Failed Futurism
Failed Furology Mutual Misunderstandings
...The Americans seem to have seen nothing coming. Or rather, if they had received some messages, probably from people who risked a lot by passing them on, they found it too incredible to believe. At the time of the Gulf War, we had information, of unverifiable origin, suggesting the existence of Iraqi commandos on American territory, ready to commit biological warfare acts. Looking back, was it really that crazy? ...The United States believe in the god of technology. They listen to millions of phone calls from a distance. It seems that the recent operations were probably planned by people who maybe just avoided calling each other. But for an American, communicating without a phone is hardly imaginable. The old techniques from half a century ago, consisting of giving orders by placing ads in newspapers, completely caught the homo-technologicus off guard. After the Nairobi attacks, cruise missile strikes were carried out. Were they justified? Apparently, nothing was obvious. Hence, a critique by many specialists on the way Americans collect intelligence. And those people say "nothing beats direct contact." ...But can one believe in what one considers inherently impossible? Let's go back. Do you remember the surprise of the Americans, discovering the extent of Soviet achievements in space? The French press of that time mentioned "a miracle fuel." But no: the rockets were immediately huge, because the Russians had much more ground to cover than the Americans to reach their territory. The Russian "space conquest" was merely the civilian fallout of Soviet military strategic projects. Currently, the Chinese are developing very large rockets. Same motive, same punishment. They are "far from everything and everyone." That is why, to hide their strategic equipment project, they have suddenly developed a strong desire to install a base on the Moon. I still remember, when I was a child, what French scientists and, in general, Westerners said about the Russians, before all this broke out (especially their first A-bomb). Many believed they were incapable of competing with Western technology ("perhaps only in biology..."). The surprise was brutal. The Soviets thought differently. Semiorok had a success rate of 99.7%. Yet it was an incredible do-it-yourself job, due to the brilliant Korolev. While the Americans were sketching, in their engineering offices, the fantastic engines of the future Saturn V rocket, facing formidable problems of combustion instability in such "coquetiers," the Russians assembled dozens of reliable engines at the base of their rockets. I was a rocket test engineer, so I know a bit about the subject. Semiorok was squat, more rigid than its American counterparts. In Russia, the rustic was also fantastically clever. Witness the rocket suspension and release system, without sophisticated devices or jacks, simply because... of gravity.
...The West would be very wrong to underestimate the abilities of Arab countries to assimilate, recover Western technologies, or simply bypass these technologies, by acting... differently. When these airplane cabins were taken over, people wondered: "how did they manage to bring weapons on board? Were they plastic guns? Not even. Three determined men can take over a plane with... cutters. You should have thought of it. Who would have predicted such a thing? The kamikaze, who immediately decided to die, and who respects no one, no human life, needs nothing. The whole thing is to manage to force the pilots to open the door, by slaughtering the flight attendants, one after the other.
- Please, Mike, open up, they're going to kill me......
...There are psychology manuals focused on hostage situations. Everyone knows "you must establish contact, negotiate, wear down the opponent's nerves." But no one thought to write a psychology manual for people involved in a kamikaze operation. ...Remember the war in Japan. The Americans had not anticipated the kamikazes. Their first attack caused devastation. The A-bomb stopped the phenomenon. Between the Japanese and the Americans: mutual misunderstanding. Before the Japanese attack, Japan armed itself, swelled immoderately, militarized. The United States reacted with an embargo, saying: "the Japanese don't have raw materials. They're doomed....." ...And then came Pearl Harbor, totally unexpected, yet logical for a people who prefer to die rather than lose face. On the Japanese side, there may have been the same recklessness:
- If we attack by surprise, without warning, and invade all of Asia, the Americans won't dare risk going so far from their territory.
...Error, the Yankees carried out a reconquest, island by island. The Japanese had not anticipated the atomic bomb either. The Americans obtained the surrender of the Empire of the Rising Sun through a bluff.
- We give you forty-eight hours to surrender, without conditions. Otherwise, we will destroy one of your cities every day.
...False, they had no A-bombs in reserve. But the bluff worked. There was also, on the American side, the intelligence to understand that it would not be wise to touch the person of the emperor, as a divine symbol. To put Hiro-Hito on trial, to hang him like a common war criminal, as was done with German officials at Nuremberg, might have been a major mistake that was not committed. And yet, it was not obvious.
...Hitler supposedly did not think the USA would enter the war. Yet they had intervened in 1914-18. He also believed he could conquer Russia "in a few weeks," but there was Stalingrad, where German soldiers in summer clothes found themselves trapped. History is full of mistakes, of failed or successful gambles. Kennedy won a dangerous bet with the Cuban missile crisis. But the "Bay of Pigs" operation, in the same island, was a failure, linked to a poor assessment of the situation.
...Do the Americans understand global geopolitics? Are they not the ones who armed the Taliban to put the Russians in difficulty, on that ground? Yet it is possible that the price to pay today turns out to be exorbitant. Conversely, Schwarzkoff, after the rapid collapse of Iraqi troops, was ready to march on Baghdad to capture Saddam Hussein, but was abruptly stopped in his tracks, on presidential order. Because Saddam, in any case, might have been a better barrier against Iran than a puppet installed by the Americans and supported by them.
21 September 2001: Following a comment from Alexandre Berube, a Canadian engineer: He said that the Americans had not armed the Taliban from the beginning, but that their aid was directed towards the "Mujahideen," as early as 1997, in their anti-Soviet struggle. He also highlights the versatility of the Americans, both in foreign policy and in commercial policy. This is his view of the American system in general. In a program on Arte yesterday, we learned that Afghanistan is one of the most powerful drug producers in the world, especially heroin.
...In this text, there may be errors, possibly many. I can only rely on personal experiences, always subjective, and on what is transmitted to me by the media, always questionable. I will mention any information, regardless of its source.
| sciences | jp-petit.com |
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I am obviously talking about information or remarks that bring something concrete, not the expression of simple opinions. My site is not a forum.
...General Massoud is dead. Fantastic operation: two fake journalists blow themselves up with their TV cameras. Let us give them this justice: the imagination of the terrorists is extraordinary. After the recent events, everything becomes possible. Conversely, how do the Muslim fundamentalists dare to attack a people who were the first, and the only one, to use a nuclear weapon twice? We hear them say: "the Americans are cowards" (....). The "muscular" response seems unsuitable, inappropriate. One can note, however, a historical fact without precedent, at least in our modern history: Bush has all the powers. Moreover, he has a "credit" of several thousand innocent deaths. In addition, no power in the world is able to threaten the USA militarily, especially since there are strong indications that the United States have an arsenal that goes "far beyond nuclear." Having mastered the problem of 4th generation weapons, of very low power and encumbrance, using antimatter stored in crystals as a detonator, it is possible that they are capable of mass pulverizing any region of the globe, without creating a nuclear winter, with a cluster of mini-bombs the size of a golf ball. It is hard to see the Russians defending the ... Afghans. The Chinese are not ready to influence the fate of the world. The most surreal media event was probably seeing the Iranian Ayatollahs "condemn violence."
...What is happening on this planet? One could call it the beginning of the third world war, in a form that, as usual, no one had been able to imagine: a war... of religion, using terrorism, "the nuclear weapon of the poor." As usual, no one had been able to predict the extent of such a phenomenon. It is not certain that the Americans really understand what they are dealing with. One can doubt whether they have perceived who the real puppet masters of all these operations are: the Mullah, the Ayatollahs, the true integralist power, which is essentially religious. The West also reacts with its culture and its laws. Bush spoke of "bringing the guilty to justice." But the fundamentalists obey another law: the sharia. Two worlds, separated by light-years, are confronting each other. Poverty, frustrations, inequalities have thrown millions of people into the hands of fanatical, schizophrenic fundamentalists, "receiving their orders from God." On the other hand, the West, and above all the Americans, are incapable of understanding the very meaning of the words "injustice," "inequality," which are the essence of the ideology, of the economic theories of free competition and free enterprise. One side claims, is consumed by hatred, daughter of despair, the other is ready to dispense "charity," without realizing that it is urgent for the human species to begin to see itself as a global entity and not as a patchwork of nationalities. Many Western countries have abolished the death penalty, yet depriving people of food, medicine, and access to contraception is already condemning them to death. ...War is declared. This means that it will also take an economic turn. Western economies are fragile. Oil remains a Achilles' heel. Everything will be done to destabilize the opponent, to provoke social disorders in Western countries that will inevitably accompany a strong economic recession and a tenfold increase in unemployment, which would exacerbate the demonstrations of far-right groups and eventually push Muslims living in France into the arms of fundamentalists coming from an Algeria already in full decomposition and perfectly capable of playing a "rear base" role. ...Conversely, the rich countries are still unable to consider a globalization of the planet's problems. Globalization, like great ideas such as "Europe," dear to Robert Schumann, are globalizations and Europes of the rich, designed in their own interest and not in the interest of the populations. These are essentially capitalist projects. The competition between countries allows pressure on wages and a tenfold increase in profits. At the level of companies, the big devour the small.
...How could an American, champion of "laissez-faire," dear to Reagan and Thatcher, imagine otherwise? His naive morality coincides with this world view. At best, in the rich countries, one considers charitable acts, while the problems are infinitely more serious.
...Is it possible to say something that is not completely idiotic about the recent events? The age of all violence is not yet over. In a few years, vast regions of the planet (or almost all of it) may find themselves in a situation next to which the Hundred Years' War would resemble a great joke. Economic and monetary chaos is at our doorstep. Global misunderstanding is more exacerbated than ever. In Israel, Jews and Arabs are settling accounts of more than two thousand years. The Americans, for their part, must see themselves as completely innocent victims, while their twin towers, besides housing innocent brokers and brave mothers of families working as secretaries, were also (also) the fortress of all the J.R. Ewings. In the mind of the average American, the Trade Center was the colossus of free enterprise. A colossus. with feet of clay, apparently. From the Pentagon came the order to get rid of the liberal Allende, who had made the mistake of receiving Castro at his home. Later, "by discreetly making several thousand people disappear" thanks to his death squads, Pinochet rid Chile of the "communists" and the Americans, in return, financed a sympathetic economic boom. This is the "Pax Americana."
...In 66 AD, the Jews rebelled one last time against the Romans. The fantastic Roman war machine got into motion. It besieged Jerusalem, which fell. The Jews had always been convinced that only Yaweh decided the fate of the weapons. The Romans, methodical, after reaching the last bastion, which was the temple, began to demolish the Antonia fortress, which stood on the periphery (and which had housed the garrison that monitored the Jews' activities below). Then came the collapse. When the Romans advanced toward the most sacred place for the Jews, the priests were making sacrifices within the temple (which the Romans later razed), hoping for a last-minute miracle.
The capture of the Temple of Jerusalem (excerpt from the Bible in BD by J.P.Petit)
...There remained the Zealot fortress of Masada, considered impregnable. The Romans besieged it. They crucified on the circumvallation wall all the Jews who tried to escape. Then they built a ramp of four hundred meters long, which allowed them to bring their battering rams protected from enemy blows at the height of the wall.
Construction of the attack ramp of Masada (excerpt from the Bible in BD by J.P.Petit)
...Then the walls fell. The thousands of Zealots entrenched in there committed suicide to the last, which would tend to prove that religion, as a strategic driver, does not always work. The Americans are far from being a "degenerate" people. They are perplexed but young and combative. The way they stand together is spectacular.
...Still, the destructive capabilities accumulated, the spread of nuclear weapons (India, Pakistan, Israel and maybe in Arab countries, in the form of terrorist weapons), the spread of biological and chemical weapons, mean that the situation has completely changed compared to 1939-45. Similarly, in 1939, no one expected a world war on this scale. The very notion of "front" fell completely. Thinking about it, does the planet on which we live have the means to afford a third world war? Is it really reasonable? One can doubt it, regardless of the motivations of the various parties. The cost of such an operation risks being without any historical precedent that can be compared to it. We, Europeans, may be living, as in 1939, during "the strange war," a "pre-war" situation that is almost surreal. The whole world may be at the edge of an apocalyptic conflagration.
...A better option, as Luztiger, a Jew who became a Christian, said, would be "that the hearts of men change." Are they capable of it? Poverty and/or fanaticism have eaten the brains of some. Blindness reigns among the wealthy, who refuse to acknowledge the glaring injustices, to consider that they may bear some responsibility. Does God exist? If so, I believe we will need a serious helping hand.
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