 1000 richest Americans to control President Wilson, as honest broker at Versailles that produced the Peace Treaty signed 28 July 1919. He appeared to have achieved nothing for the United States except honest influence but appearances can be deceptive.

Alan Dulles the first Secretary of the Council went on to found the CIA, with brother John Foster Dulles, Secretary of State, the family tinned fruit fortune escalated in value from millions to billions of dollars. In a democracy one looks after one’s own interests…and how!

As someone who loves France for its landscape and folkscape, probably in that order, and as someone able from personal experience to compare it with Britain and the United States, I think there’s little to choose between the three in terms of genuine dissenting analysis of the perilous state humanity is in.

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Colin Kirk writes on health and philosophical issues, poetry and classical history, whilst growing lots of fruit and vegetables in a mediaeval walled garden, to prepare and cook for guests - what has been described as a kind of ' Pythagorean GuestHouse'. A characteristic recent publication is Death of Augustus his Conversion to Christ

Picture Post No. 7: The Rug Turned Over

'Because things don’t appear to be the known thing; they aren’t that what they seemed to be neither will they become what they might appear to become.'

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Posted by Tessa den Uyl and Martin Cohen

  

Kurdistan, Iraq 2011
Photo credit, Azad Nanakeli

On a rainy night in Arbil, attention is particularly drawn to this eclectic assemblage of handmade carpets, hung here on a wall, used for decoration or prayer.

Marvellous, idyllic images, singers and politicians are celebrated next to religious figures on the carpets, becoming a metaphor on social habits and aesthetics. The sacred space of the carpet reveals change.

Is it our sense of our own lack of veracity that leads us to appropriate gifts in order to remind ourselves of ideals we cannot attain?

Everything seeks distinctiveness in the form of the authenticity of its inauthenticity

Within the rugs, a human possibility is woven into our fragile enthusiasm in order to give movement to our own souls.

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How to help the French living under Terror and their own Terreur

Posted by Perig Gouanvic

"Inside a Revolutionary Committee under Terreur (1793-1794)"
Finger pointing and cleansing the public discourse is not new In France

In France, there are very old beliefs, reminiscent of the Terreur era, about religion and minorities that should never be questioned. Multiculturalism is considered a danger. Let's consider, for instance, the fact that the Paris attacks terrorists, who were born an raised in France or Belgium have more in common with the skinheads of the 1980s than with the fundamentalists we see on TV. They drink alcohol, smoke pot, play murder rampage video games, and really have the "no future" belief system of other teenagers 20 years ago. Several observers witted that religion would actually be a pacifying, structuring, influence for these young people. In other words, supporting the strength of religious communities, not just stopping humiliating them, might actually prevent terrorism. At the present moment, the orthodoxy says that we should not limit "free speech" - especially the Charlie* kind - and even that we should celebrate humiliation of religion as the most exquisite mark of French Freedom and Rationality.




A French anti-terrorism judge also lamented that, as the laïcité laws became more rigid, the whole Muslim community felt so alienated they stopped collaborating with the police to denounce potential terrorism suspects. But, again, don't try to convince the authorities and intellectuals that supporting communities, especially the Muslim community, as such (not as a community with socioeconomical problems, but as a community whose customs and religion are positive contributions to France) is a positive step towards the elimination of terrorism. Supporting ethnic, religious or cultural minorities, in France, is called "communautarism". Another word for multiculturalism? Yes, except that it must be said with a grin of disgust. The French feminist sociologist Christine Delphy, who has been widely vilified for her opposition to the French scarf-banning laws, offers the rest of us a definition :

The French definition of communautarism is the fact that people who are discriminated, who are assigned with prejudices, to whom equal chances are denied, etc. these people – who have often been parked in the same neighborhoods – these people hang out and talk to each other. This is communautarism, it's bad, it means that they want to part from the rest of society and, instead of looking for well seen people, people who have privileges, for example, for Blacks and Arabs instead of reaching out for Whites and beg them to come and talk with them, they talk to each other. That would be communautarism.

Yet the fact remains that cultivating friendly and respectful relationships with communities, acknowledging their contribution to civil society, is one of the time-tested ways to prevent ostracism and extremism.​ Yet in france, too often individual members of minorities talking to each other are considered potential enemies of the state. Just imagine how dangerous it would be for the French State if it decided to approach these communities and recognize them as such!

I don't think most people are aware of the mental straightjacket in which the French have placed themselves for the last 30 years. It encompasses more than the issue of ethno-religious groups. Some probably know that the French have some very strange philosophers such as Finkelkraut and BHL**, and some very despicable intellectuals such as Michel Houellebecq, who recently wrote a book describing France becoming an Islamic republic, and became a National obsession in the wake of the Charlie attacks. These public figures pretend to be victims of political correctness, although they occupy most of the media. One thing that might not be as well known is that there also exists, in parallel, a whole swamp of dissident intellectuals that are actively maintained in the margins of the French discourse. In France, they are called the "confusionnists", "cryptofascists", and so on, so forth.

The slippery slope argument and guilt by association have become commonplace in France. In this mixed bag, you will find true far right people, but also anarchists, radical critics of NATO, Israel, etc. As an example, France has been able to outlaw the boycott campaign against Israel, which makes it more repressive of boycott calls than Israel itself. Don't try to protest: if you are not called an anti-Semite you will be called an objective supporter of anti-Semites. There is no way out. These kinds of large-scale paranoid delusions are reminiscent of the arbitrary denunciations of French Revolution's Terreur, described in the above 1797 illustration.


Finally, journalism too is constrained in this straightjacket. There are only a few journalists left who analyze the terror events in depth. They have pointed out in the past the same thing that was pointed out about the Bush administration (foreknowledge, and the presence of elements in the intelligence services who rather preferred terrorist attacks to happen, for instance to impose mass surveillance (of course these theses are not mainstream but they are still more audible in the anglophone world than in France)). But they are marginalized, and quickly become part of this "cryptofascist", "conspiracy theorizing" swamp I was talking about. The result is that compelling elements of inquiry are missed not only in France but abroad. For example, Hicham Hamza, a French journalist, has investigated the local ramifications of a Times of Israel article covering a warning by "officials" to France's "Jewish community", on the morning of the attacks. His resources are thin,  his site is regularly under cyberattacks and of course most would not approach him with a tad pole, because of the usual name-calling.

The same could be said of the Charlie Hebdo attacks - and further in the past --  of Rwanda, about which the BBC aired a documentary that would be swiftly thrown in the holocaust denying, cryptofasisct swamp in France. These elements do circulate in the French blogosphere. But guess what: France now has the right to shut down any website it judges problematic. What might be judged problematic is quite broad:

[It’s] a heterogeneous movement, heavily entangled with the Holocaust denial movement, and which combines admirers of Hugo Chavez and fans of Vladimir Putin. An underworld that consist of former left-wing activists or extreme leftists, former "malcontents", sovereignists, revolutionary nationalists, ultra-nationalists, nostalgists of the Third Reich, anti-vaccination activists, supporters of drawing straws, September 11th revisionists, anti-Zionists, Afrocentricists, survivalists, followers of "alternative medicine", agents of influence of the Iranian regime, Bacharists, Catholic or Islamic fundamentalists. « Conspirationnisme : un état des lieux », par Rudy Reichstadt, Observatoire des radicalités politiques, Fondation Jean-Jaurès, Parti socialiste, 24 février 2015.

(Welcome to the conspiracy theorist movement.)

Even so, of course, it cannot prevent us from thinking and inquiring. The French population really needs a breath of fresh air right now. They need fresh insights, serious journalism, and the freedom to discuss outside of their mentally and legally censored world. I don't have specific suggestions to solve those issues. I just think that the rest of the world should be aware that the French prison of ideas is not always self imposed and that there are many people who just wish they could escape. Many do: I can see that in Quebec.


*The Charlie Hebdo satiricial magazine whose cartoonists were murdered in January.
** Bernard Henri Levy, a self-styled philosophe.

How to help the French living under Terror and their own Terreur

Posted by Perig Gouanvic

"Inside a Revolutionary Committee under Terreur (1793-1794)"
Finger pointing and cleansing the public discourse is not new In France

In France, there are very old beliefs, reminiscent of the Terreur era, about religion and minorities that should never be questioned. Multiculturalism is considered a danger. Let's consider, for instance, the fact that the Paris attacks terrorists, who were born an raised in France or Belgium have more in common with the skinheads of the 1980s than with the fundamentalists we see on TV. They drink alcohol, smoke pot, play murder rampage video games, and really have the "no future" belief system of other teenagers 20 years ago. Several observers witted that religion would actually be a pacifying, structuring, influence for these young people. In other words, supporting the strength of religious communities, not just stopping humiliating them, might actually prevent terrorism. At the present moment, the orthodoxy says that we should not limit "free speech" - especially the Charlie* kind - and even that we should celebrate humiliation of religion as the most exquisite mark of French Freedom and Rationality.


A French anti-terrorism judge also lamented that, as the laïcité laws became more rigid, the whole Muslim community felt so alienated they stopped collaborating with the police to denounce potential terrorism suspects. But, again, don't try to convince the authorities and intellectuals that supporting communities, especially the Muslim community, as such (not as a community with socioeconomical problems, but as a community whose customs and religion are positive contributions to France) is a positive step towards the elimination of terrorism. Supporting ethnic, religious or cultural minorities, in France, is called "communautarism". Another word for multiculturalism? Yes, except that it must be said with a grin of disgust. The French feminist sociologist Christine Delphy, who has been widely vilified for her opposition to the French scarf-banning laws, offers the rest of us a definition :

The French definition of communautarism is the fact that people who are discriminated, who are assigned with prejudices, to whom equal chances are denied, etc. these people – who have often been parked in the same neighborhoods – these people hang out and talk to each other. This is communautarism, it's bad, it means that they want to part from the rest of society and, instead of looking for well seen people, people who have privileges, for example, for Blacks and Arabs instead of reaching out for Whites and beg them to come and talk with them, they talk to each other. That would be communautarism.

Yet the fact remains that cultivating friendly and respectful relationships with communities, acknowledging their contribution to civil society, is one of the time-tested ways to prevent ostracism and extremism.​ Yet in france, too often individual members of minorities talking to each other are considered potential enemies of the state. Just imagine how dangerous it would be for the French State if it decided to approach these communities and recognize them as such!

I don't think most people are aware of the mental straightjacket in which the French have placed themselves for the last 30 years. It encompasses more than the issue of ethno-religious groups. Some probably know that the French have some very strange philosophers such as Finkelkraut and BHL**, and some very despicable intellectuals such as Michel Houellebecq, who recently wrote a book describing France becoming an Islamic republic, and became a National obsession in the wake of the Charlie attacks. These public figures pretend to be victims of political correctness, although they occupy most of the media. One thing that might not be as well known is that there also exists, in parallel, a whole swamp of dissident intellectuals that are actively maintained in the margins of the French discourse. In France, they are called the "confusionnists", "cryptofascists", and so on, so forth.

The slippery slope argument and guilt by association have become commonplace in France. In this mixed bag, you will find true far right people, but also anarchists, radical critics of NATO, Israel, etc. As an example, France has been able to outlaw the boycott campaign against Israel, which makes it more repressive of boycott calls than Israel itself. Don't try to protest: if you are not called an anti-Semite you will be called an objective supporter of anti-Semites. There is no way out. These kinds of large-scale paranoid delusions are reminiscent of the arbitrary denunciations of French Revolution's Terreur, described in the above 1797 illustration.


Finally, journalism too is constrained in this straightjacket. There are only a few journalists left who analyze the terror events in depth. They have pointed out in the past the same thing that was pointed out about the Bush administration (foreknowledge, and the presence of elements in the intelligence services who rather preferred terrorist attacks to happen, for instance to impose mass surveillance (of course these theses are not mainstream but they are still more audible in the anglophone world than in France)). But they are marginalized, and quickly become part of this "cryptofascist", "conspiracy theorizing" swamp I was talking about. The result is that compelling elements of inquiry are missed not only in France but abroad. For example, Hicham Hamza, a French journalist, has investigated the local ramifications of a Times of Israel article covering a warning by "officials" to France's "Jewish community", on the morning of the attacks. His resources are thin,  his site is regularly under cyberattacks and of course most would not approach him with a tad pole, because of the usual name-calling.

The same could be said of the Charlie Hebdo attacks - and further in the past --  of Rwanda, about which the BBC aired a documentary that would be swiftly thrown in the holocaust denying, cryptofasisct swamp in France. These elements do circulate in the French blogosphere. But guess what: France now has the right to shut down any website it judges problematic. What might be judged problematic is quite broad:

[It’s] a heterogeneous movement, heavily entangled with the Holocaust denial movement, and which combines admirers of Hugo Chavez and fans of Vladimir Putin. An underworld that consist of former left-wing activists or extreme leftists, former "malcontents", sovereignists, revolutionary nationalists, ultra-nationalists, nostalgists of the Third Reich, anti-vaccination activists, supporters of drawing straws, September 11th revisionists, anti-Zionists, Afrocentricists, survivalists, followers of "alternative medicine", agents of influence of the Iranian regime, Bacharists, Catholic or Islamic fundamentalists. « Conspirationnisme : un état des lieux », par Rudy Reichstadt, Observatoire des radicalités politiques, Fondation Jean-Jaurès, Parti socialiste, 24 février 2015.

(Welcome to the conspiracy theorist movement.)

Even so, of course, it cannot prevent us from thinking and inquiring. The French population really needs a breath of fresh air right now. They need fresh insights, serious journalism, and the freedom to discuss outside of their mentally and legally censored world. I don't have specific suggestions to solve those issues. I just think that the rest of the world should be aware that the French prison of ideas is not always self imposed and that there are many people who just wish they could escape. Many do: I can see that in Quebec.


*The Charlie Hebdo satiricial magazine whose cartoonists were murdered in January.
** Bernard Henri Levy, a self-styled philosophe.

The Man who Invented Climate Change (and then disowned it)

Posted by Martin Cohen

The man who started it all off - Herbert Lamb. Source WP:NFCC#4

History, as ever gives an insight into the Climate Change debate. The historian of science, Bernie Lewin, has researched the views of the British scientist who for many years struggled to persuade governments that actually, yes, climate did change. Hubert Lamb, an academic and the founder of the influential Climatic Research Unit (better known by its acronym ‘CRU’) at the University of East Anglia in the UK, is conventionally credited with putting manmade Climate Change on the world agenda. He doesn't get many mentions though - because he came to detest the poltical abuses of his ideas.

Lamb was once described by one of his successors at the CRU, Trevor Davies ( probably self-servingly) as ‘the greatest climatologist of his time’. Davies credits him with ‘convincing the remaining doubters of the reality of climate variation on time-scales of decades and centuries’ and an obituary in Nature offers his great achievement as overturning the ‘old orthodoxy’ of climate stability. Other scientific admirers suggest that it was Lamb who first introduced the idea that climatic change has happened, and is still happening, on human time scales. But Bernie Lewin has no doubt that much of this is political fiction, noting that Lamb was far from the first to introduce the idea of a constantly changing climate. And where Lamb’s successor at his climate research centre found it, ‘ironic’ that even as the world became ‘acutely aware of global climate change’, Lamb maintained a guarded attitude to the importance of greenhouse warming, Lewin sees nothing odd in the position of a scientist advocating the idea of natural climate change being ‘guarded’ about the evidence of a global human influence. Awareness of past variability would rather tend towards scepticism of claims to have identified a single, new and extraordinary cause of climate change.

Hubert Lamb, in fact, was an old-school meteorologist, and there was something of a clash of cultures between those like him brought up on geology and weather records, and the new kinds of ‘climate scientists’ only recently tempted by research money into applying their mathematical skills to the natural world. Lamb expressed open scepticism of the theoretical physics used now to predict future climate trends noting that often the models failed to match reality. He argued for:

* the existence of negative feedbacks dampening warming trends where the climate modellers allowed only positive feedbacks amplifying them;
* that 20th century climate variation was better explained by natural factors (such as solar and volcanic effects);
* wonders how accurate the figures relied on for identifying relatively tiny temperature trends even were.

Such doubts led him to spend time analysing the political impetus for the new climate science, including vested interests, and the reasons why climate modelling in particular received so much support. Lamb completed his memoirs in 1997, just a few months before Kyoto, the international summit in which man-made Climate Change was given it preeminent role. In these memoirs he laments:

‘It is unfortunate that studies produced nowadays treat these and other matters related to changes of climate as if they are always, and only, attributable to the activities of Man and side-effects on the climate.’

This post is lightly adapted from Martin Cohen's book:
Paradigm Shift: How expert opinions keep changing on life, the universe, and everything

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