Author Archives: Martin van Creveld

Its Truth is Marching On

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In last week’s post I mentioned PE (penis envy) as one of the most powerful drives that has always made the world go round and will presumably continue to do so until the lights go out. And not for the first time either. Each time I do so, I am sure to get some readers’ reactions. They tell me that modern brain science has not succeeded in identifying any such thing (this is analogues to saying that, since the scientific community has been unable to reproduce God’s results, the world does not exist). That Freud was an impostor most of whose opus, including not just PE but a great many other concepts he used in his decades-long attempt to understand how the human mind works, has been deservedly relegated to history’s dustbin. That he used to “molest” his helpless female patients (the worst thing that can be said about any man). And so on, and so on.

Such being the case, I’ve decided to post a slightly updated version of a post I posted for the first time on 16 June 2016. Hopefully it will tell readers what PE is and why I keep my belief in it; in other words, why its truth keeps marching on.

Any comments, welcome.

 

PE? PE!

 

 

 

 

 

The other day, walking through the Hebrew University library looking for something interesting to read, my eye hit a tome with the grand-sounding title, The Oxford Companion to the Mind. I opened it; a thousand pages. Edited by one Richard L. Gregory, CBE, MA (Cantab), DSC, LLD, FRS, and published (second edition), in 2004. The volume differs from the better known Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in that it is more than just a list of all kinds of symptoms, real and imaginary. Instead it is a wide-ranging encyclopedia. With alphabetically arranged articles about everything from the way the ancient Egyptians understood the mind to something called the halo effect.

How wonderful, I thought. An opportunity to refresh my understanding of a phenomenon which, as readers know, I have long been interested in: PE (penis envy). Full of anticipation, I turned the pages. What a disappointment! PE is just not there. Yok, as we Israelis, using a Turkish word, say.

Yet that is strange. It is not as if the volume ignores Freud and psychoanalysis. To the contrary, both merit fairly hefty articles. PE apart, Freudian and Freudian-derived ideas do figure in the book. In considerable numbers, what is more. Among them are the Oedipus Complex, the Electra Complex, the inferiority complex, and many more.
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I decided to check. On Google.com PE has 1,270,000 hits; not a bad following for an idea that is supposed to be purely a figment of one man’s imagination (he himself has 40,400,000, no less). PE has 19,200, the Oedipus Complex 875,000, the Electra Complex (originally introduced by Carl Gustav Jung) 302,000, “inferiority complex” 8,740,000, and “castration anxiety” 162,000. The corresponding figures for Google.scholar are 52,500, 4,550, 2,600 30,900, and 22,300 respectively. On Ngram as of the year 2019, PE figured far more often than “inferiority complex,” “Oedipus Complex,” “Electra Complex,” and “castration anxiety.” All in all, PE seems to put on quite a respectable showing. Yet whereas the other four do have entries in the aforesaid Companion, PE does not.

What is going on here? Some claim that there is no way to prove that PE exists. That may be so; however, the same applies to all the rest. After all the methodology, which consists essentially of listening to patients in a room called a clinic that may or may not contain a couch, is always the same. So I decided to do a little historical research.

Before we delve into the topic itself, though, it is important to note that Freud, like many male gurus throughout history, attracted female patients and students as a lamp attracts moths. No wonder, that, since he valued them and treated them like daughters. It was to one of these women, a Viennese society lady, that Freud owed his professorship, a position he, being Jewish, might not have got without her help. To another, Marie Bonaparte, he owed his life. In 1938 it was she who paid off the Nazis to allow him and his family to leave Austria. Thus any idea that Freud hated women, or did not value them, or looked down on them, is so absurd that only sexually frustrated, half-crazed, present-day feminists can entertain it.

Freud first postulated the existence of PE in a contribution to the nature of sexuality he published in 1904. Two decades later, in 1925, it became the pillar of a 1925 paper he wrote named, Einige psychische Folgen des anatomischen Geschlechtsunterschieds (“some psychological consequences of the anatomical differences between the sexes;” note the characteristically modest way of announcing a new idea). From this point on it often came up in his famous Wednesday evening seminars where he and his disciples, both male and female, discussed psychoanalysis. Both the men and the women tended to be highly intelligent and quite a few of them later attained fame in their own right. Certainly none was a cretin who simply allowed Freud to overrun him or her.

And how did the women in the company take to the concept? One of the most important, Freud’s own daughter Anna, sidestepped the problem altogether. The rest were divided. On one side of the debate was Karen Horney. Praised by subsequent feminists for having “a mind of her own,” she did not deny the existence of PE. Indeed she called Freud’s discovery of it “momentous.” However, following a then famous sociologist by the name of Georg Simmel, she argued that women envied men their penises not because their biology made them to but because the penis stood as a symbol for the advantages society conferred on men; in other words, PE, and what she called “the flight from womanhood,” was a consequence, not a cause. For expressing this view, Horney ended up by being thrown out of the New York psychoanalytical society.

Several other female members of Freud’s circle disagreed. One was Hermine Hug-Hellmuth, said to be the most biologically-reductionist among all his followers. Another was Jeanne Lampl de Groot. To her, “the absence of a penis could not be regarded as a matter of secondary and trifling significance for the little girl.” Rather, PE was “a central point [from which] the development into normal femininity begins.” “Woman’s wish for a penis is the consequence of a biological datum that underlies her psychic reaction of feeling inferior and is rock bottom.”

More important than either of those was Helene Deutsch. Good-looking, capable and extremely hard working, her Psychology of Women (1944) was considered authoritative for decades on end, Deutsch was one of the first Austrian women to receive a medical degree. She considered herself, with good reason, as “a leader in female emancipation.” Yet this did not prevent her from explaining that the clitoris was “an inadequate substitute” for a penis. As late as 2018, in an article originally published in 1964, a female psychotherapist by the name of Maria Torok wrote that “in every woman’s analysis there is inevitably a period in which appears a feeling of envy and covetousness for both the male sex organ and its symbolic equivalents.” Having made listening to women her profession, she should know.

Back to Freud. Then as today, finding out whether we humans are shaped by nature or nurture was a difficult, very often impossible, enterprise. Perhaps that is why Freud, who sometimes hesitated to tread where his followers romped, never voiced his opinion on the matter. Instead he contended himself with the famous question, “what does woman want?”

I too will leave the question open. I do, however, want to provide some examples of what, in my view, PE is. When women discard skirts and put on trousers, then that is PE. When some women complain (as has in fact happened!) that their daughters are not being diagnosed with ADHD as often as boys are, then that is PE. When women refuse to have children so they can have a career as men do, then that is PE. When women want to follow men to Afghanistan and Iraq so they can get themselves shot to pieces for some obscure cause no one understands, then that too is PE.

When some Jewish Israeli women defy a court order and dance with a Torah scroll at the Wailing Wall as Jewish men have been doing for ages, then that is PE. When famous feminist Betty Friedan says she wants to play in men’s “ballfield,” then that is PE. When feminist writer Jean Sinoda Bohlen says she wants to achieve men’s “potency,” then that is PE. When renowned feminist Naomi Wolf says she wants to see more ads with objects sticking out of “women’s [emphasis in the original] groins,” then that is PE doubled, tripled, and squared. In these and countless other cases, one can only conclude that women do in fact crave “the obvious ‘extra’ that [men] have” (Nancy Friday).

Always focusing on rights, never on duties. Always imagining that men have it better and trying to imitate them. Hardy ever coming up with something really new: not the telescope, not the microscope, not gravity, not the steam engine, not the computer (all the best-known female worker in the field, Ada Lovelace, did was to translate the article of an Italian engineering officer, Luigi Menabrea, and provide it with notes). To quote my wife, Dvora, perhaps the real reason why PE is left unmentioned in the Companion is because it is not a disease.

It is, rather, a normal state of mind.

Is That Clear?

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Starting at least as far back as ancient Greece, most thinking people have always been aware that everything around them is subject to change. Starting at least as far back as ancient Greece, most thinking people have always been aware that there are some things that never change but always remain essentially the same (for confirmation, re-read the book of Ecclesiastics). In today’s post I want to focus on the second kind in so far as they pertain to the nature of, and relationship between, men and women.

*

Men on the average are considerably stronger and more robust than women.

Ergo

Without men to defend them against other men, women are essentially defenseless.

*

Ergo

For this and other reasons, men can sleep with women without their consent; the opposite is almost impossible.

Women can have babies; men cannot. On the other hand, men can have far more offspring than women can.

Ergo

Both biologically and socially, women’s lives are more precious than those of men

Lacking physical strength and burdened with young offspring, women are more vulnerable than men.

Ergo

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Starting with war and fighting, in any society it is men who engage in the vast majority of dirty, difficult and dangerous kinds of work.

*

In any known society the vast majority of public posts are occupied by men; the higher the position, the more true this is.

*

Child bearing apart, in any known society both man and women believe that whatever men do is the most important of all. That is why, in any known society women, driven by penis envy, do their best to imitate men in everything; whereas the opposite is rare.

*

Based on these simple premises, any number of different societies can be and have been “constructed” (a term so dear to feminists of all sorts). Some are very small, numbering no more than a few hundred members at most, whereas others are very large. Some live in tiny villages, others in megacities. Some make their living by hunting-gathering, others by engaging in gigantic systems of industry and administration. Some are characterized by approximate equality between their members, others by sharp socio-economic and cultural differences between individual and classes. Some allow a great measure of social mobility, others do not.

Some are so decentralized as to be almost without a government worthy of the name, others highly centralized. Some are monogamous, others (the majority) polygamous, others still (a small minority) polyandrous. Some follow the principle of primogeniture, whereas others do not. Some are strongly influenced by religious beliefs of every kind, others only to a much smaller extent. Some keep men and women more or less segregated, whereas others allow the sexes to mix more or less freely. In all without exception, ultimately it is politics which (to quote Lenin) govern who gets what.

All merge with each other, grow into each other, and, quite often, separate from each other. However much they do so, though, none can escape the fundamental truths as listed above. Not for long, at any rate. And not without triggering processes that, unless they are reversed, may very well end in the collapse of the societies in question.

Is that clear?

The First Casualty

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The first casualty in war, I’ve heard it said, is always the truth. Such being the case, I was intrigued by the tsunami of stories concerning all the terrible things the Taliban, following their victory, have allegedly been doing to their country’s women.

Here are a few examples.

 

“Taliban: Women can study in gender-segregated universities”

(https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/taliban-girls-women-study-men-classrooms-79972251); as if segregating one sex does not mean that the other too is segregated).

“Taliban says women are barred from playing sports in Afghanistan”

(https://duckduckgo.com/?q=taliban+women&t=chromentp&atb=v230-1&ia=web)

“The Taliban knocked on her door three times. The fourth time, they killed her.”

(https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/17/asia/afghanistan-women-taliban-intl-hnk-dst/index.html)

“Taliban have started torturing women, Afghanistan witness say.”

(https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/17/asia/afghanistan-women-taliban-intl-hnk-dst/index.html)

“The world must not look away as the Taliban sexually enslaves women and girls.”

(https://theconversation.com/the-world-must-not-look-away-as-the-taliban-sexually-enslaves-women-and-girls-165426)

‘Inside Taliban’s horrifying medieval executions as women are beheaded and stoned to death for ‘chatting to men’.”

(https://www.the-sun.com/news/3467120/taliban-executions-women-afghanistan-stoned/)

“Taliban demands war booty, women aged 15-45, as sex slaves”

(https://www.jihadwatch.org/2021/07/taliban-demands-war-booty-women-aged-15-45-as-sex-slaves-in-captured-afghanistan)

You get the idea. Before working yourself into a fury over those inhumane, woman-hating, Taliban rapists, though, you might want to take a look at the past. Not of the Taliban, but of the country in which, thanks to its immense “soft power,” so many of the accusations originate. Such a look will quickly show that the invasion of Afghanistan was not the first time Americans used their enemies’ alleged abuse of women as an excuse for making war on them.

No sooner had the War of the American Revolution broken out in 1776 than the rebels accused the British of engaging in mass rape in Rhode Island in particular. From then on the accusations have been piling up. And up. And up. Indeed it would hardly be too much to say that Americans have convinced themselves that they are the only people who know how to treat women properly and feel duty-bound to oppose anyone who does not do so.

Again, here are a few examples.

  • The Mexican War. As always happens when migrants flow into new territories and start opening them up for settlement, during the middle of the nineteenth century the American West was suffering from a deficit of women. Nowhere more so than in areas comprising the future mining states where, it is said, men sometimes outnumbered women by as much as 200 to one. To help alleviate the situation, the Americans convinced themselves that Mexican women were caught in the clutches of their Catholic priests and tht it was their own duty to rescue them. They started doing so, and the rest is history.
  • The Civil War. Uncle Tom’s Cabin notwithstanding, the primary purpose of the Northern Aggression, as the Confederates called it, was to prevent the South from seceding. Freeing the slaves only came a distant second. By way of useful propaganda, slavery itself was sometimes presented in the form of a chain-wearing, nude and nubile young black woman.
  • The war with Spain. There once was a young and good looking woman by the name of Evangelina Cosnio y Cisneros (1877-1970). The daughter of a leading member of the Cuban revolt against Spain, she was arrested and sent to a camp. There the commanding officer, a Colonel named José Berriz, harassed her and, when she refused his advances, threatened to have her stripped and whipped as so many other Cuban women allegedly were. Or so the story went. Evangelina’s sad fate caused the famous American newspaper tycoon, William Hearst, to send a party that successfully pulled her out of jail, put her in a man’s clothes, and took her to the United States. Once there, properly wined and dined and blessed by President McKinley, she became an active participant in the campaign that ultimately ended in the American “liberation” of Cuba from the Spanish yoke.
  • World War I. Like most wars, this one was launched for the best strategic reasons as understood by the most hard-headed, toughest, statesmen and soldiers of the time. By the time America joined the fray in 1917, though, American propagandists seem to have concluded that, to prepare their public for the butchery to come, it was necessary to take a different tack. Whereupon “poor little Belgium” was drawn in the shape of a half-naked female being caught in the arms of a monstrous, pickelhaube-wearing, salivating, ape-like creature called “Kultur.” The poster became famous and has remained so down to the present day.
  • World War II. I am not aware of Americans claiming to save German or Japanese women from the sexual advances of their equally German or Japanese menfolk. It is, however, worth noting that, in the west at any rate, the Wehrmacht was well disciplined. So well that, according to a document I once saw, once the American troops had landed in France they raped more Frenchwomen in six months than the Germans had in four years of occupation. And so well that, according to Mary Louise’s What Soldiers Do, some members of the liberated French population actually hoped for the Germans to return.
  • I’ve been trying to find material on American troops sent to rescue enemy women during Korea and Vietnam, and the 1991 Gulf War; to no avail. What I did find, though, was something equally interesting: to wit, stories about Saddam Hussein’s men throwing young Kuwaiti babies from their incubators. The following are just a small sample:

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“When contemplating war, beware of babies in incubators.”

(https://www.csmonitor.com/2002/0906/p25s02-cogn.html)

“Saddam and the incubator massacre.”

(https://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/35797

“Operation desert lie; Bush 41, Nayira, and Saddam Hussein.”

(https://midnightwriternews.com/operation-desert-lie-bush-41-nayirah-and-saddam-hussein/)

“The fake news in 1990 that propelled the US into the First Gulf War”

(https://citizentruth.org/fake-news-1990-that-ignited-gulf-war-sympathy)

“Selling the Iraq war to the US.”

(https://www.cbsnews.com/news/selling-the-iraq-war-to-the-us/)

The first casualty, once again.

Carpe Diem

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Carpe diem, my grandmother (1894-1986) used to say. With corona making life hard for hundreds of millions if not billions around the world, I thought it would be appropriate to concentrate on a few of the good things by which I, and hopefully a great many others, are surrounded. Such as have always existed and, let’s hope, will return in full force once this nightmare is over. As, either because of medical advances or because we will get used to it, sooner or later it will be.

1. A good meal with family and friends. I am no gourmet. I dislike the kind of people who boast of being able to distinguish between fifty kinds of wine, and I do not particularly like restaurants. After a few days, even the best ones—not seldom, particularly the best ones—get on my nerves. Especially Israeli ones, which tend to play loud music, making it impossible to hear oneself and others think. Fortunately Dvora is as good a cook as they come. She also keeps experimenting, meaning that the food is never boring. Imagine a sunny winter morning or a cool summer evening here near Jerusalem, some 2,200 feet above sea level. Imagine a balcony looking out over a small but carefully kept and beautiful garden. A small group of family and friends, perhaps accompanied by some children, gathers. A bottle of wine is passed around, making everyone feel slightly—but only slightly—tipsy. As Herman Melville is supposed to have said, anyone who has that can feel like an emperor.

2. Music. When I was six or seven years old my mother tried to teach me to play the piano. I did not want to learn and she desisted, but not before telling me I would be sorry. In this she was right. Following my father, my tastes in music are mostly Western and classical, running from Church music (both Gregorian and Eastern Orthodox) through the Renaissance (Monteverdi and Palestrina; as sweet as honey, both of them) through the Baroque (Bach, Handel, Vivaldi) and the nineteenth century (Beethoven, Schubert. Wagner) to the years around 1900 (Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov). But occasionally I also enjoy listening to Chinese music, Arabic music, and popular Israeli music. Two favorites that do not really fit into any of these categories are the Carmina Burana and the Misa Criolla.

To conclude this section, two additional comments. First, my son, Eldad, gave me a set of good speakers for my computer: they are one of the best presents I ever got. Let me take this opportunity to say, once again, thank you, Eldad. Second, our next door neighbor, a lady in her early sixties, has decided to take up the piano and is plinking away. I cannot say it, but hats off nevertheless. 

3. Art. Not everyone can be a Michelangelo, a Bach, or a Sophocles. Creating beauty, the kind of beauty that wills survive for centuries, is something reserved for the very few. One in ten million who tried, I’d say. Such being the case, all that is left to me is to enjoy the art of others; particularly painting, sculpture, architecture, and design. My tastes run form the ancient Greeks to the Dutch masters of the seventeenth century (de Hooch, Cuyp, Vermeer, Rembrandt) all the way through Biedermeier—for me, a recent discovery I made during a brief visit to Warsaw a few years ago—the German Romantics and the Impressionists to Picasso and Fernando Botero. Nor will I miss a good show of Chinse, or, Indian, or Islamic, art. Flea markets are a joy to attend. Old posters, based on the history of the period in which they were created, are often wonderful. However, over the years I have come to dislike abstract art. Judging by the number of visitors I meet in the galleries, I am not the only one.

Normally I visit museums with Dvora, who herself is an accomplished painter. For those of you who do not know, looking at pictures in the company of a painter is a unique experience. Most people, including myself, tend to focus on what they see; the sea, say, as Painted by Turner, or the human body as presented by Rodin. Dvora, on the other hand, asks how the artists achieved the effect he did. To do so she comes so close to the painting that her nose is practically in it. How many times did she not alert the guard who came running!

4. Sport. Truth to say, I, was not born with the sportsman’s talents. In fact so bad was I that the coach who, sixty years ago, taught me to play tennis, a very nice man incidentally, later told me that, on seeing how clumsy I was, he had considered recommending that I take up another sport! Later I spent thirty-five years of my life long distance running up and down the hills surrounding Jerusalem. Rugged terrain, I can tell you. The kind that teaches you what determination is all about. Feeling one’s body go on automatic, so to speak. Floating in the air, as it were, and one’s thoughts freely fluttering about—there is nothing like it. Unfortunately my knees have long forced me to stop running. That was over twenty years ago, and I still miss it. But I do enjoy walking. And swimming in lakes, of course.

Even though these are not scientifically proven, they definitely deserve an honorable mention: Stress Food allergies Hormone changes (like menopause, for example) Genetics Many cases develop after gastroenteritis (stomach flu) Poor diet (processed, high sugar foods) As you can see, many of these Irritable Bowel Syndrome causes constipation symptoms but also alternates with diarrhea. cipla viagra online Apart from tablets, a patient can use the simplest cheap viagra from india form of genuine drug if getting issues to swallow a pill. It is a biologically active to the most gram-positive and gram-negative infections including Staphylococcus aureus and viagra without prescription canada Streptococcuspyogenes, and also other kinds of streptococci. This helps to generic levitra online ensure that the most important concepts are driven home and that your teen learns all of the safe and effective driving techniques the course is designed to teach. 5. Scholarship. For as long as I can remember myself I have always been a bookworm. If I had a great aim in life, it was Rerum causas cognoscere, to understand the causes of things. Probably not with success; looking back, I often think that I know and understand fewer things now than I did at the time I first gained consciousness of myself. I do not think I have made any great discoveries.

How these things work in the natural sciences I do not claim to know at first hand. In the humanities and the social sciences, though, practically everything has been said before by someone at some time at some place; with the result that making such discoveries is, in one sense, next to impossible. But the subjective feeling of having understood, or feeling one has understood, something one had never thought about before—that is an experience the quest for which is worth spending a lifetime at.

6. Nature. The expanse of a field, reaching far away into the horizon. A forest, dark and mysterious. A lofty mountain, enveloped in the kind of silence you only get where there are no people around. A lake, shimmering in the sun. The sea. The eternally changing, all-powerful, sea. It is enough to make you want to weep.

7. Love. It has been defined countless times by countless different people. My own favorite definition is as follows: love is when one’s beloved shortcomings make one laugh. As, for instance happens whenever Dvora sees me with my shirt buttoned the wrong way, smiles, and starts making fun of me. Another definition is that love is trust so great that one never has to say sorry. Not because one never hurts one’s beloved; only angels can do that, and they tend to be rather boring. But because he or she knows that it is not done on purpose.

Anyhow. Love, accompanied where appropriate by the kind of sex that makes the body and mind of both partners radiate with happiness, is the most wonderful thing life has to offer. Pity those, and the older I grow the more of them I think I see, who have not found it.

8. Last not least, a heartfelt email thanking me for one of my posts, such as I sometimes get.

 

Shut Up! On Censorship

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Since long before I started posting on this blog almost seven years ago, I’ve been concerned with freedom of speech on one hand and censorship on the other. Including the censorship which has been applied to me, almost turning me into an academic unperson (one reason for continuing to post for as long as I can). And including that which others have fallen victim to. I therefore thought I’d start thinking a little about the matter. Who knows, perhaps one day these few notes will serve as the starting point for yet another book.

So here goes.

What is censorship? The attempt by one person, or group of persons, to prevent others from speaking their minds.

When did censorship begin? There probably never has been a society without censorship. If not of the formal kind, exercised by personnel specifically authorized for the purpose, then of the informal one that is rooted in public opinion. It is as Hobbes said: absolute freedom can only exist in a desert. That applies freedom of speech as it does to any other kind.

What makes censorship possible? The power some people exercise over others. In other words, the existence of government, institutionalized religion, organized public opinion, or all three.

What conditions favor censorship? Dictatorship. War (“truth is the first casualty”). All kinds of disasters for which no one wants to take responsibility. Bigotry. Monotheistic religion (“You shall have no other God before me;” “There is no Allah except for Allah”).

Who has done the censoring? In the past, it was almost always rulers and/or priests who set up the appropriate legal authority to enable them do so. Nowadays, thanks to the social media a growing number of private organizations are also involved; what started as an instrument for liberation has turned into the most extensive system ever devised for preventing people from saying “inappropriate” things. See under Facebook, see under Twitter. For what they have been doing to those dared express their approval of former President Donald Trump, including Trump himself, I hope they rot in hell. And may their place soon be taken by other platforms which will allow even “Bozos” to say what they think.

Shouldn’t those who mislead public opinion by pronouncing and spreading falsehood be censored? They should. Beginning with the authors of the Bible who, without any proof, have claimed that God exists and keeps interfering in human affairs.

Who has been censored? In general, those who 1. Produced and disseminated information considered undesirable by using any of the available means; such as speech, writing, the plastic arts, photography, film, broadcasting, and, nowadays, the Net. 2. Those who were of some consequence. If only because there are so many of them, there was often no point in censoring nobodies; that, however, seems to be changing.

He makes contemporary Christian writings as entertaining unlike any rhetorical analysis of a thesis on religion. tadalafil buy india The most essential components are included in the HVAC system such as vibration isolator, gas burner, gas line, condensation probe viagra line, compressor, condenser, and many more essential coils, etc. However, viagra cheapest pharmacy remains first choice for men who don’t want to consult with the physician or stand in a queue over the counter. Through viagra prescription this, body relaxation is highly achieved. Socrates apart, the list of those who have been censored or punished for speaking their minds includes Giordano Bruno… Francis Bacon… Galileo Galilei… Thomas Hobbes… Baruch Spinoza… René Descartes… John Locke… Isaac Newton… Charles de Montesquieu… Heinrich Heine… Arthur Schnitzler… Thomas Mann… Boris Pasternak… Jean-Paul Sartre… André Gide… Simone de Beauvoir…

What methods does censorship use? 1. It destroys as much of the “secret” or “heretic” or “dangerous” or “unsuitable” material as it can. 2. What it cannot destroy, it seeks to keep secret 3. It silences those who produce, transmit, or distribute the material that is being censored, either before it is published or after it has been. For an  account of the way one of the most rotten, most reactionary, regimes in history used to do it, see Maxim Gorky, The Mother (1906).

What kinds of material has been censored? Depending on the time and place, 1. Anything that might anger the gods or contradicted the way the established servants of religion saw the world. 2. Anything declared to be immoral; especially if, as in the case of Socrates, it was considered likely to “corrupt” the minds of the young. 3. Anything that might present a danger to government, either from within or from the outside.

Why is censorship dangerous? Because 1. It is, always has been, and always will remain the instrument of tyranny par excellence. 2. Because of its all but inevitable tendency to spread. Until, in the end, what started as a cloud no larger than a man’s hand comes to cover the entire sky, making not only speech but even thought itself impossible.

What is the effect of censorship? Very often, to draw people’s attention to the speech, or information, that has been censored. As, for example, happened to me when, following an Israeli court order banning a Palestinian movie, Jenin, Jenin, I made sure to watch it on YouTube. 

What fate will overtake censorship in the end? Here it would seem that the last word was said some nineteen hundred years ago. The author is the Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus (Annals, 35):

The Fathers* ordered his** books to be burned… but some copies survived, hidden at the time, but afterwards published. Laughable, indeed, are the delusions of those who fancy that by their exercise of their ephemeral power, posterity can be defrauded of information. On the contrary, through persecution the reputation of the persecuted talents grows stronger. Foreign despots and all those who have used the same barbarous methods have only succeeded in bringing disgrace upon themselves and glory to their victims.

 

*   The members of the Senate.

** The reference is to Aulus Cremutius Cordus, a Roman historian who lived under Tiberius. In 25 CE he fell foul of Sejanus, the corrupt but all-powerful commander of the Praetorian Guard, who had him brought to trial for allegedly offending the memory of the late Emperor Augustus. He ended by committing suicide.

A Guide to the Perplexed

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A Guide to the Perplexed is the title of a book by Maimonides (Moshe Ben Maimon) one of Judaism’s greatest scholars/philosophers who lived during the second half of the twelfth century CE. Here I am using it as the title of an attempt to sort out some of the most important “new” forms of war invented, mostly by American officers, think tank personnel, academics and journalists over the last few decades.

*

Airland battle. A form of close air force/ground forces tactical and operational cooperation pioneered by the Luftwaffe during World War II and revived by the US during the late 1970s as part of the maneuver warfare school (q.v). of that period.

Asymmetric war. A term referring to an armed conflict waged by powerful, mostly state-owned and regular, armed forces and their smaller, either state-or non-state owned, irregular opponents.

Bushfire war. A term coined during the 1950s to describe the African and Asian wars of decolonization and the attempts of the colonial countries, almost all of them unsuccessful, to win them.

Cyberwar. A kind of war waged not in physical space but inside computers with the aid of data links, artificial intelligence, and similar contrivances. Extremely secretive, said to be ubiquitous and capable of destroying entire societies without them even noticing that it has got under way, so far it seems to have resulted in not a single human life lost.

Effect-based operations. Defined as “operations conceived and planned in a systems framework that considers the full range of direct, indirect, and cascading effects—effects that may, with different degrees of probability, be achieved by the application of military, diplomatic, psychological, and economic instruments.”

Guerrilla. The term originated in the second half of the eighteenth century when it referred to small-scale operations waged by light troops away from the belligerents’ main forces. Made famous during the Spanish resistance to the Napoleonic occupation, today it refers to irregular warfare (q.v) waged, mostly in covert form, against occupying forces.

Infowar. “A concept involving the battlespace use and management of information and communication technology (ICT) in pursuit of a competitive advantage over an opponent. Information warfare is the manipulation of information trusted by a target without the target’s awareness so that the target will make decisions against their interest but in the interest of the one conducting information warfare.”

Insurgency/counterinsurgency. Insurgency is a violent attempt by a population or organization to overthrow a government, domestic or foreign, they consider illegitimate When protracted it tends to merge with terrorism (q.v) and/or guerrilla (q.v),

Low intensity war.  A war waged (at least on one side, sometimes on both) without benefit of state control over the armed forces, large numbers of troops, or many heavy weapons.
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Maneuver warfare. Around 1980 Western armed forces felt that, in case of war on the “Central” (i.e European) Front, they were likely to be beaten by the so-called Soviet “steamroller.” To prepare themselves for a possible Soviet invasion, they went back to the German World War II method of maneuver warfare in which maneuver and a decentralized “mission style” command system played a great role.

Mosaic war. “This new design concept would confound enemies by presenting a highly adaptable web of sensors, shooters, and decision-makers enabled by advanced computing. That network—named for the adaptable, piecemeal art form—should be able to assemble and disassemble itself into infinite new combinations on the fly.” The idea is to “disaggregate what [the USAF in particular”) can do across multiple platforms and sensors… reducing vulnerabilities for US forces and complicating the problem facing adversaries.” 

Neocortical war. “Warfare that strives to control or shape the behavior of enemy organisms, but without destroying the organisms. It does this by influencing, even to the point of regulating, the consciousness, perceptions and will of the adversary’s leadership: the enemy’s neocortical system. In simple ways, neocortical warfare attempts to penetrate adversaries’ recurring and simultaneous cycles of ‘observation, orientation, decision and action.’ In complex ways, it strives to present the adversary’s leaders—its collective brain— with perceptions, sensory and cognitive data designed to result in a narrow and controlled (or an overwhelmingly large and disorienting) range of calculations and evaluations. The product of these evaluations and calculations are adversary choices that correspond to our desired choices.”

Regular/irregular war. Regular war is waged by state-owned, bureaucratically organized, armed forces against opponents of the same kind; irregular war, by non-state owned organizations either against the government or against each other.

Resource war. The idea that, as the earth’s population grows, future war will be primarily about natural resources. As if there were anything new about this.

Spacewar. A form of war waged primarily by assets, such as satellites, located in outer space. It may, however, also be waged space-to-earth and earth-to-space. The primary objective would be to disrupt enemy communications as well as command, control, and intelligence-gathering capabilities.

Swarming warfare. Swarming means that rather than operate as a single block under a unified command, our forces are going to rely on multiple devices (mainly drones) attacking the enemy in a decentralized, yet coordinated, way. The objective is to overload his ability to respond and, in the end, bring about his collapse.

Terrorism. A form of low-level guerrilla warfare (q.v) or insurgency (q.v) in which one side, being too weak to stand up to their opponents, rely primarily on stealth in order to disrupt ordinary life with the ultimate aim of toppling the government and taking over.

TQM (war). Total Quality Management is an idea originating in US business and applied to the military in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War. As is evident from proponents’ use of the term “management” instead of “command,” they emphasized the similarities between business and the military, arguing that, “servicing” the enemy, the latter should adopt the methods of the former.

*

You might think all this represents progressive and steadily improving ways of getting to grips with the extraordinary complexity of modern war. If so, consider that, even as the West came up with these and any number of similar ideas, it kept losing almost every war in which it has engaged from 1945 on. May that be because, as Hindenburg once observed, in war only the simple succeeds?

Questions People Ask

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Now that he U.S withdrawal from Afghanistan has become a fait accompli, people all over the world expect to understand why and how it happened. In particular, judging by any number of discussions on the Net, the following questions demand answers.

How did the U.S get involved in Afghanistan?

U.S involvement in Afghanistan started in the early 1980s. That was when President Reagan decided to assist the Afghan Mujahedeen (Holy Warriors) , who were fighting against the Soviet occupation of their country, by providing them with weapons, money, and advisers. Using classical guerrilla methods, for close to a decade the Mujahedeen harried the Red Army, which at the time many experts considered most powerful in the world. The number of Afghan casualties, refugees included, has been estimated at 2,000,000. Nevertheless, in 1989, having suffered perhaps 13,000 killed and with nothing to show for their efforts, the Soviets gave up and retreated north to their own country. As they did so the Mujahedeen did not even bother to shoot at them.

Go on.

The resulting political vacuum was filled by a group known as the Talban (Religious Students.) They in turn sheltered Al Qaeda, a terrorist organization led by the Saudi Osama Bin Laden and well known to the American intelligence community from other terror attacks it had mounted at various places around the world. Following 9-11, when the Taliban refused to hand over Bin Laden, the U.S Government under George W. Bush had little option but to launch an offensive—any other decision would have swept those who made it clean out of office.

How difficult was the challenge the Americans faced?

Afghanistan (“Wild Country”) has long presented would-be conquerors with four main challenges. First, the terrain, which is mountainous and, in many places, all but roadless. Second the climate, which is continental and, in winter, often makes traffic impossible for week on end. Third, the fact that there is not, nor has ever been, a single government capable of making peace on behalf of the entire population with all its numerous tribes, groups, and clans.

Making things worse for the Americans, Afghanistan is a landlocked country located on the other side of the world from the U.S. While part of the logistic burden was sustained by developing LOCs (lines of communication) by way of Pakistan, the consequent dependence on air transport turned the invasion into a enormously costly logistic nightmare. Not that the Americans did not do their best—they invested vast resources. In the whole of history no other country has ever done nearly as much. In the end, though, to no avail.

Still, the U.S had the most powerful military on earth whereas the Taliban had neither a regular army, nor an air force, nor an air defense system, nor computers, nor artificial intelligence, nor any number of other gizmos said to be essential for modern warfare. Mines apart, throughout their most important weapons were Kalashnikov assault rifles, mortars, and anti-tank missiles, all of them cheap and easy to obtain and operates. Many Taliban did not even have uniforms, preferring to wear their traditional jelabias instead.

The Jelabias at any rate often prevented the Americans from distinguishing Taliban combatant from the civilian population, which in turn not seldom meant heavy casualties, euphemistically known as “collateral damage,” among the latter.

At a deeper level, it was the Taliban and not the Americans who had the most important factor of all: namely the will to fight for their country, for their religion, and for their traditions. Specifically including that part of them which regulate everything pertaining to women.

This last point is worth exploring in somewhat greater detail. In any society that has ever existed, women (and children) represent by far the most important thing warriors have and fight for. Ergo, any outside attempt to interfere with the opponents’ women and children is bound to give rise to the most strenuous resistance. Better die than wath one’s wife in the conquerors’ arms, said the Homeric hero Hector! By trying to impose Western feminism on the country, the US made sure that much of the native population, both male and, often enough, female, would resist tooth and nail. Which was just what, especially in the countryside, it did.

Anything else?

Here are a few such symptoms which can help to increase the blood flow in your system, this makes it easier for the pill to get into the blood completely and then tighten the pelvic muscles for nearly 10 seconds. viagra uk shop It originates in the dental pulp and/or in the peri-radicular tissues. cheap viagra It becomes quite difficult viagra sales on line to find a solution to your erectile dysfunction problem without letting anyone else know about it. The causes of erectile dysfunction commonly involve reduced blood flow to the penis causing an erection. for sale viagra has long lasting effect of about 36 hours. Yes. As former US national security adviser and secretary of state Henry Kissinger once put it, counterinsurgents, as long as they do not win, lose; guerrillas, as long as they do not lose, win. In other words, almost from the beginning time was working for the Taliban. In essence all they had to do was to wait until the Americans got tired and left. Which, after twenty years, they did.

What should the Americans have done differently?

Tactically and operationally, one can think of any number of things they could have done differently. For example, by using more boots on the ground during the first weeks of the conflict they might have prevented the Taliban, forced by the American bombing to disperse in all directions, from escaping and reorganizing. As, among many others, both Bin Laden and Mohamed Omar, the Taliban leader directly responsible for giving him shelter, did.

Much more important, starting in 1945 there have been any number of armed conflicts in which Western forces were defeated by local guerrillas. Think of the struggles that brought down the Dutch, British, French and Portuguese empires. Think, above all, of Vietnam. Following this experience, the Americans should have decided, secretly and well in advance, how long the campaign should last—say, ninety days. That period having passed, they should have proclaimed victory and withdrawn. While promising to return if necessary, of course.

After Bush, but before Biden, came Presidents Obama and Trump. Where did they fit in?

Both inherited a bad situation. Obama did the best he could, sending in the “surge” which registered some successes at first but ended without having achieved anything. Trump, as usual, did little but bluster. Bottom line: neither stood a chance either against the Taliban or against their own public opinion which had long become apathetic and, to the extent that it cared at all, wanted nothing better than an end to the conflict.

To return to the beginning, given the number of Western defeats we just mentioned, you’d think that there must have been warning voices.

There were some. A few even predicted that Afghanistan would end as Vietnam did, with pro-American Afghans desperately clinging to their departing guests’ helicopters. However, they were drowned in a mighty chorus of patriotic fervor and calls for revenge. With the memory of the 1999 “victory” over Serbia still fresh in people’s mind, President Bush himself gave the cue. He claimed that America had overcome the so-called Vietnam Syndrome and was ready to treat its enemies as they deserved to be treated. Seldom in history has anyone proved more wrong, I suppose.

Let’s switch from the past to the future. What are the most likely consequences of America’s failure?

In the short run, a significant loss of prestige that will make the US more hesitant about invading some countries and other countries less confident that the Americans will come to their assistance in their hour of need. This in turn is bound to affect America’s position throughout the world. Including Europe where some countries may start rethinking their position in NATO and in respect to Russia. Better make a deal with Putin than trust Biden, they will say.

While America loses, its main foreign opponents—China and Russia—are gloating over its failure. Hoping to profit, both suck up to the Taliban, claiming they themselves neither are, nor ever have been, anti-Islamic and promising every kind of assistance in rebuilding the country.

And in the long run?

As the British in India among others learnt to their cost, Afghanistan, left to its own devices, has never been a comfortable neighbor to have. On one hand there is the “government” which, however, is corrupt from top to bottom and does not have the power to control the clans and tribes that live in the outlying provinces in particular. On the other there is a warlike and often well armed population many of whose members do as they please, behaving as if borders did not exist. Add the absence of a proper bureaucracy to bridge the gap between the two, and all that’s left is a godawful mess.

To use a metaphor, currently the Afghan bride, war-ravaged and desperately poor as she is, is being courted not by one but by two powerful suitors. Whoever wins, I wish them joy of her.

And Still Mankind Survived

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COVID 19. HIV. Overpopulation. Too much C02 and any number of other harmful substances in the air, in the ground, in the seas. “Huge” fires in places as far apart as Turkey and Canada. “Unprecedented” droughts in parts of Africa. “Disappearing” glaciers. “Unbelievable” floods. “Immense” numbers of casualties. Open whatever news bulletin you choose—I myself do so several times a day, in several different languages—and the message is always the same. Following a nefarious combination of unrestrained growth and neglect, the world is on the brink of disaster. Unless “we” do something, and quickly, the bells will soon be ringing over our graves. Provided, of course, there is anyone left to dig the graves in the first place.

Far be it from me to question all this. For those who are interested, though, I have drawn up a list of the twelve largest (as measured by the number of dead) disasters in history. I take, as my non-plus ultra, the year 1945. A moment in history when the earth’s population was only about a quarter of what it is now, and decades before anyone heard of global warming and the like.

Name of event Year Highest estimated number of dead
Antonine Plague 165-180 12,000,000
Plague of Justinian 541-542 50,000,000
Black Death 1346-53 200,000,000
Cocolitzli (Mexico) Epidemic 1545-48 15,000,000
Indian Famine 1773-93 21,000,000
Third Plague Pandemic 1855-1945 12,000,000
Chinese Famine 1876-79 13,000,000
Chinese Famine 1907 25,000,000
Spanish Flu 1918-20 50,000,000
Chinese Floods 1931-35 42,000,000
Now to the post-1945 figures. They are as follows:
Great Chinese Famine 1958-61 55,000,000
HIV 1981- 35,000,000
COVID 2021-21 4,000,000

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Both before and after 1945, all the rest were much smaller. As the Talmud says, each person is a world unto him (or, for God’s sake, her) self. Statistics are the most heartless form of knowledge; the amount of suffering they contain or, if one prefers, conceal is both immeasurable and endlessly varied. Still, two conclusions follow from all this. First, the most deadly events of all have always been disease, famine, and floods; by contrast earthquakes, eruptions, tsunamis, avalanches, various kinds of storms, heatwaves, fires, etc. hardly count. Second, adjusted for the earth’s population as it was at the time it occurred, almost any one of the pre-1945 figures far exceeds those pertaining to the post-1945 period.

And still mankind survived. Do I have to say more?

Why Read Nietzsche?

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Why read a book by Nietzsche?… There are, are, after all, many other books to read, there are also many other things to do besides read…

“Nothing,” Nietzsche wrote in Dawn (in aphorism 18), “has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.” In a draft for the preface to hi uncompleted Will to Power he wrote: “A book for thinking, nothing more…” This is one reason for reading Nietzsche’s books; they are a unique course in thinking—nothing more, but also nothing less. Independence of mind, independence in general, was his greatest passions, and independence is above all what he taches; not p4rimarily a new set of ideas, or a new science, but philosophy in the proper and traditional sense of the word, a stimulation of the mind into activity, into becoming productive, into becoming airborne.

And that little bit of human reason we have is not only dearly bought, it is also easily lost. I think we are in some anger of actually losing it unless we remind ourselves constantly how little mankind would have left to be proud of I it lost its reason. There are even those who believe it is in their interest it should be lost, or at any rate reduced and be held in check, though they couldn’t be more wrong unless they are definitely misanthropos and hate mankind. But everywhere in the active world today intelligence is on the defensive; it has to fight to survive. For what characteristics the present at, the present decade? An excess of emotion, constant stimulation of the emotions and a desire to have them stimulated more; nationalism and anti-nationalism, not for ‘reasons’ but for purely emotional reflexes; ‘ideologies’ which are likewise a transparent covering for the stupidest passions, greed and resentments; ‘hatred’ (of war for instance) and ‘love’ (of peace for instance) as ultimate arguments, though they are so far from being arguments at all that a single negative can reverse that polarity and turn a negative into a positive overnight; and in the private world a continual resort to the feelings, not as a reaction to an over-strict upbringing–which was the excuse of the 1920s—who now living had an over-strict upbringing?—but as a flight from the brain to the ‘heart’ and then further on down; the desire to become the prisoner of some emotion presenting itself as a demand for more freedom; a cult of ‘sensibility’ which believes the opposite of feeling is ‘being dead;’  whereas its true opposite is thinking… There are no doubt reasons for this denigration of reason: the H bomb is said to be the most important reason… Meanwhile, there has never been in all history been so much music; it sometimes seems as if intelligence were being dissolved in rhythm. Nietzsche’s books are, among other things, a protective against this dissolution.
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To think well, to think at all; a third reason for reading Nietzsche would be to think differently. It is very hard to come to a rational opinion on any single subject; one does not think deeply enough or long enough; one has insufficient data, one makes up one’s mind much too soon. Some feel they ought to have an opinion about this or that and go in search of one, and find one, from a sense of duty. Some become committed when very young and then find all their opinions perfectly natural, as a train leaving Kind’s Cross committed to Aberdeen finds it perfectly natural to arrive in Aberdeen and not in Bombay. Some cannot bear uncertainty and therefore seek certainty and find it took quickly. Others perhaps admire someone and adopt his opinions so as to be more like him. Many opinions are merely a coloring induced by immediate environment, like a sunburn or a city pallor. There ar3e indeed a thousand ways of acquiring an opinion ha have nothing to do with rational thinking. Now Heaven forbid I should suggest that Nietzsche’s opinion are the only rational opinions and hat everyone should adopt them forthwith. That should be a very sad result of reading him and quite beside the point. To read Nietzsche, decisively to reject him, and to know why—that would be more to the point. More to the point still would be to see why he could be right, to see out of what mode of thinking such as his can proceed, to see how many ways of thinking there are in brief, to stop being parochial. Not knowing how to think true more than one sort of opinion is like never leaving the street one was born in.”

From: J. J. Hollingdale, Introduction to F. Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (1968).

AI

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J. Tangredi and G. Galdorisi, eds., AI at War: How Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning Are Changing Naval Warfare, Annapolis, Md, Naval Institute Press, 2021.

The book, which I got in hard copy from a friend, was written by a team of experts, all of whom have years of experience with computers, cyberwar, AI, the US Navy, or all four of those. Such being the case, I was hardly surprised to find it overflowing with praise (interspersed with a few warnings, what’s true is true) for everything that has to do with computers. What huge memories they have, incomparably larger and more easily accessible than those of the most capable humans. How fast they can process information and, thanks to the data links that connect them, pass it to the ends of the universe (and perhaps beyond, but let’s not enter into that here). How sophisticated their programs, specifically including AI, have become, enabling them to “see” a thousand connections that would probably have escaped humans even if they spent a thousand years looking for them. How modern warfare (and a thousand other things) would be inconceivable without them.

How dangerous it would be to allow America’s rivals to leapfrog it in this critically important field. Above all, what marvelous things computers and AI may still be expected to do in the future. How, though unable to replace humans, they can greatly enhance their capabilities. Provided some remaining fundamental problems (such as the difficulty they have in adapting to change and the vast surplus of information they generate) are solved, of course; and provided the necessary funding is made available. All this, against a background of naval, and by no means only naval, warfare that is becoming steadily faster and more complex.

I would be the last person in the world to even try and dispute all this. After all, who can argue with sentences such as the following? “For this modest shift in force design to yield the most benefit, DoD needs to co-develop C2 processes that can operate a more disaggregated force and to pursue a new innovation strategy that focuses less on gaps in the ability of today’s force to operate as desired and more on how the future could perform better with new capabilities that may create novel ways of operating (Harrison Schramm and Bryan Clark, p. 240).” “An important benefit of using machine control is that it enables C2 architectures to adapt to communications availability, rather than DoD having to invest in robust communication infrastructure to support a ‘one sizer fits all’ C2 hierarchy” (same authors, p. 241). And who cares that “the term ‘all domain’ has started to replace the US Army ‘multiple-domain warfare’ term. First use appears to be Jim Garamose, “US military Must Develop AI-domain Defenses, Mattis, Dunford say,’ US Department of Defense, April 132, 2018, htppsw//www.defense.gov/Newsroom./News/Article/Article1493209-us-military-must-develop all-domain-defenses-mattis-dunford-say” (Adam M. Aycock and William G. Glenney, IV p. 283).
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Not I. Nor, I suspect, anyone who is not a member, bona fide or otherwise, of the community which specializes in such things. All this might have convinced me to snap to attention and salute in face of the avalanche of expertise –the “select bibliography” alone amounts to forty pages—the authors have hurled at me. If I did not do so, though, then that was partly because of the following incident. I got my first inkling that the book, which had been sent to me by snail mail, had arrived here in my neighborhood when I found a computer-printed note in my mailbox saying that I should come and collect it from the nearby post office. However, I knew I could not do so immediately; here in Israel it is customary for the Postal Service to give you your letters and parcels not on the day you are notified but on the next one. However, this was a Thursday. Since the Israeli weekend starts on Friday and lasts through Saturday, doing so had to wait until Sunday. Sunday morning I went to the office, only to learn that, to send a letter or parcel, you now have to make an appointment in advance (by handy and application, of course). As a result a number of people, mostly elderly ones like myself, were milling about looking embarrassed, not knowing what to do and how to do it. A few, asking the overburdened staff for help but not getting it, were close to tears.

Fortunately I was there to receive an item, not to send it. This time there was no need for a handy. I handed in my note, typed my ID number into a little gadget they keep for the purpose, and prepared to sign my name onto the screen when I realized that the attached electronic pencil was missing; perhaps someone, overtaken by computer rage, had deliberately torn it away. So instead I used my finger—not to make a print, which the machine was unable to “understand,” but simply to leave some kind of mark—an X, as it happened. Much like the ones illiterates of all ages have always used and still use.

I suppose I was lucky. They let me have the book, which as is almost always the case with the Naval Institute turned out to be not only crammed with information but well and solidly produced. Not having to go home and visit the post office again—good!

In and out of the Start Up Nation, my experience may be unique. Or is it?