Memories of Richard Trigaux: 8 Toulouse, 1975-1981

The leftists (continuation and end)

(Permalink) Written in July 2021

(Notice to my USA friends: beware of propaganda and abusive generalizations. Regular Communists and Soviets are not leftists. Leftists are marxists who are trotskyists, maoists or spontaneists. 19th Century socialists, French Socialist Party, and USA Democrats are totally unrelated to any form of marxism or extremism.)

I have never formally joined any leftist party or similar ideology. But in 1975, when I arrived in Toulouse, I had contracted several ideological viruses of this kind, polluting my consciousness, inherited from my time in Bordeaux and my Cabuesque readings. The main one was the dualism between the «good» conscious people on one side, and the «bad» members of society on the other, all consciously and deliberately serving the evil in an «intrinsically rotten» society. Such a mindset inevitably cut me off from my classmates and professors at the University Institute of Technology (IUT), and owed me some trouble. Although, my time at the IUT did not saw the collective sociopathic behaviors seen at Duruy or in the Collège Naval. Just a few guys showed distant.

One of my few classmates who supported me in such a toxic state of mind was a member of Lutte Ouvrière («Workers' Struggle», trotskyists). While chatting with him, I found myself one day meeting members of their local cell. I had noticed that this particular comrade had a brownish vibration, which I attributed to some disability or illness (I had already seen a case). But that ALL OF THEM had the same vibration set the alarm off. Moreover, as they were trying to get to know me, it took them no more than two minutes to call me a bourgeois!

This pathetic performance led to the final purge of my leftist period (three years in total), while the anti-society dualism would be shed some years later, in two stages: when I started working when I started working, and finally while getting out of the Faitg.

Such an attitude can get you into serious trouble, without actually benefiting anyone. Indeed, during the strike, an innocent student tradition, we discussed whether we should boycott the oral exams. The vote was yes… but when the grades came in, it turned out I was the only one who boycotted them! This earned me several zeros, dragging my average below the passing grade, with no recourse. This is the only reason why I did not receive my DUT diploma… even though I was perfectly capable, since I later worked as an electronics technician in the space industry.

Later, I had a similar problem with the anti-nuclear movement during an act of civil disobedience: a 15% self-reduction on EDF (French electricity company) bills in protest against nuclear power. The initiative had been going on for two or three years, and a small debt was accumulating on my EDF account. Then one day, having heard nothing about this action for a while, I asked for an update. One of my mates then bleated that «this action had been abandoned»!!! Yes, they had abandoned an act of civil disobedience, without informing those who were carrying it out, thus placing them in a very dangerous position. Indeed, governments fear collective acts of civil disobedience, which bring them to their knees. So, if you act alone, you will be treated worse than a criminal: like a madman or a terrorist. I therefore paid my debt to EDF without saying a word, rather than persisting in an action which consequences I could no longer assume.

I have not engaged in any civil disobedience since. I no longer have the desire for it, after such demonstrations of leftist irresponsibility, the kind that cost the lives of so many militants abandoned alone on the ground. And if you engage in an act of civil disobedience, never do it alone, ensure you have reliable support and that you can recover if problems arise. For example, be able to pay your debts quickly, avoid leaving valuables in an occupied location, and so on. And especially if you do not have the country's citizenship, keep at safe distance from this kind of things. Otherwise, you will always be the first targeted, usually deported, sometimes held hostage. Even the obligation of a facade of legality does not protect you: there are many forms of torture without traces and poisons with delayed effects.

Loosening my attachment to leftists has restored a correct view of this movement. Of course, there is the lies-violence-gulag and all that. But above all, once disillusioned, you realize that leftists are actually extremely curious people. They were against the blondes. In my attempts at comics, I was criticized several times for drawing blondes (Actually, I drew in line art, so without hair color, which is why blondes seemed overrepresented. But the nuance was too difficult for these people to grasp). Once, there even was a guy who was against smiles! I received this criticism even in the New Age movement, which often inherited converted leftists. I do not know if they are still against blondes today, but other equally bizarre and improbable superstitions have appeared since, like anti-gluten, anti-soy, anti-smart meters, naturalism or vitalism, etc. Being against bread, the most basic and symbolic of foods, it is totally crazy when we think about it.

The zonards (Continuation and end)

(Permalink) Written in July 2022

(In French, by the time, «zonards» were fake Hippies and real tramps, specialized in parasiting alternative places)

Following my experiences in Bordeaux SubliSordi], I had sworn never to associate again with zonards and other filthy people. But I still had a weak point, where the problem would follow me again: drugs (even if «only» hashish, it is still drug).

I arrived in Toulouse on my moped that summer of 1975, without a place to live or anything other than what my luggage rack could carry. As I made my way through the city, I quickly spotted posters for the Association Toulousaine d’Ecologie, or ATE, which, luckily, had a meeting that very evening in their first premises, 18 rue des Pénitents Gris, on the corner of Rue de l'Esquille. There weren't many people around yet, and we immediately fraternized, to the point that I found a host for some days, a friendly but rather eccentric Breton named Yann.

This allowed me to look for proper accommodation. Surprise, it was more expensive than in Bordeaux. I missed out by some minutes a lovely mauve garret, just at the limit of what I could afford (or ask my father to pay, since I was still a student). I settled for a freshly wallpapered apartment, and therefore looking clean, but unfortunately in one of the dilapidated shacks in the city center, 15 rue des Couteliers (it has since been demolished). Never do that: these things have horrible negative egregores, from all the ugliness, stupidity and filth accumulated there since the Middle Age, plus all the suffering, hatred, disease, agony and pornography they have witnessed. I think this is the main cause of the nervous breakdown [#Depression] which struck me in the winter 1975-76, and that all those rotten old buildings should all be burned down.

Anyway, I was starting my last year in Toulouse at the IUT (University Institute of Technology), without too many problems. Always happy to help out, I was hosting an old friend from Bordeaux, then a new friend, an IUT student, Chris. This guy seemed nice to me, because we shared a lot of opinions about «the system». And he smoked hashish, which did not bothered me: I saw him more like a kind of «liberated» Hippie. Luckily, what happened next occurred after I finished my IUT studies, because it would have been impossible for me to study with the trick Chris played on me.

Indeed, Chris suggested one day we received «two female buddies». Which I did not disliked, even if it did crowded the small apartment at its limit. But it was actually a well-laid trap: once I was outnumbered, arrived one by one «the others», far less pleasant, who moved in without even asking my opinion: «the rat», a chubby gray fellow with shifty eyes, openly scheming and contemptuous; «the fox», a skinny, sly, red-haired petty crook (hence the nickname); and several others living off petty scams and shoplifting, or similar people from Toulouse who spent long, noisy evenings in my apartment. Among the latter was Didier De Jaeger (beware of homonyms), famous in Toulouse for having created a comic strip denouncing «Le Patriarche» (a dubious group led by Lucien Engelmajer, claiming to help drug addicts, but whom Didier accused of sexual violence). Of course, if you search on the internet today, you won't find any trace of this Didier, unless he finally went back to capitalism, ha ha ha! (There's a bank manager by that name, and a few other similar situations. I don't think it is him, but if it is, his whole «critique of the system» was ultimately just a hypocritical statement, a bourgeois-bohême play.)

Worse, the apartment itself turned out to be a disguised hovel: the upstairs neighbor's toilet started leaking and running down our wall, the concierge was a former prostitute who had become extremely ugly and greeted us in her «work clothes», while our explorations uncovered horrific cellars that gave us nightmares. Yeah, the hovel, the cellars, the zonards, the depression—it all went together perfectly.

And these guys, not content with squatting in my apartment, made my life a hell, preventing me from sleeping until two or three in the morning! Sleep deprivation is a well-known and widely practiced form of torture because it always manages to break the will, without leaving any lasting effects. And sociopaths do not need to sleep; they can always torture us in this way. And anyway it is legal.

They also criticized my own comics, and they managed to get the police into my apartment! Something I could have done without, especially since I was already trying to work for the free radios. Luckily, they did not figured out what my equipment was for.

Didier was helped by another guy whose name I do not remember, who forbade me from drawing smiling people or blondes, as if they were terrible sins. And as a matter of facts, nobody in their group was blonde.

I think their worst thing was the way they appropriated my belongings. For example, I had bought two liters of organic virgin olive oil from the ATE, still expensive at the time, and I well hoped to get through the winter with it. One day, the two liters had disappeared... When I asked, I learned they had made fries with it! Yes, you read that right: fries with virgin olive oil! Hoping to at least find my oil cooked but still edible, I asked what they had done with it: they had thrown it away! That makes fries at the price of a luxury restaurant... I suspect these people were actually children of rich people. Anybody who have truly worked hard for food know the value of things, and they would never do something as stupid as throwing away the oil after just one frying.

Another time, shamelessly rummaging through my things, they found some silver wire, which I used to make inductors on radio circuits. They wanted to make «jewelry» with it... But it is not that easy, and I found back my wire all twisted and tangled, unusable.

Instead of Hippies or socially progressive people, these people were zonards, meaning fake hippies. They even called each other «babas» (a term of address in India, for spiritual people, taken over to mean a Hippie). But in reality, they were bums who still looked young, not yet wrinkled. They even brought along some real tramps once, whom they gazed at with rapture! Luckily, the latter did not stay. My apartment was probably still too clean for their liking.

Once, a «friend» offered me a place to sleep peacefully. The problem was, it was a two-hour walk away, not exactly ideal for starting the night, and on top of that, she did not warned me it was a squat, an apartment which inhabitants were away, but which window they had forced open. If the cops had caught us, it would have been jail, so I thanked this person for her «help» and never went back here. But you will understand that I was really exhausted, to accept a place like that. Plus, it was winter and freezing cold.

It ended up that the landlord, faced with major repairs to fix the leaking toilets, decided to sell the shack, which was demolished shortly afterward to make a new building. So everybody was evicted. If you go there today, nothing remains of those dilapidated shacks. Although the new buildings already have the same dirty color as the surrounding area!

Last insult, a murder was committed in the cellars, just two weeks after we left. I do not know who and by whom, but I shudder at the thought: there is a good chance they were connected to «my» gang. In fact, there is never much distance between zonards and gangsters. The link between the two is the dealers, for the drug. The later do not hesitate to abuse their position of «indispensable suppliers», to implicate their victims in shady activities in the name of «criticizing the system»! For example, to entrust them in a murder, while remaining untouchable themselves. At the moment two petty crooks of «my» group were still around, stealing furniture from the deserted apartments. I was to meet one again later in a «New Age» group. At least, crooks are recyclable.

Finally, one of the young women who frequented this group was forced to have an abortion by her parents. Apparently not a tramp herself, a decent girl, or at least normal, but how many naive young people get caught up in these kinds of groups? Luckily, there was not yet the AIDS back then.

After some weeks staying with friends (thankfully I had made several real ones), I finally found a decent apartment with my mother, this time at 7 rue Joseph Vié, in the Saint Cyprien district, where I stayed until I left Toulouse for Le Faitg. My mother did not stayed with me for long; she left for Canada. Then she came back shortly before I left for the Faitg, keeping the apartment for her alone.

Well, this new apartment was not great either: the heating was woefully inadequate, and the damp walls gave off unpleasant odors. But such living conditions are the lot of those who do not have much money. So my mother eventually moved to social housing, which at least are clean and heated. The only major problem with social housing is the noise by asocial people, but it is not worse than the old neighborhoods.

This lame story is unfortunately not an isolated case: I knew two other instances of home invasion. Once, it was a violent woman (yes that happens, and it is then very difficult to defend ourselves, because we are automatically accused), and another time it was a litigious woman who claimed to be the legal owner. The biggest problem is making people understand these situations, or obtaining any kind of assistance. In the first case, we had to take advantage of her being outside to lock ourselves inside and throw all her belongings out the window (I did that, yes I did it, what did you imagined?). In the second case, at a farmer's house, the situation was more complicated. The issue went all the way up to the prefecture. Luckily, they take farmers more seriously than ecologists (even though he was an ecologist too, ha ha ha!). But it was only on the last day before evictions were illegal that they finally sent the police to remove the troublemaker. In the Faitg, we have had this problem several times: filthy people squatting our place, sometimes violent people. We even asked the gendarmes for help, but they did not wanted to get involved, saying that «we had accepted them into the community». Even Buddhist centers are victims of this practice, and at Dashang Kagyu Ling, the usufruct was very imprudently granted to several people hostile to the place, rendering it unusable until their death, that is until 2050 or later.

So, if you receive anyone, always be careful with the words you use: call visitors «trainees», not «members» neither «community members», and publish a written set of rules that you can present to the police without it looking like it was made the day before. For example, non-profit bylaws filed with the relevant government offices. Several Buddhist centers have produced rules to protect themselves from psychiatric patients, since some were regularly sent to them.

Added in October 2023: In France, a little-known law states that you can only request someone's eviction up to 48 hours after their arrival. After that, they are presumed to have a registered address in your place. This was probably the reason the gendarmes refused to help. The problem is, potential squatters all know this trick, and they wait until the end of the 48 hours to start making trouble. This is why, if you ever want to host people, set up a system where they are «interns», or staying like in a hostel, for a limited period agreed upon in advance, or something like that. And even then, I am not sure you can get the police to come, for example, to a Buddhist center to get rid of parasites. Fortunately, Buddhists have discreet but effective methods.

You will understand that after such a misadventure, I have never hosted anyone again (except my mother, who landed down in my place several times, following her own adventures). It might seem selfish, especially after so many people helped me in this way. But I keep a fear that «it happens again», even a milder version which would not leave me free at home, for instance to meditate. Even a single person can become incredibly unpleasant, for example, the lonely friend I had taken just before the gang: he was sad and negative, criticizing everything I did and bringing other unpleasant people in.

It was also as a consequence of this lamentable experience that I finally refused all drugs. What I did not knew was that it would free me from many other unpleasant things, while also opening many doors.

(Permalink) Tramp or homeless person? In the media and among politicians, it is fashionable to call tramps «homeless people», a supposedly neutral term, unlike «tramp», considered pejorative or discriminatory. This is a hypocritical attitude, and completely unrealistic. Indeed, a tramp and a homeless person are definitively not the same thing, even if their appearance can quickly become similar. Becoming homeless, that is to say, «without an address», can happen to everybody: job loss, divorce, eviction, etc. I myself almost became homeless several times, if it had not been for my mother or friends who took me in while I got back on my feet. A homeless person does not like this situation, and they will do everything they can to get out of this situation.

A tramp, on the other hand, either revels in this state, or he is simply too stupid to get out of it. In the case of «my» zonards mentioned above, in a group of ten, not one of them thought that you do not throw away frying oil after one single use! It is clear they were all a bit off, and that this alone was the cause of their tramp state and poverty. Thus, it is stupidity or rejection of society which makes of somebody a tramp, and not poverty which makes someone a delinquent or makes them love filth, as we too often hear from delusional pseudo-humanitarians.

Therefore, any policy of aid to the homeless or to the tramps must take this fundamental difference into account, if it wants to achieve its objectives. Thus, what the homeless need most is emergency shelter in suitable premises protected from filth, violence, and noise, with clean toilets. For a tramp, a form of psychological support and coercion are necessary because, unlike the homeless, they are fleeing from the previous conditions. Coercion and supervision would be humiliating and counterproductive for a homeless person, who does not need stigmatization but concrete help.

In any case, as in any euphemisms race, «homeless» has also become pejorative in everyday popular language, and used interchangeably in both meanings.

Drugs, filth and vermin (Continuation and end)

(Permalink) Written in July 2021

At the time, it was a constant in my experiences with «alternative societies», during my two years in Bordeaux plus a year and a half in Toulouse, or in the communities I visited around the same time: a cultivation of lice, scabies, sexually transmitted infections, etc. I say cultivation, because these people seemed to deliberately share these diseases, justifying their negligence with a barrage of «no community without lice», «filth keeps you warm», and other nasty sophistry to dodge even the most basic efforts on hygiene. This kind of thing most likely played a heavy role in the failure of the community movements, exerting a terrible negative selection against interesting and capable people.

Therefore, I strongly advise against staying with people who are capable, for example, of taking turns treating lice, in order to perpetuate the infestation. Scabies is not considered a serious illness, yet it is a very bothersome condition, with intense itching and a demanding treatment: disinfecting the entire house with toxic products, washing all the clothes and bed, and applying a product which can cause severe burning sensations, even eczema. And of course, an absolute coordination for everyone in the household: you treat it together, or you divorce.

Conversely, I have never heard of such things among the ecologists, anthroposophists, spiritual people, Yogis, Buddhists, and others I have hung out with since. Also inexistent among all the engineers, technicians, and workers of every level I have met in my professional life. So there is definitely a strong «cultural» component to the spread of vermin. They do it on purpose, in a way.

Perfectly in keeping with filth and vermin, drugs have also been a constant throughout these four years. The memory of the Hippies was still fresh, and the widely held belief was that marijuana or LSD heightened sensitivity to vibrations (this is the meaning of the word «psychedelic», which the media have conveniently feigned to forget since). (It should also be noted that the claim that drugs would be «entheogenic» did not existed during the Hippie era; it is a more recent invention by pro-drug media and wikipedia, around 2010.) Thus, these drugs were seen as an integral part of a social movement which did not yet called itself spiritual, but which was already tentatively exploring in this direction.

However, no one could ignore the serious dangers associated with «hard drugs» like heroin or amphetamines: the deaths of several rock music icons served as a reminder that these were not just reactionary propaganda lies. Proponents of marijuana justified their use by saying it was a «soft drug», and «safe» (in fact, we know today that marijuana damages the brain, including the one of a pregnant woman's baby, and it can even lead to psychosis). LSD was somewhat different, considered soft, but with precautions (here too, we know today that LSD damages the brain, can kill through overdose, and that a hallucinating person can commit dangerous acts).

At the time, like everybody else I had adopted these ideas, thinking that marijuana would be an interesting, even essential spiritual aid. So I tried it on several occasions, maybe ten times. I still refrained from buying it myself from a dealer: the few I saw emanated a frightening brownish vibe (at the time, it was not yet the fascist gangs of the so-called «sensitive neighborhoods» (French euphemism for a place where violence is considered normal), but they already had that vibe.

However, I quickly noticed something with smoking weed: that there was, precisely, nothing to notice. I felt nothing. Not even hallucinations, nothing. Once I was with a guy who claimed to have hallucinations from the same joint as me, even though I could not see a thing! I later realized why: these people were actually cutting their hashish with tobacco, or even smoking pure tobacco rolled into joints, just pretending to smoke hash. Which is completely idiotic, because tobacco is a very effective and well-known anti-psychedelic, canceling out all the supposed effects of hashish.

It ended once that I got to try real hashish. Then I saw the walls undulating. But psychedelic experiences? Contacts with Transcendence? Entheogenic revelations? Nothing at all, not even a tiny ray of light filtering under a door. Just the grimy wall of my friend's toilet. Plus, I started having palpitations, which scared me. We are probably more impressionable in that state, which explains why the only effective use of hashish seems to be… war. (The word «assassin» comes from «haschichin», a sect which used this drug to commit assassinations, and the Afghan soldiers who fought the Taliban along with the international coalition, would start the fight with a joint).

As for LSD, my plan was to try it, at least once. But only in the company of «serious people». A condition which never materialized… Today I know why: serious people don't take LSD, and above all, they don't encourage others to do so. There have been terrible accidents involving people on LSD, mutilating themselves or killing.

The «zonards» I fell victim of even tried… datura! A common plant sadly, which Carlos Castaneda presented as a form of shamanism in his book «The Teachings of Don Juan». Some have questioned the authenticity of this account, for which I know no confirmation from any Indian source. Now that I know more about all the ins and outs of these things, I think the book is a fiction, but assembled from enough real elements to fool a non-specialist. (The Lobsang Rampa of drugs, basically. The latter most likely stole all his «real» elements from Alexandra David-Néel.) (2025: Today, university people as well as Indians consider the book as a fake). Anyway, there is a world of difference between a shamanic ritual and a bunch of excited idiots playing at getting high. So, not only were these people very sick, but they also went out downtown in that state, delirious, vomiting, trespassing properties, etc. They ended being picked up by the police and then taken to a psychiatric hospital. The hospital must have been overcrowded, because they threw them out the very next day, whereas I would have liked they kept them. Basically, they were lucky not to outright die.

It is worth noting that in Haiti, datura is known as «zombie cucumber» because it supposedly helps keep people in a state of subjugation. From what I have seen, the story seems plausible: a person under the influence of datura completely loses situational awareness, and they therefore no longer try to escape or rebel. They become what in Haiti is called a zombie, used as a slave, for labor, or sexually. But we guess the victims do not live very long, consuming such a poison daily! Probably all the mythos about zombies stem from some real cases, but limited.

We then understand that, as early as 1977 or 1978 I made the decision never to touch any drugs again, neither hard nor «soft».

(Strictly speaking, I did something illegal. But if I mention it today, it is not to justify myself, right on the contrary, it is to show from the inside what a mistake it was. So today I can look down on the bourgeois-bohême intellectuals of a disoriented «left» advocating the legalization of their reefers. Not to mention those «Greens» who have since long ago lost all contact with the true spiritual roots of ecology.)

Today (2021), we are better informed about the ins and outs of the drug problem. In fact, it is not new, the Belle Époque had already dabbled with several drugs, which dangers were therefore already known, but poorly measured. Thus, the idea that drugs could bring a «liberation» easily took hold in the Hippie movement, whose critical thinking was inversely proportional to their enthusiasm. But I have never heard anyone describe any genuine spiritual experiences with any drugs. Not even a little or sometimes, but not at all and never. Well, it is like leaving a cult or being raped by so-called marabouts: nobody shouts it from the rooftops that they have been scammed.

Opium has the most shameful history. Unable to penetrate the vastness of China, the colonial powers imposed the use of opium during the Boxer Rebellion. It didn't take long for the elites to disintegrate, allowing the colonists to extort the country. It is then understandable that today all the drugs are brutally banned in China. And that this is a great opportunity for the Chinese people, not a «restriction on freedom».

LSD has a more complicated and very instructive history. It started to be used in the CIA's MKUltra project as a means of torture, on randomly kidnapped American citizens held captive without any information. I mean torture: imagine suddenly having hallucinations without knowing what it is. I experienced something similar as a child, with the atropine they put in my eyes without any warning about the effects. Not exactly hallucinations, but the atropine makes everything appear all tiny. That was already frightening, so imagine full fledged hallucinations! Then the LSD became… a game among the CIA adepts, who held LSD parties or offered surprise trips to their buddies! At the same time, LSD was being seriously studied by scientists to see if it could be used as a psychiatric treatment. But when the matter fell into the hands of the band of lunatics Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, and John Lilly, they became the «scientific caution» of LSD for the Hippies, and everything slipped out of the road.

Of course, real scientists claimed to have had «transcendent experiences» with drugs. Why them and not me? In fact, it is a fairly common mistake among rationalists and materialists, incapable as they are of having any real transcendent experience, due to their absolute submission to their neuronal ego (General Epistemology, Chapter V-10) and the tyrannical control the latter exerts over their consciousness. Thus, when they hear about genuine spiritual experiences, they interpret them according to their own egotistical ramblings, incapable as they are of imagining consciousness without ego.

This is how so many scientists (otherwise honest and serious in their field) denigrate spirituality with a whole host of fanciful and uninformed interpretations. For example, seeing pretty colors during an LSD trip is interpreted as an angelic experience. Okay, people with migraines also see pretty colors, but they don't say they are angels.

So let us remember the ABCs of spirituality: spiritual experiences only happen when the ego is disconnected. Otherwise, it is imagination. Always. And mythomania, if in more we believe it.

These unfortunate errors should normally have been forgotten with the end of the Hippie movement. But that was not the case, for several reasons:

😐Until around 1980, the Hippies, leftists, and May 1968 remained the only reference for a more advanced society, with nobody to explain their mistakes. Many people therefore continued to experiment with drugs, sometimes hard drugs, after realizing that the «soft» ones did nothing.

😶After 1980, with the coming of age of the tetraethyl lead generation, the groty-punk movement and its offshoots were, on the contrary, anti-life and reactionary movements, opposed to conscience and spirituality. Drugs then offered an effective means to self-destruct in the style. But the groty-punks' worse contribution was to insidiously shift drugs from «marginal» (Hippie) to «socially acceptable» («proletarian»).

😶An international lobby of drugs quickly established itself, one of the most powerful alongside those of climate change denial and animal suffering. Powerful enough to coerce governments and impose its propaganda in the media. They neither say nor do anything illegal (on the surface, because in reality they serve as a legal front for the worst gangsters). But they spread misinformation about drugs, and they often influence various political parties. In France, they control the Socialists and the Greens. In the US, they have the Libertarians and a part of the Democrats under their thumb. they also are one of the most powerful barony in wikipedia, systematically attempting to purge pages on drugs of almost any revealing information. In some countries, they even go as far as to field tanks against their government! The «dirty» part, the trafficking, remains, of course, a matter for gangsters, sometimes white-collar, but most often armed and violent. Crossing borders is entrusted to disposable «mules», or through various well-hidden networks, even using submarines! In France, retail sales are handled by the fascist gangs in the «sensitive neighborhoods», the very same ones who also recruit for ISIS. Indeed, dangerous wackos with a brown aura stinking at twenty meters away—what better selection to attract completely brain-dead people, capable of offering themselves body and soul to these new slave traders?

Feminists or feminists?

(Permalink) Added in December 2025:

Right next to my house on Rue des Coutelier was a feminist place, which provided emergency shelter for women fleeing abusive partners. All very well, we thought, and, one day, seeing them on their terrace, a friend and me said hello. Their only response was angry looks.

That was already strange, but it does not end there: my friend told me that, instead of providing emergency shelter, the group harassed their so-called protégées for hours, to get them to agree for homosexual intercourse. So, far from being safe, their victims went from one hell to another! Is this story true? In any case, it is not their angry looks which are going to exonerate them. (Proverb supposedly Chinese: when you spit against the wind, you get everything back in your face).

This incident, and many others, have led to the realization that some people who claim to be feminists are in fact misandrists or female supremacists (femnazis in the US), or simply dualistic leftists engaged in their usual entryism into a movement totally unrelated with any of their ideologies.

The problem is that today, female supremacists are increasingly speaking on behalf of feminists (especially in the media), crushing generous egalitarian ideals under their sexism and dualism. Fortunately, the concept of gender equality is now irreversibly embedded in the collective consciousness. And the sexists, whether male or female, tirelessly reap the spit they spew against the wind. Stop whenever you want, guys. Er, the guys-es, hihihi!

The Association Toulousaine d’Ecologie

(Permalink) Written in December 2021

Looking for something useful to do in Toulouse, I immediately spotted the posters of the «Association Toulousaine d’Ecologie» (ATE, Toulouse Ecology Association). Finally, I was going to be able «to do ecology»!!

It was easy to get to know them in their small premises, back then (1975) at 18 rue des Pénitents Gris (on the corner of rue de l'Esquille).

Ecology was truly in its infancy, to have formed a buying group for organic products in such a tiny space, just 5 meters by 5! There even was a cellar for the meetings—what a luxury!

I was immediately drawn to the idea of taking charge of the distribution of organic products. There were several reasons for this:

🐳Organic products were generally sold at twice the price, and treated as luxury items by retailers (at the time, almost exclusively by small, specialized shops like «La Vie Claire»). A problem which is only now beginning to be addressed (2021). Otherwise, distribution was virtually nonexistent, and farmers paradoxically struggled to sell their products, even though demand was already well established. Creating a voluntary, self-managed purchasing group was then the only way to bypass the weak link of capitalism, allowing buyers and farmers to get to know each other. This approach was highly successful at the time (1975-80) and certainly contributed to setting up a distribution network. However, the weakness laid in the lack of spirituality (see the militant atheism of some members), which forbade to correct disputes and disagreements. This led these initiatives to collapse after a year or two (in France, only the ATE lasted until 1981 or slightly later). But the approach certainly contributed to establishing an efficient distribution system for organic products; we shall see how later.

🐝Another serious problem was the lack of trust in organic products: there was no proof that a product labeled organic truly was, and fake organic products were a problem, even if their prevalence was not known. Specifications already existed, but there was no effective verification. Today, in the end it is the government which implemented a certification system, with tests and audits, based on the principles of other quality labels. This situation has advantages: the «organic» label now has legal standing. But it also has disadvantages, not the least being that the definition of organic can no longer be changed, even in the event of a relevant scientific discovery. But this is not the government's fault, it is the fault of the founders of the organic movement, who disliked science, while secretly relying on it to support their claims. (In more there was no Internet by the time, but only paper science reviews giving only instant snapshots without hindsight or perspective) Thus, the definition of organic achieves the paradox of being scientifically valid, while remaining inaccessible to science. For example, you cannot label vitamin B12 «organic», even if it is produced that way. On the other hand, you can label smoked meat «organic» with «beech smoke extracts»—that is, with creosote! Yes, organic creosote! Plus organic wine, and soon organic hashish too… Spot the seven mistakes.

🐩Another interesting motive is the profound economic rationale behind such an approach, which we shall see a little bit later.

At the time, there was a pleasant and stimulating atmosphere at the ATE, with all sorts of interesting people, especially our friends from the Conservatoire Occitan. We supported new initiatives like this one, and they supported us too. We even had a small newsletter where we talked about all these kinds of things.

Later, we moved to larger premises on Rue Danton (a comically serendipitous name, since we also held there the meetings of the Committee Against Death Penalty!). We also had another location on Rue Dautezac, both locations serving for the buying group, with probably around a hundred regular buyers in total. I was among the regulars, never missing a meeting. My entire social life and all my friends were here.

Our main activism was the anti-nuclear movement, for which we participated in several demonstrations, though we never organized one ourselves, due to the «lack of» a nuclear power plant in the area.

The ATE's peak was our participation in the 1978 legislative elections, under the banner «Ecologie 78». This atmosphere lasted for several years before deteriorating when I left Toulouse in 1981, and the ATE came to an end.

The True Economy

(Permalink) Written in June 2022

A topic like economics could not escape the attention of ecologists, especially whose associated with «La Gueule ouverte». Indeed, it was already clear at that time that this naive capitalism, which had replaced the power of the nobility and clergy, was one of the main causes of economic injustices and pollution.

However, unlike marxists and other leftists, we were wary of centralized systems like the USSR (still running at the time), which generate other forms of injustice, and are often even worse in terms of pollution. This wariness is what had already led the Hippies and their communes to various concepts such as self-sufficiency, self-production, bartering, return to a medieval way of life, or living at a «human scale», all this intended to «avoid» social problems. The whole thing was based on the idea that exploitation only «happens» through the accumulation of power in large groups. Barter, on the other hand, justified itself by claiming that it is money which «causes» exploitation. These views had been extensively implemented some years earlier by the Hippies and the communities movement of the early 1970s in France. The fact that it all collapsed within two or three years halted any further attempts. But these failures did not altered the underlying theories about barter, the human scale, the return to the Middle Age, and so on. People simply thought, rather gloomily, that it was «too difficult», and contenting themselves with holding up signs at demonstrations—something which requires little effort to improve our personality.

Few had grasped that exploitation or pollution do not «happen»: it is people who do them. Above all, in the modern world, nothing compels people to obey media propaganda, except their neuroses and their sadomasochistic submission to painful authority. Few understood that we cannot change others without first changing ourselves: mastering that tyrannical ego, and all these opinions and neuroses which drive so many people mad. Those who understood disengaged from this inefficient activism to dedicate themselves to spirituality, first in the naive New Age of the 1980s, then in the spiritual renewal in the 1990s and beyond. Among these, few returned to militant activism, preferring to work on more discreet but more efficient solutions.

At one point, we received at the ATE a thinker from the Distributive Economy, exploring less niny alternatives to capitalism. Distributive Economy is an idea of Jacques Duboin, who expressed it in 1935 in the newspaper «La Grande Relève». Starting from the idea that machines make human labor obsolete, he proposed a system where money is created in proportion to production, then distributed equally among everyone, and finally destroyed once it has been used to buy something. Such a system aims at making speculation and capital accumulation impossible, thus eliminating at its root the emergence of social inequalities which favor a minority.

I quickly made these ideas mine, and tried some simulations to see if they worked. Well, at the time I had no computer equipment, so my simulations were done with sheets of paper with small boxes, which could not go very far. Nevertheless, these simulations showed that Distributive Economy works fantastically well, with much better results than capitalism.

This, I already knew it, thanks to a «pedagogic» experiment we were offered when I was a student at the University Institute of Technology (IUT): the «Island Game», supposedly designed to introduce the basics of economics. This was one of the rare occasions when I could play a leadership role in a class: I had proposed not exchanging, but giving away the production. The result was a resounding economic success, thus demonstrating the validity of these views. And therefore, beyond that, the validity of systems based on mutual aid, like Distributive Economy. I did, however, have the feeling that the game was heavily rigged in favor of capitalism, but I understood how only much later. And it was this rigging which allowed me to truly understand, and that led me to True Economy: the economy without ego. (see a bit later)

So, Distributive Economy was very promising. But there was a catch: people had to be willing to work, even without any personal incentive. This is what my early simulations showed: it worked, but only if people decided to work. But without wages or dividends, nothing compels them to do so! In other words, given the ridiculously low level of altruism people had in the 1970s, the distributive system would have collapsed in a matter of days. Today, in 2022, there is a rise in altruism. Admittedly, still insufficient to cure capitalism. But systems like universal basic income, social security and other allowances, would actually lower the threshold of altruism needed for an altruistic economy to function. We would then save several decades.

It was only later, through my discovery of spirituality, that I understood how the Island Game was rigged. And it is very interesting. The players are divided into three teams, each with a different production, so that the whole can only work with the collaboration of all three. From the facilitators' point of view, this made sense, preventing people from circumventing problems through self-sufficiency: there was no other way to win than to work together. But this whole actually formed a single, indivisible entity. The trap was hidden in this division into three: each team could build a group ego, precisely the disease which underlies capitalism. And with such a mindset, the three teams would start a competition. This is what the facilitators were waiting for! Because egos are incapable of altruism, they either refused any gift, leaving the three teams in poverty, or they embraced... capitalism, agreeing to give only in exchange for something else. Even if it was «only» bartering, it was still capitalism. The game then «worked», which supposedly «demonstrated» the necessity of money, capitalism, and more generally, of conditional exchange (of which bartering is merely a basic form). The organizers even tried to trick us twice, first favoring and then disfavoring one of the three teams which balked at the idea of altruism. We then gave our production to the recalcitrants! Taking great care to ensure our boats returned empty, to clearly demonstrate to the organizers that it was a gift. The enormous economic expansion which resulted finally won over the last opponents. But this was a close call: the game included pre-printed banknotes, and the game masters recounted that in other instances, people had even gone so far as to wage war on each other, manufacturing weapons, and so on.

It is this story of ego which finally made me understand that no legal, algorithmic or technical regulation of the economy is possible. Indeed, whatever system we imagine, egos will always try to subvert it. For example, by becoming regulators. The experience of the USSR amply demonstrated this: from 1917 to 1995, the Russians had had ample opportunity to implement a non-egocentric economy, with the keen support and active help of their government. But they did not. The terrible karmic curse which resulted is still haunting them in 2022, with a corrupt and inefficient economic system.

But this also has positive consequences: there is actually no need to overturn the rules of finance, nor to stage revolutions, to free ourselves from capitalism. Even if we did, our egos would divert these revolutions in another way (as it happened in the USSR, in the Hippie communes, etc.). Such destruction are in no way necessary for our spiritual progress. On the other hand, only this spiritual progress allows us to control our egos.

Even without complete control of our ego, we can still help the poorest with a minimum income, social security, allowances, etc., in order to prevent extreme poverty.

I recently added the idea of a single global currency (called $ol, or S¤l, pronounced Sol), in order to put an end to the artificial inequalities between countries.

But what will truly overcome capitalism is people becoming altruistic and responsible enough to engage themselves in activities which benefit others, as they are increasingly doing with humanitarian donations, citizen associations, crowdfunding, etc. Thus, economy is ultimately a spiritual matter, where progress in the concrete world is only achieved in the extent we are controlling our egocentricity. The growth of a non-egocentric economy would even be the surest indicator of our collective spiritual progress.

However, I felt the need to create some concepts to address the most common pseudo-criticisms. Essentially, True Economy is based on a double mindset, with the exclusion of all ideology:

▶️ The Spirit of True Economy: the desire for each individual to work for the common good,

▶️ Confidence in True Economy: to think that it actually produces the expected results.

People with such a mindset can then gather in Activity Circles, each dedicated to satisfying a specific need for the benefit of the whole. An Activity Circle should not be confused with a self-sufficient community as envisioned by the Hippies: on the contrary, economic flows move freely through it. Furthermore, unlike a community or even a kibbutz, the Activity Circle is not responsible for providing basic living needs for its workers. These needs are addressed by all the other Circles (indeed, it is another need, to be met by other Circles). Finally, production is decided by all its members, who have come together for this purpose (even if they not all of them are workers). Finally, the workers themselves manage their work. (The closest capitalist structure being subscription-based investment: future customers advance the money to organize production, which is then distributed among the members).

It is therefore a rather elaborate theory. But it was the purchasing group of the Association Toulousaine d'Ecologie which specifically inspired the concept of the Activity Circle. This group was concrete proof that such a structure works, that it is easily appropriable, and that it does indeed allow for building a better economy and a better life. For us, it was an opportunity to live together fraternally, while promoting organic farming. Downstream, by allowing people to live organically at half the price of commercial products at the time. Upstream, by offering producers a market outlet, which they desperately needed (So much organic farming was ostracized in the 1970s). I especially remember one producer who, lacking an organic market, was selling his milk to a yogurt brand. Indeed, the chemically treated milk from the other producers was so laced with antibiotics that their yogurt would not ferment! This producer also grew his own fodder for his cows, while also producing wheat on a three-year crop rotation, so that he had no inputs other than diesel fuel.

If such initiatives were so effective, why did not they continue? Indeed, the ATE was the last survivor of its kind, dozens of others had closed after just some months. The reason was the militant atheism so common among Charlie Hebdo ecologists, which forbids them any spiritual work. In this way, they deprived themselves of any means of harmonizing their relationships or abolishing their egos! At the ATE, we had a fairly fraternal team, and some proposed weekends timidly described as «relaxation» or living together. But this could not go far, with leaders who saw «mysticism» in these initiatives. Such a severe energy leak explains why the ATE's egregore eventually deflated, leading to its demise.

I also already understood by the time that True Economy has a fractal structure, even if I had not grasped the concept of fractals itself. Indeed, there are a large number of small, local Circles, ensuring basic production. But the higher you go in the organization, the more people the Circles reach, while simultaneously affecting an increasingly smaller share of production. Are in this case the manufacturing of integrated circuits, with only a few factories worldwide. This last point puts the concept of «human scale» back into perspective: in True Economy, each level has its own «human scale», without us being limited to small organizations due to our psychological shortcomings (one of the factors which led to the failure of the Hippie movement). Thus, the True Economy can embrace space exploration or the Internet, without claiming they are «too big». And we already have initiatives in this direction, with various non-profit committees managing specific aspects of the Internet or free software.

Of course, the Ideal View above, or View of Absolute True Economy, only works if people possess enough True Economic Mindset, that is, a sufficient psychological mastery to prevent any egocentric desire from corrupting their activity. For people who lack this level, their first question is, «But we need guarantees». Yes, guarantees against cheaters, of course, but also and especially against their own psychological flaws! We think at guarantees like tickets, sharing administrations, distributive money, etc. But why to invent any, as a lot already exist: money, salaried employment, contracts, social status, structures, collective agreements, etc. All things that people without egocentrism can live without, not even thinking at them. But those who do not yet know how to swim need lifebuoys!

The idea then, is a Transition True Economy, where each group will attempt to behave according to the Vision of Absolute True Economy, while using the safeguards that them deem necessary to achieve this. Thus, they will behave as in the Absolute Vision, but with the security of those safeguards.

This then leads to a highly efficient and diversified system, allowing everyone to find their place, from pure capitalism to Absolute True Economy, passing through all sorts of innovative structures which more or less realize the Absolute Vision.

Thus, the transition can take place without conflict or revolution, or even without emergency, as people evolve, without depending on reforms or means which are not yet available.

Given its importance, I have developed the concepts of the True Economy twice: in a booklet, «The True Economy», published in 1999, and in «General Epistemology», chapter VI-8.

Well, in 1999 my proposals were met with a deafening silence, which has worsened since 2010 due to the scotomization of small actors on the Internet.

However, I have observed in recent years that a growing number of initiatives are adopting the principles of the Transition True Economy: minimum income, universal healthcare, crowdfunding, citizen foundations, etc. This is what leads me to say that contemporary society is experiencing a rapid spiritual progress, unlike before 2000 when even the slightest concession had to be won with fierce fight.

I also want to point out this page where I finally conducted a real computer simulation, featuring «perfectly egocentric» «agents» who meet randomly and invest on each other. Such a system very quickly leads to a highly unequal society, as observed with capitalism (the wealthier an investor becomes, the more money he can make, while the poorest can never invest, and therefore their wealth decreases further). Nothing new so far. But the simulation allows us to introduce three forms of altruism:

🐻a variable percentage of perfectly altruistic people, from zero to one hundred percent

🐶an equal percentage of altruism for everyone, from zero to one hundred percent

🐕a tax levied on the richest and distributed to the poorest, ranging from mild socialism to extreme Bolshevism.

An initial finding was presented in a scientific paper, «An Econophysics Simulation of Altruistic Economy», published in Physica A (Science Direct) (article no. 35, March 15, 2005, volume 348, pages 453-464). It shows that an altruistic economy shifts from a highly unequal distribution (called Pareto law) to a much more egalitarian one (a Gaussian law), requiring only a relatively low level of altruism, around 20%. So, you do not need to be a saint to end capitalism, just not to be an idiot.

But I have since noticed another result. While a percentage of people who are completely altruistic is ineffective (they get fleeced by the others), on the other hand a moderate wealth tax significantly lowers the level of altruism required to end the shameful inequalities of capitalism and move towards an egalitarian distribution. Hence the importance of Social Security, various allowances, guaranteed minimum incomes, and of course, wealth taxes (which do not need to be as extreme as Bolshevism, the latter actually proving counterproductive by creating poverty for the wealthiest). It has even been scientifically demonstrated that those receiving a minimum income are far more likely to engage in various worthwhile initiatives. And this is precisely what we observe with the rapid and historic increase in humanitarian donations and civic associations.

On the other hand, indirect taxes like VAT run counter to this objective, as they disproportionately affect the poor: the state gives with one hand and takes back with the other. Ideally, VAT should be abolished and direct taxes on profits or wealth reinstated. But, since VAT is the creation of the god Giscard, abolishing it would provoke all kinds of furious opposition. So I rather propose linking the bank accounts of welfare recipients to automatic VAT exemptions: everything is in the computer, and neither the welfare recipient nor the small trader have to worry about the billions of small calculations.

Beware of the GARI

(Permalink) Written in September 2021

Some will shudder at the thought that I might have hung out with anarchist «terrorists» like the GARI. In fact, at the time, we had not yet emerged from the supremacy of marxism in French political life. Thus, even in ecology circles like the ATE (Association Toulousaine d’Ecologie), anarchism was still considered a valid project for a better society. We were only just beginning to understand that violence is not a good tool for this, but we had not yet reached the point of clearly disassociating ourselves from it. An ambiguity typical of the era, but unthinkable in the 21th Century.

I still think that we would not have worked with GARI members who would have killed or threatened to do so. At the time, we thought that they would not do this, but today, well safe 50 years later, wikipedia attributes a series of attacks to the GARIs, many of which could have killed innocent people. I do not know where wikipedia's cases come from (probably due to confusion with the Basque terrorists, who were genuinely dangerous), but we were certain that «our» GARI group in Toulouse were not killers, not even terrorists in the strict sense. They still had been arrested and convicted for kidnapping and holding hostage the boss of a company on strike. It was therefore closer to union activism than to terrorism, a fact acknowledged by the court, which gave them relatively lenient sentences. Once out of prison, this group probably considered themselves blacklisted for any illegal activity. They then founded a militant printing press, the Imprimerie 34 (or I34), initially located at 34 rue des Blanchers in Toulouse, hence the name. And they were never idle: every leftist, ecologist, intellectual, or artist in the Toulouse region felt compelled to «support the I34». They were the ones who printed our posters for Ecologie 78, and those of several other groups for the elections. A windfall probably unique for all the printing companies in Toulouse!

This relationship with the printing company explains why we met with these people, without, however, getting involved in any illegal activities, which they had, in any case, stopped by then. And, since they had served their prison sentences, there was no longer any reason to snub them. Well, today it is out of the question for spiritual people or vegans to associate with such groups, which now belong to History.

The affair was not entirely negative at the time, though: They were the driving force behind the Toulouse Committee Against the Death Penalty. And for them, it was not just a stylistic exercise: the world was still reeling from the horrific murder of Puig Antich by franco's goons, for his alleged involvement in the elimination of Carrero Blanco, franco's heir. (Today, wikipedia comes along with a completely different story, accusing him of murdering a policeman during the 1973 Catalan independence movement, a movement we only heard about since around 2015. In 1973, the Catalans had far more pressing matters to worry about, such as getting rid of franco and his cronies.)

Then something «very curious» happened: a newspaper article (Le Monde, if I remember correctly) said that Bernard Réglat, the director of the Imprimerie 34, was «on the run». A lie, because he had served his full sentence, and he was therefore completely free, just like you and me. Moreover, he was a visible every day in Toulouse, at the I34 offices or at the committee against the death penalty. But the consequence was quite strange: Bernard was arrested again, by the Toulouse police! A mess which should normally have been resolved in some hours or days. But Bernard was arbitrarily imprisoned for several months! Until the court discovered that he had no outstanding convictions justifying his continued detention. It is therefore very clear that the Toulouse police was also infiltrated by fascists or sociopaths playing at being siloviks, even if they had not managed to attract such a «prestigious» figure as papon in Bordeaux.

(This problem was still present during the AZF disaster, when private information known only from the investigators «leaked» to a little-known local far-right fanzine, which the mainstream press nevertheless had its eyes glued on, as if everything had been orchestrated in advance, exactly as with the Frank Fontaine affair. This is what gave rise to the racist conspiracy theory claiming that the disaster was an attack by an Arab employee of the factory.)

Thus, we lived for several months with this unthinkable anomaly: a person arbitrarily imprisoned without cause, simply at the behest of a media outlet! Things escalated to the point of a bombing on their offices on Rue des Blanchers, which could have injured passersby or residents. On top of all that, there was the insolent smile of the false democrat president Valéry I^st the radioactive. Such cognitive dissonance encouraged solidarity with the GARI (which is what happened), and probably delayed by several years the true adoption of non-violence by ecologists, which began around 1976 but was only formalized around 1979-80 (which indirectly led to the end of anti-nuclear demonstrations, see how regarding Creys-Malville).

One day, the I34 moved to the Château de Thil, west of Toulouse, where they had much larger premises, and the château itself, which allowed them to have a small community. This could have interested me, but I did not asked them, thinking they would not want me. Besides, I was beginning to find their company «inexplicably» somber and unpleasant, without yet understanding why.

What tipped the scales was the year NDEs began to be discussed in the media. I could almost accept that some might be incredulous at a discovery which so radically transformed our lives (certainly the most important scientific discovery of the 20th century). But the response from several members of I34, ATE, and the Cabu team in Charlie Hebdo and «La Gueule ouverte» was astonishing: they did not denied the fact, but they were against the continuation of consciousness after death! For instance, one idiot wrote that we have «nice hallucinations» before dying! Another even devoted a whole page to explaining that he «did not have a soul»! (The worst failure on the Turing Test). It was the ultimate form of suicidal ideation: hating life to the point of seeking not only physical death, but the outright annihilation of consciousness! Unprecedented since the Albigensian Crusade exhumed the Cathars of Toulouse to burn them (thus preventing their resurrection, they believed).

Thus, this press, which we thought was dedicated to life and happiness, revealed its true evil and dark heart.

And this is not an isolated case, nor is it poor writing: in Michel Mélendre, case, Charlie Hebdo clearly called him «a contactee». So, they were not denouncing a forger, they were rejecting extraterrestrials themselves! They even depicted the Tibetans of Dhagpo Kagyu Ling as Cabu's «beaufs»! Thus, it is clear that in their minds, the term «beauf» does not refer to reactionaries, but rather to anyone who does not share their nihilistic beliefs. This Cabu team's hatred of consciousness is the true root of their atheistic fundamentalism, which would lead them to the caricatures of Muhammad, and ultimately to their deaths. Of course, the media gleefully exploited this horrific end to stoke hatred of Arabs, carefully avoiding any mention of its root cause: their hatred of consciousness they had already displayed at that time, upon discovering NDEs. But the story likely does not end there: according to recent scientific findings, their morbid stubbornness makes them prime candidates for negative void NDEs, characterized by a sensation of absolute emptiness. What scientists don't know is how long this can last.

It is one of these incredibly negative persons who later became the director of I34. When I first met her, I found her sympathetic (although she already cultivated a feigned ugliness), but after the NDE incident, she began verbally attacking me at every meeting. These terrible ideologies of consciousness denial drive even the best of people mad.

Then one day, I noticed that the ATE had changed printers. Surprised, I asked why, and I received this answer: «We were fed up with being yelled at all the time». I had no reply to that, for a very simple reason: having asked I34 how they managed to reach agreements within their community, I received this other astonishing answer from Bernard Réglat himself: «We fight».

All of this shed a new light on their group, or rather, an entirely new darkness.

It was therefore clear that anarchism and marxism were dark ghosts of the past, pursuing goals completely different from ours, pedaling in the opposite direction to the new non-violent, ecological, spiritual, enlightened, vegetarian movements.

When I returned from the Faitg in 1990, I34 had returned to Toulouse, near the hyppodrome. But it no longer had much business, and it went into liquidation shortly afterward. Marxism and anarchism had had their days. Or perhaps customers were fleeing the dark atmosphere of such negative people.

Added in 2026: The discovery of the survival of consciousness also changed something fundamental: death was no longer the absolute evil justifying the killing of anyone who opposed the true life. Thus, violence was definitively ruled out as a means of building a better world. The discovery of spirituality in the 1990s would instead point towards the genuine methods, such as psychoeducation or working with egregores. But above all, we should lead by example!

The siloviks 1

(Permalink) Written in August 2023

I wrote a little further on about what the siloviks are.

Even if it hadn't been able to attract such a «prestigious» endorsements as papon, the Toulouse police had a gang of siloviks, poorly purged of pétainism, or worse. They were the ones who arrested and threw Bernard Réglat in prison, without cause. Well, we were not exactly harassed by the police in Toulouse, but we were often stopped for «offence of ugly mug» (lawyers have legalized this expression with «discrimination based on appearance»). Officially, this harassment was directed at Arabs, but they were not the only ones, everybody was exposed, especially at night or in isolated places.

I remember once a cop asking me for my papers. It was dark, and his police car was not very visible. I replied, «Who are you?» with a scared expression, like in a TV soap opera. He lowered his voice, probably realizing his attitude was less than ideal, lol. I am mean :D

But the feat which brought the Toulouse siloviks to the public's attention was leaking private information during the investigation into the AZF disaster. In the first days of the investigation, everyone was stunned by this «incomprehensible» explosion, and all the leads were being explored. The police examined the bodies of the workers killed in the explosion, looking into a possible suicide bombing (although it is hard to imagine how someone could have carried several tons of explosives in their pocket without being noticed at the guard post. Those guards were incredibly touchy, though, I once got yelled at just for walking past the door, lol). One of the workers, an Arab, was wearing several underwear, a detail sometimes found in suicide bombings perpetrated by so-called «jihadists». The police therefore checked whether this man had any contact with terrorist circles. This was not the case at all, and so this lead was abandoned.

However, this information was «leaked» to a local far-right fanzine (its name has never been given, if indeed it is not a pure invention of the media). In just two days, it circulated widely in the media, which published the entire story, including the worker's name, developing the «terrorist theory», and criticizing the police for having «abandoned the lead» (apparently, all these people thought that suspecting an Arab was equivalent to condemning him without a trial). The police's publication of this information constituted professional misconduct, which was never punished, nor even denounced. The membership of police officers in an extremist organization was never punished either. And the media were part of the plot, because they knew exactly where and when to look, in an obscure magazine: they made a huge deal out of fleeting information which should not even have been published... but which allowed them to denigrate an Arab! And, to top it all off, wikipedia immortalized the whole affair, humiliating this man for eternity, by citing all the media hype on the subject as source. Yes, wikipedia does not like «primary sources» (like the police report saying there was nothing to see), it prefers «secondary sources» (all the media chatter quoting each other, seeing a terrorist plot where there was just a poor guy simply living his life).

I had a personal glimpse into the group of «siloviks» within the Toulouse police force between 1993 and 1997 (before the AZF, then). Following one of the countless arson attacks on cars in the cité Bagatelle, some of the body panels on mine were damaged (a Citroën BX at the time, I needed a reliable car to transport my children on every vacation). However, the insurance company considered the «responsible party» to be... the victim, the person whose car had been set on fire! This is not the only absurdity of French law, often written by completely derealized people. Thus, to make a claim, I needed to find out who this victim was, or at least their license plate number. The problem was, the wreck had been quickly removed: only the police could have that information. So I called the Toulouse police headquarters: the Remparts police station, who transferred my call from one station to another a dozen times with vague explanations, finally sending me to the «general services» department where I got a lunatic who started yelling at me for no reason! At that point, I hung up: let's remember that what differentiates a silovik from a simple sociopath is the fact that they have the power of the state on their side, and that they can use it for their personal harassment. I remembered what had happened to Bernard Réglat, at the hands of members of the very same Remparts police station, perhaps one of those who had mocked me.

It ended when I asked the fire department, who sent me to the police headquarters (Boulevard de l'Embouchure). I went there and found a uniformed officer who professionally told me he could not give me that information, but that he could pass it on to my insurance company. So, the matter was resolved. Thanks to that police officer who was doing his job properly!

I do not know if Toulouse is still served by siloviks. I hope not, but these groups often maintain themselves from generation to generation. Indeed, those from Bernard Réglat and the AZF disaster could not have been in their positions since pétain. The corruption had clearly been passed down through generations: when a department is corrupted by a silovik leadership, they promote other siloviks to positions of power for the succession. Only a government crackdown can put an end to this transmission of vice. (Added in 2025: But siloviks are so practical that, as with papon, no government wants to get rid of them, not even the kind cute ones like François Hollande)

The Occitan Conservatory

(Permalink) Written in July 2021

My ecological readings in Pau had made me aware of an idea: the territories of states do not correspond to those of the ethnic groups who inhabit them. For example, France actually has nine ethnic groups, each with a different language:

🐗French, also spoken in Belgium, Luxembourg, and Switzerland (not counting Quebec, Louisiana, and all the former colonies, some of which still have French as an official language) more the numerous local dialects.

🐨Flemish, also spoken in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany (Platzdeutsch), and South Africa.

🐭Breton, also spoken in Cornwall.

🐉Occitan, which also includes the Val d'Aran, the Aosta Valley, and other valleys on the eastern slopes of the Alps.

🐰Part of the Basque Country

🐙Part of Catalonia, which also includes the Balearic Islands and some enclaves in Italy.

🐶Corsican, an Italian dialect

🐺Even some Sardinian in southern Corsica, according to some sources

🐶Alsatian, which must well be classified as a German dialect, despite the protests of those seeking revenge for the two World Wars, who even invented a fanciful spelling to deny this origin («Mulhouse» is written «Milusa», even though everybody knows perfectly well that it is «Mülhausen», the miller's house).

🐒If we include languages not tied to a specific place, we have Romani, Arabic (nyek nyek nyek!), and even Amazigh! Today, we must add English, which has become almost a standard in Buddhist circles and in international affairs. Not to mention the numerous immigrant communities from various countries, particularly Asian ones.

Of course, this was a hidden reality (at the time. Today it is no longer hidden, but it is still ignored). Disliking hidden realities, I embraced the idea that traditional languages, often mocked as «patois» (a french-only derogatory term for anything else than the Paris-Versailles dialect), needed to be defended. Their decline had practical reasons, but it was also a process orchestrated by state propaganda.

It was fortunate, then, that when I lived in Rue Joseph Vié in the Saint Cyprien district, I was just steps away from the Occitan Conservatory on Place Saint Cyprien, where Occitan classes were held, organized by a rather unique character: Rénat (the final «t» is pronounced). So, I began learning Occitan! Moreover, there was a Tunisian restaurant at the time, also on Place Saint Cyprien, where we would go to eat the couscous after the classes. It created a great atmosphere among a group of friends, Rénat's students.

There also were some colorful characters, like Bròc, sporting a Dali-esque mustache, playing at the future Occitan dictator once the country would be «liberated». In fact, I never knew if he was joking or if he truly believed it. Perhaps it would be better for Occitania to remain French, or better yet, European, than to fall into the hands of dangerous crackpots. Anti-French racism certainly exists among some Occitans, and it even has the potential to turn violent, as I witnessed in Mont de Marsan. And even in the Conservatory, we are to see it:

However, I grew tired of these lessons after a year or two. Indeed, the Conservatory also had workshops for restoring traditional objects. And then, people would completely freak out when they saw a «Franchiman» (Frenchman), staring at me or asking strange questions that apparently referred to some story only them knew. This made that, the day Rénat started charging for his courses, I gave up, concluding that being Occitan took up all their time, leaving them do nothing useful.

In fact, since then, I never heard of any interesting «Occitan» initiatives. Never either did I saw any supporting initiatives for a better world. It is a shame, but in these times when life is becoming increasingly international, it is not the biggest problem.

This paragraph added in February 2022: Ultimately, I am not unhappy to have disengaged from Occitan. First of all, none of these movements ever helped my projects for a better world. I was even accused of «colonizing» Occitania! But also, today in France, paradoxically, only the government supports Occitan (with one hand, while continuing to brutally normalize the culture with the other), and I already have far too few readers for my various books in English and French, so if I had written them in Occitan... Worse, «regionalist» or «minority» demands are far too often disconnected from the ecological and spiritual issues of the 21st century: autonomist demands against the Lyon-Turin tunnel, opposition to wind turbines, opposition to a telescope (!!!), etc. Of all political or social ideals, national sentiment is the fastest to go rancid.

My partial learning has not been useless, however: in addition to reading a text in Occitan or Catalan, I can babble in Spanish, and more or less understand texts in Portuguese, Italian, and even a bit in… Romanian! Indeed, all these languages share between thirty and sixty percent of their etymologies.

An interesting scene unfolded at the Tunisian restaurant on Place Saint Cyprien. Not an evening went by without me running into a friend from the Conservatory there. But that evening, arriving a bit earlier than usual, the room was empty, except for an Arab I did not knew. But I saw that he was manipulating an oud, a rare instrument in France, of the guitar family but with a rounded body. Moreover, it was a masterpiece of marquetry, which we guessed was very delicate. As I started a conversation, he let me hold the instrument so I could admire its details. Then a friend from the Conservatory came in, kind but a bit goofy: «Let me see, let me see!» he exclaimed to me, imagining that the precious and delicate instrument was going to be passed from hand to hand like some cheap guitar. The disaster was coming, big as a house! Then the Arab and me had only one thought, one gesture, perfectly synchronized: I handed him the instrument, while he reached out to take it. The magical moment was over… but it had ended beautifully.

Added in 2025: This idealization of Occitania and of the Occitans seems quite false to me today, considering all the mockery I have endured from Occitans, particularly at the Victor Duruy High School in Mont-de-Marsan. They even do it among themselves, with rivalries between villages, like in the film «la Guerre des Boutons». But the most striking thing was the Occitan institution of the Cagots. For long, people wondered who these Cagots were, even wikipedia offers a wealth of hypotheses about their origins. At the time, they were described as ugly and deformed, even though today genetic analyses of their descendants show no such peculiarities. The only explanation is that traditional Occitans had a compulsive need to have a minority readily available to denigrate and oppress. Even if this meant to designate their members from among their own people, for lack of an easily identifiable ethnic or religious minority. And that is precisely what they did to me in Duruy. Well, I imagine that the Occitans do not have a monopoly on this kind of nonsense, but it is not difficult to find peoples who behave normally towards minorities.

Libertine eco-love

(Permalink) Ecrit en 2019, revu en 2025

We saw in the previous chapter that leftist love is not exactly stellar. In Toulouse, I had to deal with ecologists Charlie Hebdo style, who are less prudish than the leftists, and I managed to make some small hits. But without sentimental continuation, to the point that I ended up rejecting their proposals. The common problem among ecology activists of the Charlie Hebdo type is that they blithely confuse «liberation» with «liberation of the ego». A serious spiritual failing, which translates into love as this libertine atmosphere of people sleeping around with anybody, but without ever committing themselves, neither emotionally nor financially.

(Originally, in the 18th century, the word «libertinism» referred to the rejection of all morality. The modern meaning seems less pronounced, but the notion remains of using partners without supporting them, under various pretexts such as challenging the «bourgeois family» or the «religious couple». The immorality is simply less overt. This concept is very different from the Hippie ideas about free love, in a loving community where people supported each other. But free love and libertinism have been far too often confused and mixed up, to the point that both concepts are now viewed with suspicion.)

A way of being which manifests itself in other, more indirect forms of vicious rejection, like this woman who once told me, after several weeks of ambiguous games, that «when you touch my body, I feel like you are taking something from me». A master of the art of shifting onto the other person the responsibility for a rejection she lacked the courage to admit! Too bad for her, she had very beautiful breasts, sure I would have taken good care of her, ha ha ha!

Added in 2023: These bizarre behaviors, and probably other women’s bugs, are actually quite easily explained by the way girls were broken at school, right up until the 1960s (1970s in Mont de Marsan), by instilling in them the idea that women should be passive in front of men. So, she apparently did not think she had every right to refuse, since apparently she did not wanted, lol.

I would have taken even more care of her, since at that time I was beginning to understand that sex and love are inseparable. So, far from «taking» something from her, it was, on the contrary, my whole life that I was offering her.

Indeed, in the meantime, Mélanie (name changed) had «explained» me in her own way that sex and love are inseparable, at the exact opposite of the libertine vision of leftists, bourgeois bohemians, and some Hippies. Mélanie was a widow, her husband having «died mysteriously» at the hands of what served as the «police» for one or another of the gangs of deranged sociopaths who «ruled» Argentina at the time. Repatriated to France with her baby, she arrived at one of the tower blocks in the Cité de la Faourette in Toulouse, at the home of an Argentinian friend, Roberto (one of those who had taken me in after the debacle with the zonards). She was the one who proposed, and it was my first relationship with a woman, and the one I regret the most. In fact, she was looking for a new dad for her child. But I did not understood quickly enough, caught up as I was in the libertine ideas circulating at the time. So she left with another dad. I hope she was happy, she deserved it. As for me, I was really sad, and I can no longer listen to Genesis. But I understood it was my fault, and since then I consider women as whole persons, not just their bodies.

I think the libertine ideas of the bourgeois bohemians and other leftists, also more or less endorsed by the Hippies, did more harm to their movements than drugs. No obvious major social upheaval, but all those broken families, lost loves, children without parents, all that sadness, loneliness, and suffering. How can you pretend to build a better society if you are even not able to maintain its most basic unit?

I add, it seems that love, this strong emotional attraction to someone we have made love with, only happens once. Well, I do not have enough statistics, but I would be curious to study the question.

Besides, back then, we actually knew very little about sex. The clitoris had just been invented, the G-spot was still in its atmospheric reentry phase, and tantra and ejaculation retention were still in interstellar transfer. In short, we knew absolutely nothing, and the supposedly «liberated» sex education manuals offered no concrete guidance on how to give or receive pleasure. And they certainly did not explained love and how to nurture it. According to these manuals, all you had to do was put the penis in the vagina for both partners to experience an immense pleasure! Nothing could be further from the truth, and it was not until the 1980s that people started talking about real sex. So, in my beginner's clumsiness, all I knew was to squirt like a Muggle, leaving Mélanie hoping for better next time. Add to that my PTSD from that filthy woman in the Foyer Saint Jean: every time I saw a female sex, it was that stench which came in my mind. I did not even dared to use my fingers!

As for the «couple-free» hippie communes, the idea was indeed very prevalent at the time; we even see an example of people claiming to live this way in the film «The Valley» and in the official Woodstock film from that era. But I think this idea was mainly due to a group called «The Family» which emerged from the Hippie movement. I think they were the ones who stole my lab partner in Toulouse in 1976. She was not taken out of France, but she still asked me not to see her anymore, apparently because she was not allowed to have friends outside of their group! Hence the label of a cult. I do not know what became of this group, which is no longer mentioned today.

In fact, the true idea of the real Hippies was not to live without love, but in a polyamorous union, with love shared among everybody. What we call polyamory today. The denial of love and its dissociation from sex actually appeared later, in France among the «zonards» (false Hippies), then in Charlie Hebdo, among the Greens, the Socialists, the «bobos» (bourgeois bohemians), etc. Thus, despite their claims of feminism, they merely joined the general machismo of the right wing, using women according to their own egocentric desires. It is not a certain François VI the volage who will show me wrong, him who abruptly dumped a good wife for a simpleton who managed to drive Woody Allen crazy.

Added in August 2022: I also realized that the words used for women back then, like «girl» and especially the destructive french word «nana» (chick) of the leftists, actually limit women only to their sexual dimension, completely negating the fact that they can also fall in love at any moment, and even become mothers (which then automatically makes us husbands or fathers, responsibilities we must then assume in one way or another). For this reason, I no longer use these words, even in my erotic daydreams, I think «woman». Okay fine, a kind blonde busty woman, but a complete woman, with a heart.

Added in August 2023: In fact, today, and even back then, we can only observe that all the talk about sexual liberation and feminism has led only to the cultivation of the ego. That is to say, our worst enemy, a demon living in our own consciousness and fighting tooth and nail against our happiness, constantly waiting for opportunities to make us ruin our lives with our own hands. Many of the feminists who denounced the «objectification of women» by phallocentric men have ultimately only reproduced this vision themselves, accepting or rejecting objectified men according to their own sexual fantasies. Even laws and social customs are shifting towards female supremacy, a simple Yin-Yang inversion of the old phallocracy: a woman can freely sexually assault a man, seduce him, and then reject him at will, while even a kind male proposition can now be considered a sexual assault!

Worse still, the most fantastic discoveries of the late 20th century, like tantric sex, are now known only to a tiny minority (in France), and when you talk about energy exchange within a couple, people stare at you, or they say you are in a cult. At best, the so-called «spiritualists» visualize «lights» circulating between the members of a couple. This rejection of «energies» is anyway very selective: the same people will tell us to put more energy into our work, ha ha ha ha ha! Yet nobody ever imagined that visualizing lights in a broom would clean the house.

Well, if I had known in 1970 or 1980 all that I know today, I would have been better in love. But finding a good partner is not that simple, so that upon my return from the Faitg in 1990, I gave up my dearest wish to have a partner.

Added in December 2025: I had a confuse feeling that the word «libertine» was needed in this title. Now I know why. Of course the Charlie Hebdo-style ecology activists I knew were saying «sexual freedom» instead of «libertinism». But it is obvious that they had made massive confusions between the two (and they are not the only ones). Indeed, libertinism, as conceived in the 18th century by figures like the marquis de sade, was a dualistic rejection, not only of the bigoted sexual restrictions imposed by religion, but of the whole Christic morality, down to the most basic respect for the individual. It was a dualistic and egotistical movement, nor a search for harmony neither of happiness together! Which, incidentally, inspired other hyper-dualistic movements, like marxism and psychoanalysis.

It is then understandable that this milieu could not function normally: everything crashed down as soon as the egos got tired of pretending. The ATE only lasted a little longer than the other groups of its kind.

The nervous breakdown

(Permalink) Written in July 2022

During the winter of 1975-1976, I had a severe nervous breakdown. Why to talk about it? Because many people go through it, without knowing what to do. And, hoping to calm this incomprehensible pain, which doctors don't recognize and which society denies or stigmatizes, they throw themselves into the hands of charlatans who only make things worse. As with many other things, I had to deal with it, understand it, and find solutions on my own.

It started abruptly, without warning. For some time, I had been having trouble falling asleep, my heart beating faster than usual. Suddenly it... stopped! Well, not really, but the sensation was very strong. And when we are materialistic, it is absolutely terrifying! I jumped out of my bed, with the feeling that I was dying! It was not the case, but then I was afraid of having some serious heart illness which could kill me at any moment. As a result, falling asleep became terrifying, and I would spend until midnight tossing and turning in bed, searching for sleep but afraid of finding it! I even once saw the «entrance to the tunnel» of the NDEs, but without knowing what it was nor seeing the exit, it was the ultimate terror. The annihilation of death was suddenly taking an appearance!

Some days later, I fainted in the middle of the class at the IUT! Actually, I now think that it had nothing to do with it: I had violently hit my elbow some minutes earlier, and we all know how sensitive this particular spot can be. I had indeed felt something like a violent electric shock.

Add to that the sadness of the long winter evenings alone in my apartment... which was actually a disguised hovel. At the time, I did not knew it, but it is very dangerous to live in those rotten old houses, filled with the horrible vibrations of all the suffering, agony, and filth they have witnessed. I even recommend avoiding doctors, «therapists,» or «mediums» who operate there. I had two serious problems, one with a so-called clairvoyant and another with a so-called osteopath.

This suffering lasted several months, and it also contributed to lowering my grades at the university.

A little panicked, I ended up at the office of a university «advisor» (where I had been summoned after the fainting), who did not helped me at all, instead projecting her own fears onto me! According to her, I «was not eating enough» (I went to the university cafeteria and ate the portions they gave me, no more and no less than the other students. So if it was not enough, she had to make the cafeteria feel guilty, not me).

She finally gave me Sedibaine, saying I was experiencing «anxiety». This «solution» calls for several comments:

💩She presented Sedibaine as a «soft», safe sedative. In fact, an internet search revealed it to be phenobarbital, a dangerous and addictive neuroleptic, basically, a sedative, meaning that it actually worsens depression! Anyway, I quickly realized that this medication did not solved the problem at all, and after a while, I threw it all away.

🐷And I did well, because I knew a serious case of someone deeply saddened by a divorce which was destroying his children. He was given a... sedative, which, of course, pushed him even further down, leading to a suicide attempt! Some doctors are truly like children playing with things they don't understand, if they are not deliberately trying to break people.

😤This charlatan interpreted my heartbeats as «anxiety», meaning a feeling of fear. But when I asked her what I was afraid of, she did not answer. This word is often used ambiguously by pseudo-psychologists and pseudo-doctors. Indeed, some people are so materialistic (even zombies in the truest sense) that they do not feel their own emotions! But they notice their heartbeats, which then they mistake for a feeling. Even if these heartbeats have a completely different origin!

👊It is quite possible that this person hated me (this happened often back then, and it still does today), and that she actually tried to break me, by making me dependent on a neuroleptic, or by putting me in a psychiatric care system (which would have stigmatized me for life). Insanities of this caliber were seen, or worse. The most interesting thing in the story is that a dangerous psychiatric drug ultimately had no effect on me. Maybe because I'm not mad, lol (Vision of the Elf Legolas tasting alcohol, without noticing any effect)

💩Finally, it is remarkable that a dangerous and addictive psychiatric medication was handed out without a prescription by someone who was not a psychiatrist, not even a doctor.

There were other causes of this depression, like this ancient comrade from Bordeaux I was hosting at the time, gloomy and negative, criticizing everything I did and seeing the bad in everything. Normally, company is an excellent remedy for winter blues, but in his case, it was a serious worsening of my condition.

I had also tried herbal teas to help me sleep. But apparently, the effect was rather negative, and I quickly developed a real intolerance to these teas, no longer even being able to stand their smell. Even today I feel a reluctance when I smell this in an organic shop. Likely some plants, although «natural» and «eco-friendly», are actually as dangerous poisons as «chemical» neuroleptics, and just as prone to misuse by materialistic doctors or self-proclaimed healers. Apparently, these plants induce depression, supposedly to «calm» and «make us sleepy.» In other words, they were making my condition worse.

This paragraph added in December 2025: In fact, materialistic people do not feel their emotions, so they mistake physical symptoms like heart palpitations for emotions. Hence the accusations of «anxiety»... without any real feeling. But also, at the time, psychology and psychiatry only sought to mask the symptoms. They thought they could «cure» a sad person by masking the sadness. Which can actually push them much deeper down (confirmed by ChatGPT). Finally, people who have dealt with a psychiatrist are irreversibly «marked» socially, which would have ruined my plans for a better world. Today, while I am violently ignored by google and wikipedia, at least the latter cannot write that I have had psychiatric disorders. Thus they ignore me, and this truly is the best thing they can do for me.

So, regarding depression, I had to gradually understand the problem and find solutions, often alone. First of all, heart beating without any abnormalities in heart rhythm are called palpitations. It is an annoying symptom, but benign and harmless. The least would have been to reassure me immediately (which my carnival psychiatrist failed to do, this is why I say she was knowingly trying to destroy me). And these are not «anxieties» (feelings of fear), but purely mechanical reactions, in my case, the difficult digestion of the heavy and unhealthy meals from the university cafeteria. Plus aerophagia. I asked several doctors about it, and they confirmed that aerophagia can cause resonances in the chest, like a drum, amplifying the heartbeat. Then, when some air bubble moves, the resonance suddenly disappears, and we really get the impression that our heart stops! Hence the terror, a real feeling this time, but caused by the heartbeat, not the other way around. Over the years, I have been able to get used to these benign symptoms, by «accepting» them, thus avoiding the fear to keep me awake. But above all, I have been able to avoid them by becoming vegetarian and eating less in the evening.

I had another bout of depression en 1985, but it had a very specific cause: psychological stalking by a sociopath who was very good at hiding her true nature.

It is important to note here the common fate of people who are depressed because they are victims of sociopaths. In many cases, faced with the destructive violence of a sociopath, victims feel guilty, believing that this violence is their fault. Marie France Hirigoyen cites the case of a woman who had been psychiatrically hospitalized and given psychiatric drugs, simply because she was depressed about her sadistic husband, who was turning their marriage into a hell. She managed to get her released, but she said there were many others, to the point that she chose her specialty, «victimology», to help them and raise awareness of their plight. I myself knew a similar case among... Buddhists (as what just wearing a label does not make us a Buddha, hahaha!). The woman (the victim) was so depressed that the custody of the child was given to the father (the abuser). Then, when he died, the mother returned, completely normal, to take care of her child. Another case is illustrated in the film «Titanic», where the heroine is the victim of a caricaturally sociopathic fiancé who terrifies her and makes her feel worthless. It is through the contact with a normal man that she realizes the cause of her problem, ceasing to feel guilty and regaining her autonomy. «He saved me», she says in the end.

The problem is that many social workers, counselors, doctors and judges prefer to «treat the depression» of the victims—that is, to finish destroying them—instead of recognizing the reality of sociopathy. Naturally, they hold the power, so that they are not going to criticize its mechanisms. These attitudes are serious errors, and even complicity. Indeed, Marie France Hirigoyen's denunciation occurred in 1998, 24 years ago as I write this. Whether it is medicine, social services, or the judiciary, all have had ample time to take sociopathy into account. Even the criteria for recognizing sociopaths are published everywhere and are as well-known as the road code. I would add one more, so outlandish that no one seems to have thought at it: justifying their behavior at a given moment with events which occurred later. Even the operation of the universe must bend to their ego!

For some years now, we read in popularization science magazines articles claiming that depression is an illness. I say no: it is a feeling, caused by an absurd and lonely life, by emotional losses, or by sociopaths. Treating the symptoms without addressing the cause allows them to subjugate the victims, while protecting sociopaths or avoiding considering the absurdities of our current society.

Our scientists support their thesis by saying that depression produces observable physical symptoms. But anger also produces obvious symptoms: mental confusion, agitation, facial flushing, asocial behavior, risky or even suicidal tendencies, etc. But anger is considered «manly» and valued, while depression is «a women's thing» and devalued. Considering it an illness also allows for the exoneration of loneliness, of the absurd meaningless life, and of sociopaths. It also allows for the subjugation of victims through psychiatry, even depriving them of their rights. An injustice which, of course, keeps them severely depressed, thus «justifying» this treatment.

Now, recent research links certain depressions with gut flora disorders and other issues. This is possible, but we must also treat the external causes: a meaningless society, and the sociopaths. And of course the internal causes: false spiritual attitudes like attachment or dualism, which create frustrations which increase suffering, and even perpetuate depression for itself, even after the external causes have disappeared.

It was on this last point that I had to work, alone once again (At the time. Today it is the ABCs of Buddhism, and psychologists offer methods of this kind, such as CBT, guided visualization, etc.). Indeed, the frustration of suffering exacerbates depression, creating a vicious cycle. It is a neurosis, and so I had to start by practicing positive thinking to «turn the vicious cycle in the other way» and gradually climb back up, instead of sliding down. Today, nearly 50 years later, neither the absurdity of life nor the sociopaths have any power to make me fall back down.

Of course, a neurosis produces a change in the brain, and this is what doctors see with their equipment, leading them to say that depression is an illness with material causes and remedies. But ultimately, it is the consciousness which caused the harmful change, and it is also the consciousness which can heal it. And it can do so without addictive castrating medication or social stigma.

Okay, I am not telling you not to see a doctor, but at least try the above first.

Ecologie 78

(Permalink) Written in July 2022.

Given the vital importance of ecology, it was inevitable that it would enter the realm of political discussion. To this end, several ecologist candidates have run in the elections, starting with the historic René Dumont in 1974. The goal was clearly to bring ecology into politics, not politics into ecology.

The aim was to make politicians understand that they had to take ecology into account in their decisions. But politicians and the media did exactly the opposite, instead subjugating ecology to their dictates and ideologies, merely using it to bait us toward their stale parties of stale oldies. The problem is that ecology obeys nobody, and this incredible hubris of wanting to subjugate it to the idiotic games of political parties is the direct and sole cause of all the catastrophes which affect us today: climate change, Chernobyl, Fukushima, extinction, pollution, cyclones, fires, etc. And then there is the absurdity of not being able to do without putin's gas, even though it is being used for the war in Ukraine. Finally, this allowed the Orwellian media to speak on behalf of ecologists! This political taking over of ecology is certainly the tallest intellectual fraud of the 20th century, even before marxism, and the one with the most calamitous consequences. But all those crooks had to be complete cretins to think that silencing ecologists would solve the problems with ecology.

Cassandra…

In the 1978 legislative elections, we had not reached this point yet. French ecology activists, emboldened by the results of the previous elections, united under a single independent banner: Ecologie 78.

But how could they guarantee their sincerity? And their unity, given such diverse activist and social organizations? It was done in an extraordinarily simple way. Instead of devising a complex and impossibly consensual platform, we settled on just two points:

▶️ No nuclear power

▶️ No withdrawal in the second round.

No nuclear power immediately threw off all the hypocritical pseudo-ecologists who «did not see» the dangers of nuclear power, or who offered Disneyfied versions of ecology.

No withdrawal in the second round eliminated any political opportunism, especially by a groping and sticky Socialist Party, which yet until then, distinguished itself by its inaction and complacency.

The manifesto of Rolland Lenormand and Richard Trigaux, for Ecologie 78 in Toulouse

Our manifesto for Ecology 78 in Toulouse. The texts underlined in red indicate:

-Support from scientists

-Our desire not to form yet another political party, neither to position ourselves in the right-left political play

For proof: it is this second point that the lies of the media and politicians have hidden, by creating an «ecologist party» subordinate to the left.

We note that my Rotring drawings deliberately had a popular and practical style, while remaining open «toward the top». My view of the Pyrenees was imitated several times in the following years...

I must say that it worked fantastically well, and the voters understood it, giving us an average of 5% per candidate, an unprecedented success for the ecology movement. But there was never any follow-up to Ecologie 78, which was in fact the swan song of ecology’s representation in elections, we are to see why.

It is quite remarkable that such diverse associations were able to work together without any hitches. In Toulouse alone, we had two completely different associations: the Association Toulousaine d'Ecologie, which had to be considered close to leftists and anarchists, and Environment and Humanism, which the media would label «right-wing». Similar situations existed in most major cities. Such collaboration between so widely different people was possible because we had a simple and clear guiding principle, which allowed us to effectively set aside our disagreements.

However, the politicians and the media could not let this go unchallenged, and we had a glimpse of what was to come, even before the elections themselves.

The media started to denigrate the ecology movement, accusing it of being «nebulous», of «lacking direction», and so on. These swines knew perfectly well that if ecologists adopted a label, right or left no matter, then the resulting polarization of public opinion would forever prevent them from winning any election. And this is exactly what happened!

I also accuse the Socialist Party of having subjugated the ecology movement, with the deliberate aim of neutralizing it, not helping it. At the time, the Socialist Party was well-known as a Disney version of the capitalist right, criticizing it, posing as saviors, but never actually doing anything to solve the problems. And we had ample proofs of this since, with the Mitterrand and Hollande presidencies, which accomplished absolutely nothing, not even in their area: social issues.

As proof, I personally caught them in action at a working meeting in Paris, which I attended as a candidate myself (yes, I was a candidate in the 4th district of Toulouse, I did everything in my life, even that). It was a very technical meeting, with two or three decisions on our agenda (which I no longer remember). Many of us had to contribute, so speaking time was severely limited, and decisions were made by vote. It was a working meeting among highly motivated people, and the discipline was incredible, the focus palpable. Yet we were several times interrupted by strangers who had entered the room and repeatedly monopolized the conversation for long minutes, asking the same old question:

«Are you going to withdraw in favor of the left?»

They were tiresome and difficult to silence. Man, it is like walking into a football club and telling people they would be smarter if they played hopscotch. We did not respond to them, they were so irrelevant. But they mistook our silence for listening!

We did not give up, and the result was clear: with nearly 5%, the French people recognized ecology issues as an important criterion.

However, Ecologie 78 was the swan song of the independent ecology movement. If the new political and media clergy had not managed to manipulate us, on the other hand they would do what they excel at: speak for us. To fix the already awakened people and to serve as a deterrent to the others.

In fact, they had nothing to do but to comment. And «interpret». They knew perfectly well what was going to happen. We had indeed devoted all our energy to Ecologie 78, without thinking about what would come next. Once the dust settled, nothing remained: no organization, no plan, no unifying idea, not even a point of contact. On the other hand, egos remained, which quickly began to puff up, hypnotized by the temptation of power and fame. And the media knows very well how to stroke egos to make them shine!

Thus, several people founded their own «ecological parties». For example, one of the ATE candidates, Philippe Dufételle, founded his own party, the MIDEP, where he was completely alone, by lack of any support from the ATE or anyone else. But he had become «a politician» to the eyes of the media! And so the media came to interview him, as if he was the chief of the ecologists! (He even ended up on the Toulouse city council, where he had to manage the anger of residents furious about the future AZF disaster, ha ha ha!) Yet Philippe was nothing more than me, as a former candidate. But the media clearly had a plan: they never came to interview any of the other nine candidates (and especially not my running mate: a scientist!).

Thus, through regrouping and mergers of various small groups, «the Greens» were born, the «ecological party» which took only some years to openly acknowledge its subservience to the Socialist Party. At first, the Greens could entertain the illusion, with the endorsement of some scientists and anti-nuclear activists. But these were quickly eliminated, leaving only pure apparatchiks, with no roots in the field. The media then only had to talk about the Party and ignore the real activists and scientists, stopping to mention them altogether. They had succeeded in neutralizing public ecology and alienating public opinion from ecology! And when Dominique Voynet announced that the Greens would be «left-wing», she merely symbolically closed a trap that had already served its purpose. (I once wrote to Dominique Voynet, when she was a minister, with some very technical suggestions. I never received any reply. Prooot.)

I think I owe an explanation here: how has an «ecological party» done more to discredit ecology in the eyes of the public than to advance it? There are several reasons:

🤪Labeling ecology as «left-wing» prevents it from gaining any votes from the right-wing electorate: unable to exceed 50%, it can never win again. A simple and effective trap, yet still largely misunderstood. (Note that labeling it as right-wing would have produced exactly the same result. This would have been just as possible, given that the naturist predecessors were rather right-wing, and many associations involved with Ecologie 78 would have accepted this label. Even far-right could have worked; the nazis did supported the naturist movement at the time—that is to say, exactly the same trick to neutralize any criticism from that side.)

🤨Worse still, even solutions, like renewable energies, are now considered political ostentation and ostracized! As if climate change would impact left-wingers and not right-wingers... showing how out of touch the anti-ecology are.

😐The association with an atheist Charlie Hebdo party, the Socialist Party, severed ecology from the religious right, and especially from spirituality. It could therefore never again become a majority movement! Even the efforts of the Pope or the Dalai Lama to speak of ecology as belonging to everybody, have failed to reconcile religious people with ecology. And even today, the main obstacle to ecology is that the Christian right does not vote ecologist, period. They remember 1903 and the expulsion of the Carthusian monks from their monastery of the Grande Chartreuse. Indeed, when we saw a «Green» Party elected official refuse to officiate a wedding because the bride wore a veil, they have no illusions about what awaits them should the so-called «Greens» win.

L'expulsion des moines de la Chartreuse en 1903

The loss of social codes of this epoch makes some explanations necessary: the men with the shepherd's crooks, are locals who, contrary to the media propaganda of the time, were sympathetic to the Carthusians. They show it by putting their hats off. The soldiers also show their disagreement with the way they hold their rifle. The monks chose an attitude of total non-conflict, very visible in their body langage, in order to defuse the media propaganda. Or for their own spiritual training in Christic love. These attitudes defuse the violence from the expulsion. I also observed this phenomenon myself in the anti-nuclear demonstrations, together with the same solidarity of the locals. The image is from wikipedia, but apparently they did not understood the codes.

🤭The media just had to stop mentioning the truly independent candidates. In fact, those who have run since rarely exceeded 1%. This is probably the percentage of people who read election manifestos.

😑The entry into the left-right political game lowered ecology to a minor issue, subordinate to petty clan rivalries, instead of uniting all the positive energies.

😜The public opinion is now polarized, determining its ecology choices based on its political opinions. For example, the right wing is against green cars, while the left wing substitutes its pet project: the gluten-free electric car. Given that 75% of France's electricity is nuclear, this clearly demonstrates the hypocrisy of the so-called left. Things have escalated to a very dangerous reaction, such as the movement against wind turbines, driven by an increasingly arrogant far right. This polarization is now so pronounced that a large majority, left and right all together, prefers to pay fossil gazoline twice the price of solar gasoline (E85)!

Yet we had historical examples: how the Soviet Communist Party enslaved the Russian people, instead of liberating them as it claimed. Even in the 1970s, nobody could pretend ignorance of this problem, as we were in the full impetus of the publication of Solzhenitsyn's books, which the media raved about. For the Right, the degeneration of Jesus' message of love into social conformity was also very visible, even if the media and intellectuals are much less talking about it. We are even witnessing a historical acceleration in the decay of movements which source of spiritual energy has been cut off: several centuries for the Catholic Church, some decades for the Socialist ideal, some years for the Greens and the New Age, and only some months for the Yellow Vests. Apparently, someone is controlling the energy tap, thinking that it is better to have no social movement at all, than any rotten social movement.

And if today we are so backward and naive about ecology, it is thanks to the media and the Socialist Party, which have systematically silenced the citizen voice on this subject, starting with Ecology78 precisely.

Because, of course, these mind control tricks did not took place only in France. Every country had its own version, and few have truly made progress. So, in the US, talking about ecology is «Democratic,» which is equivalent to say «communist»... The consequence of this nonsense: it took 35 years of greenhouse effect for the Biden administration to pass a law for renewable energy.

And today, 35 years later, they shed crocodile tears when climate change hits: nobody is ready! Nobody did anything! So they talk about «adapting»... They are masochist, stupid, nuts, and totally unrealistic.

Even the far right is against ecology. Well, of course, they are against everything which is pro, and pro everything which is against. But in fact, anti-ecology is not their usual practice. For example, enjoying nature was part of the nazi ideal. They even allowed German naturist camps (the forerunners of ecologists) to operate. The same thing happened in Francoist Spain, which allowed naturists to roam freely while brutally repressing the leftists. But the French far right of the early 21st century is not a true far right; it is an artificial creation of the media and putin, financed by the moonies, without whom it would have remained minuscule and unknown. And its sponsors shaped it precisely to suit their needs: racist, of course, since this the stock-in-trade of the fascists, and still the best bait for extracting membership fees from the idiots. But also anti-ecology, in order to protect the interests of the carbon barons, and anti-European in preparation for putin's invasion. Such a precision is no accident.

But ecology suffered more from the far left than from the far right, as we are to see:

The anti-nuclear movement and Creys-Malville

(Permalink) Written in July 2022

In the eyes of History, in the 1970s the anti-nuclear movement completely eclipsed other aspects of the ecology movement: buying groups, organic farming, green energies, recycling, living close to nature, lightweight and renewable architecture, protection of endangered species, etc., etc. within a movement which already included dozens of associations, many of which never participated in the anti-nuclear campaign or in electoral campaigns. But these movements are now forgotten by the media, and not even mentioned on wikipedia, which only discusses the political taking over.

In fact, the anti-nuclear movement was the other great black hole which devoured the ecology movement, this time from within. Of course, at the time, nuclear power was the most serious threat to Mankind, frantically pushed by hordes of fanatical psychorigid technocrats and derealized politicians. The future would prove us right, with Chernobyl, Fukushima, and the others yet to come (2022). If they had listened to us, these insanities would never have happened. Chernobyl and Fukushima are not accidents: they are deliberate crimes, committed by declared enemies of Mankind, fully aware that they were doing evil. Of course, they did not planned which power plant would explode, but still, if we kill people playing Russian roulette in the street, this is a crime, not an accident.

But how has the anti-nuclear movement been so harmful to the ecology movement? We did not knew it, but it was the stake of one of the countless attempts by leftists to infiltrate a movement which did not belonged to them. And as we are to see, this was the main cause of the failure.

Well, it was indeed ecologists who initiated the anti-nuclear movement (primarily Greenpeace, against nuclear testing. But they were not the only ones). But given the extreme gravity of the problem, many groups devoted their time to it. Not to mention, of course, the local committees which had sprang up around power plant projects, dedicated exclusively to this issue.

But the marxist-style infiltration has very specific methods, which are replicated identically for each new movement. Marxists still dream of raising an army to seize the power, as Lenin did in 1917 (by taking over the «soviets», which were workers' strike councils, hence the name «Soviet Union»). In their eyes, the ecology movement was merely a breeding ground for recruiting activists motivated «against society». And to attract these activists, they needed to focus the energies on a simplistic great satan: the nuclear power, a terrifying hazard justifying the most extreme violence to their eyes.

For these two reasons, they needed to eliminate the peaceful ecological activities (organic farming, recycling, endangered species, etc.). This is one of the reasons why many organic buying groups closed as early as 1976 (ATE being an exception), considerably impoverishing and devitalizing the whole ecology movement. Above all, marxists had to prevent at all costs the anti-nuclear movement from turning non-violent. A delicate balancing act, and they knew they could only push «gently» towards violence, since ecology is, in fact, inseparable from non-violence.

The deadly police violence during the Creys-Malville demonstration in 1977 had already deterred activists. But another major national demonstration in Flamanville turned into a disaster, with a storm destroying all the stands and leaving the organizers bankrupt. The leftists therefore had to move sooner than expected to the final stage of their infiltration maneuver: destroying the anti-nuclear movement in order to force activists to leave it and join their «army». It was the journal «Libération», the system's sheepdog, which carried out this dirty work, announcing «The anti-nuclear is finished!» No one had said anything of the sort, no coordinating body had met to make such a decision, but Libération had spoken. The irony is that, from that moment on, the attendance at anti-nuclear demonstrations actually plummeted to almost zero! I do not know what proportion of anti-nuclear activists actually joined marxist groups, probably very few. So there was a huge amount of destruction without much results, but the marxists don't care at all about the fate of the movements they hijack, they just move to the next one.

A rather unsavory incident occurred in Golfech, which you have probably heard about. One day, the body of an anti-nuclear activist was found in the Garonne River, his skull smashed. We knew that the pro-nuclear activists were not exactly known for their non-violence, them. For instance they had set fire to a caravan, not long before. The assassination of activists was already a sport in some countries, but in France itself, it was a worrying new phenomenon. The police investigation, however, revealed a totally different, perhaps worse reality: this man had been killed by one of his business partners, the photographer Floréal Bujan, over a dispute about the management of their company. Such things can happen in any non-psychoeducated environment, unfortunately. But it discouraged many activists, especially since Floréal was well-known for having made a militant film, «Golfech Mon Amour». My personal impression? Floréal is the only killer I have ever met (to my knowledge). But even before his murder, he already had a dark unpleasant aura. I know why now. And you now know why I take these stories about auras seriously.

The Creys-Malville demonstration in 1977 was the high point of the anti-nuclear movement. Until then, activists had wavered between strict non-violence à la Gandhi and more forceful actions, like in Plogoff, where local farmers had talked about bringing back the weapons of the Resistance. Fortunately, local ecologists dissuaded them. But Mitterrand was afraid, and it was the only nuclear power plant he canceled, out of the three he had promised in his election platform. And even then, it is quite possible that the project was abandoned for technical reasons, as in Port-la-Nouvelle (I shudder to think they would have anticipated the independence of Brittany and Catalonia).

There was therefore a definite risk that the anti-nuclear movement would degenerate into violence. The government and the leftists were just waiting for such an opportunity to brawl, and it is certain that a truly violent demonstration would have served as a pretext for harshly repressing the whole ecology and naturist movements, not just the anti-nuclear activists. They could even have tasked papon, still free at the time, with staging another nice pogrom like in 1961. Or the SAC thugs, like in May 1968. The organizers were aware of this problem, they had discussed it, and for this reason, they had finally made the decision: Creys-Malville 1977 would be non-violent. Not «more or less», not «implicitly», not «optionally» as many other demonstrations had been, but clearly and without compromise. It was a historic decision, which definitively anchored the ecology movement in non-violence. Where it still remains today.

A decision which did not pleased everybody. For example, the newspaper La Gueule Ouverte ran the headline «It will be non-violence» as if it was a bad news.

Wikipedia provides a detailed description of the demonstration, which is very useful because it somehow centralizes all the lies about it. So, we recall that in the preceding days, the media were talking about a «war council» between the «two sides», thus denying the non-violent, citizen-led project. Yet it is very clear that if the demonstration had not been announced as non-violent, far fewer people would have attended. And certainly not me.

In fact, given the number of demonstrators, there were several starting points, aiming at encircling the anti-humanity site. This had been announced like that, and the demonstrators had spent the previous night at several assembly points, one per march. But, serious error by the organizers, or grave treason, at the last minute all the marches were redirected to Faverges, to join the site in a single point. And the police knew it, along the way I heard mentions of preliminary «negotiations» with them!

However, playing napoleon on a map is one thing, and navigating the real terrain is quite another: the Faverges passage was long and narrow, a trap where the immense unified procession would be blocked. And this is precisely what happened: the few hundred demonstrators at the front found themselves bearing the brunt of the repression, while the others were stuck behind in a massive traffic jam. Then came the retreat, and the rout: there was nothing left to do.

Until that moment, I, like everyone else, was afraid, hearing the continuous detonations of offensive grenades. (Anyone who claims not to have been afraid upon hearing for the first time the «sound of the gun» is quite presumptuous! Okay, it was not «the gun», but still weapons of war, capable of killing or maiming—we all knew that, the anti-life activists knew it, and in 1976 I saw them fired at a group of seated non-violent protesters, one landed at one meter from me.) But from that moment on, fear was replaced by another sensation: I had to leave immediately. It was no longer fear, but a feeling of overwhelming urgency, probably a moment of super-consciousness, this has happened to me several times in dangerous situations. The demonstration was completely disorganized anyway, with no communication between the head and the end. Then the riot police finally pushed the entire demonstration back to where I was, and there was Indeed nothing more to do.

Now let us look at the lies of wikipedia, which, let us remember, will become the «official History» in the future, while real testimonies like mine will be classified as «personal opinions», and therefore «oriented» and «not credible».

The french wikipedia claims that (I translate) «The organization of the demonstration was ensured by the coordination of the Malville committees, which was supported by activists from the Parti Socialiste Unifié (PSU) as well as the Organisation communiste des travailleurs (OCT) and the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR).» Wow, high density of lies. Let us unravel this. At the time, an unspoken rule was that all demonstrations were organized by «the locals» (people living nearby), because «they knew the ground». Creys-Malville was no exception; there was a local committee, some of whose members I met during the preparations. As for supporters, Wikipedia is lying here by omission: there were dozens of associations and parties, some quite far from the left: trade unions, humanitarians, scientists, artists, local elected officials, mayors, etc. (the latter were even at the head of the demonstrations wearing their tricolor scarves. Leftists would not have done that!) Even the Swiss government, while not officially supporting the demonstration, still opposed Malville. The three mentioned by wikipedia are therefore a very accurate selection: this page was clearly written by an American manipulator, who selected bogeymen suited to his own country. Indeed, in the US, French socialists are confused with the very nasty communist «great satan». In reality, the PSU was a moderate, democratic and civic-minded party, probably the most honest of all French parties since 1945, and I have never heard of the OCT. Wikipedia is like wine: their stories get better with age.

Creys Malville was no exception to the unspoken rule above, and it was probably through the local committee that the trouble began, during the preliminary «negotiations» which had transformed the planned encirclement of the site into a trap at Faverges. I have serious doubts that the mastermind behind this scheme was a well-known local figure, whom I met, and who proved to be stubborn and authoritarian: everything had to be done his way. Thus, the local committee simply endorsed his stupid decisions, while, in the name of secrecy, the intelligent people were confined to building eco-friendly toilets... (without partitions!!!)

(Permalink) Like most, I had to back down long before reaching Faverges (few actually arrived there), but I still witnessed a very interesting spectacle. I was near the front of my own procession, ten meters behind the elected officials in their tricolor scarves, when two shady-looking individuals carrying batons appeared. Along with a few others, I had started to surround them when suddenly someone bleated «and freedom!» and everybody scattered. A hundred meters further on, the road forked. But the lane we were supposed to take was blocked by TWO cops. We had local elected officials at the head of the procession, with their blue, white, and red ribbons, and they certainly were not going to brawl with the police. So the procession headed off down the other lane (towards the Faverges trap). Suddenly, the two thugs from earlier emerged from the demonstration, and started dancing around the cops, pretending to hit them with their batons, then backing away without touching them, coming again, and so on. The two cops did not even attempted to defend themselves, not even raising their shields! But most importantly, a swarm of photographers emerged from the demonstration, dancing all around the four protagonists for several minutes, photographing the scene! Clearly the two cops, the two scoundrels and the dozen photographs were accomplices. So, it was a completely staged scene, designed to discredit the movement in the eyes of the public. There have been many others; I remember once a photo of two punks desecrating a church, 20 kilometers from a demonstration.

These «false flag operations» are therefore common, and the media deliberately participate, with being informed and present (therefore complicit), or even orchestrating them from scratch (as mentioned above, or in the case of the «Mayan prophecy» of 2012, or the Frank Fontaine affair). Thus, the media, including Libération and wikipedia, «create the reality», in order to manipulate the public opinion. They just do it in a more targeted way in France, instead of systematically like in North Korea.

Regarding the events in Faverges, Wikipedia states that «A few dozen demonstrators then attacked the police, armed with slingshots, bolts, or Molotov cocktails, some threw stones». The above lie is blatant: even assuming these people existed, they were not «demonstrators», as the protest was non-violent. Wikipedia is thus deliberately participating in the disinformation campaign, just like the photographs above. And Wikipedia does not mention any injuries among the riot police. So the «clashes» were clearly one-sided attacks. Seen how we decode wikipedia? (Actually, a riot policeman lost his hand, with throwing an offensive grenade too late. But this is the riot police's fault, so wikipedia does not mention it.)

There were many German and Swiss demonstrators (it was a European demonstration, because the explosion at Creys-Malville would have affected all of Europe, as Chernobyl demonstrated). Again, according to wikipedia (always say «according to wikipedia»), this presence allowed the prefect to call the demonstrators «boches», a very un-European insult (from WWII against the nazis), which reduces this man to a very low level. But hey, this is what wikipedia says, right? In any case, no prefect forced them to retract this accusation.

And all this for a breeder reactor, a technocrat's utopia, plaything for ignorant politicians, which never worked properly, and which ultimately had to be neutralized (the pipes cut) so that no one could ever try to restart it. This is because the risk was far greater than with other reactors, with 5,000 tons of sodium separated from the cooling water by only 2 or 3 millimeters of steel which dissolved in the sodium... In short, it was a time bomb, a machine from hell which detonation would have blanketed the entire region in caustic soda and plutonium. Clearly, this project was the work of sickos. A kind of escalation of the madness of ordinary nuclear power, squared, so to speak.

Today (2023), the plutonium has been removed. But nobody knows how to deal with the 5,000 tons of sodium, solidified in a mass. This is already complicated enough, but on top of that, it is very likely contaminated with long-lived radioactive waste.

In any case, the power plant site is still blurred on Google Maps. I suppose out of shame.

There are two points which are rarely mentioned regarding the anti-nuclear movement.

The first is the massive support of the local populations. This has been a constant throughout the entire anti-nuclear movement: everywhere and always, we were welcomed in town halls, received into people's homes, and when our stay was unexpectedly extended, we were given accommodation, even clothes. Did we need a headquarters? We had it that very evening. It was incredible, especially considering how rural French people usually snub strangers, especially young people (always suspected of being «Hippies» coming to spoil the cows' milk). But we never experienced any signs of hostility from the locals.

This stands in stark contrast to the election results, where a vast majority vote against ecology, for sadomasochistic parties or for profiteers. People probably do not see things the same way «here» and «in the television». Or perhaps this rejection of ecology is the result of the shady dealings and manipulations which followed Ecologie 78, thus after the end of the anti-nuclear movement.

The second interesting point is the attitude of the CRS (riot police) and the mobile gendarmerie. When we saw a riot squad arrive, they were extremely agitated, even resorting to unnecessary acts of sadistic cruelty, I witnessed several, in the sort of hitting a cyclist from behind or destroying farm equipment. Then, upon our non-violent interaction, they... melted, realizing we were normal people, just like them. This was also observed in other non-violent struggles, such as the Larzac protests, leading to mutual respect between police and demonstrators.

This posed a serious problem for the organizers of the sadomasochistic practices, who often had to change squads, and in any case, bring in new ones for any violent action. Wikipedia even claims that in Faverges, many riot police refused to use force. Which would not have been the case if they had received Molotov cocktails. At least one of these two Wikipedia claims is a lie: nobody likes being hit with Molotov cocktails, and throwing any is a guaranteed ticket to at least a brutal beating, with prison on option.

It is clear that these riot police were being manipulated, receiving severe disinformation against us. And I have a direct proof of it. My brother Serge had a biker friend in Mont-de-Marsan. A typical slacker, Duruy style. But what else can you do as a job when you are a biker and you have spent your whole school time messing around learning nothing? CRS! (the french riot police)! I say that he was not a bad guy, he even kept having fun, my mother said that once he gave her a ride on his CRS motorcycle (that probably wasn't legal). But one day, this guy came back from a training stage, furious and hurling the worst insults at «the ecologists». Clearly, he had been brainwashed, and in a grossly exaggerated manner. This is the weak point of the government and of repression: these pot bellied bureaucrats cannot do the dirty work themselves, they are forced to delegate it to ordinary people. People who have families, friends... Is it any wonder, then, that the government is so poorly regarded in France? Practically everyone has at least once glimpsed at some shady dealings, either directly or through a family member, a friend, etc.

I have even seen several times the maimed riot policeman from Creys-Malville, hailed as a hero by ecologists, because he continued to carry out his duties despite having his hand ripped off. Surely, there are many potential heroes in the riot police, the gendarmerie and the police, for whom we could easily find more useful activities than destroying our future. (Added in 2023: Hooded thugs? Nayib Bukélé? Ha ha ha ha!)

Thus, the anti-nuclear movement had been a formidable human adventure, profoundly affecting each participant, including the police. Such is the power of non-violence! Whereas Marxist dualism, on the contrary, creates deep divisions. This is why the media did everything to conceal the non-violence of the anti-nuclear movement, or why wikipedia only cites far-left supporters. Had the movement continued, we would have arrived at a different, and far more interesting, society. But it indeed was the destruction wrought by marxist infiltrators and the scabs at Libération which brought it to a brutal end. And this end left a gaping hole in the ecology movement, and a feeling of failure among the activists and participants. Indeed, many were completely invested against the nuclear power, abandoning all the other activities: purchasing groups, nature protection, alternative economy, etc. The end of the anti-nuclear movement thus left a discouraged movement, disenchanted, drained of all its energy.

The 1980s were therefore quite bleak, and the electoralist «left-wing» ecology of the «Greens» further eroded voters' trust. This trust is only gradually returning, but it was not until 44 years later, in 2022, that Yannick Jadot returned to the level of Ecologie 78 (my level). And even then, I did not voted for someone who included the legalization of marijuana in his platform: I knew well before what the cost would be.

Attempts at alternative work

(Permalink) Written in March 2019.

No longer being a student, my father stopped sending me money. Which, in this autumn of 1978-79, left me without any income. My attempts to sell electronic equipment proved far from successful, despite a few repair jobs here and there. Although, my plan could have worked: a friend from that time, with a similar approach, had managed to sign a maintenance contract with a major music instruments store in Toulouse (Baron, if I remember correctly, but I no more find the name and location today). But in reality, I could not do much in my small apartment, without a penny to buy even the bare minimum of equipment. My wind turbine regulator projects also came to nothing (not even specifications), and my modular audio circuits did not progressed beyond one or two prototypes, quickly outdated anyway by technological advancement.

Faced with the lack of income (a recurring problem in my life), I had to look for work.

In keeping with the spirit of the times, I first tried a self-managed project. But that was not it either: working one day a month is not enough. Moreover, the team included two temperamental female supremacists, whose sole aim seemed to be to rip off potential customers with shoddy workmanship. And finishing a concrete slab at night with a flashlight is an excellent way to do a shoddy job. The customer, seeing the mess, refused to pay. Worse, these two scumbags also preyed on other more vulnerable women. I remember one «social case» whom they called a fascist. The poor woman cried when she learned she was «a fascist»! There too, the «freedom» of self-management seemed to attract the worst elements of society, those unable to settle anywhere else. Unless it was simply a case of «normal» people decompensating, revealing their abysmal lack of psychoeducation.

So, a failure. But still, the plan was viable: other, healthier members of this group became plumbing artisans.

The problem is that I had bet on the success of this alternative economy everyone was talking about, based on mutual aid, in pleasant rural settings. According to the talks at the time, many were supposed to exist in the Lauragais countryside. But in fact, I never saw a single one, nor any attempt at a distributive economy, even not another buying group. The only one I could name was a so-called drug rehabilitation center, apparently the only expertise of these people.

So, when it was time to take action, I found myself completely alone in front of the real challenge! A situation I have often faced in my life. Almost everybody had deflated facing the effort, or backed down from the psychological training needed to be able to live self-governed without disputes or bosses. Personally, I had already done quite a bit of training, but no one took my outstretched hand, if they did not outright mistake my budding kindness for weakness. So I had no other choice but to ensure my own survival, while waiting for hypothetical other opportunities to realize my project of helping at a better society. That is to say, remember, helping YOU. If the world you live in is better than the one I knew, it is thanks to the efforts of thousands of people who gave up an easy-futile happiness just for you. If it is not yet as good as it should be, it is because of all the obstacles placed in the way of those who sought to improve it. In my case, it was the systematic lack of financial support which cost me YOU ten years in «jobs» which prevented me from working towards a better world, and which is still my main limitation today (2024) with a meager pension which allows me for almost nothing.

I was truly in need, with my first unpaid rents. Unsurprisingly, the ANPE employment agency was of no help. And to get a temporary job, I had no choice: I had to speak the language of people who work. In Toulouse at the time, there was a Polyintérim temp agency on the corner of Rue de Metz and Allées François Verdier, opposite the War Memorial. I showed up there one Monday at seven in the morning (a real effort on my part, given my recurring problem of sleeping in). I did not said anything, did not asked anything, I just sat down near the counter with a review. At eight-thirty, I left. I did the same thing again on Tuesday, then Wednesday. On Thursday, the temp agent told me «You, come on» and sent me to my first job. Without saying a word, I had shown him that I could keep my promises!

I was able to work more or less regularly like that for about three months.

So I had a terrible winter in 1978-79, going from one temp job to another, riding to work in the snow on my moped (it is awful: it hurts so much, we are forced to ride slow, in addition to the danger of driving with poor visibility, a slippery road, and cars slaloming around us without realizing our difficulties). But apparently, the employers were happy with my contribution, because they called me back.

One of my two temporary jobs was at a dairy, where we had to pack bottles coming out of a sterilizing machine. An impressive machine, with a ten-meter-high tower, so the bottles could be lowered into water until the pressure was right to be heated to 110°C. There also was a machine for making Tetra Pak cartons, but it was behind a glass partition, for hygiene reasons. That thing never stopped. Nor did the palletizer, a basic but efficient robot. This job, and the surrounding situation, inspired a passage in my novel «Stranded on Earth».

The other job was at a large Carrefour warehouse, where we loaded the trolleys which were then sent to the small stores, according to their orders. It was based on a huge system of rails and guides which transported the carts along the way, from loading to delivery. (Carrefour is a french brand of supermarkets, which also serves small local shops).

Despite the physical exhaustion of the work and the three-shift system, I strangely retain a fond memory of that time, right down to the smell of diesel from the trucks, which evokes nostalgia for that era! My Proustian madeleine, ha ha ha ha! But if you ever see Proust, don't mention my Proustian diesel to him, okay? This nostalgia probably stems from the fact that I was finally doing something useful, with people who treated me as an equal. Even if it was not what I had decided, it was much better than the innate Tartuffery of leftist activists. I think what they are really objecting to is not so much the «exploitation» than the work itself! A little stay in a kolkhoze would have done them good, I think. But very little few have dared to try that, ha ha ha ha ha!

The Toulouse «Poudrerie» chemical factory

(Permalink) Written in March 2019.

Here lies an instructive incident. It is no surprise that agents of temporary work firms, even when they show smiling, put their own interests before ours. They are nicknamed «négriers» (slave traders) for a reason. So, one morning, the man from Polyintérim sent me to the Poudrerie. The Toulouse Poudrerie, a military chemical plant which activities are secret, and which entrance is strictly forbidden. A kind of local Area 51, complete with even idiotic conspiracy theories surrounding the AZF explosion. The only known production was a phosgene pipeline. For a long time, this pipeline formed a bridge over the «Route d'Espagne» (National Route 117) in front of the AZF factory. All of this was destroyed in the AZF explosion. Fortunately, the phosgene had been stopped before, because it would have killed thousands. The Poudrerie factory still exists today, but lawns have replaced the buildings destroyed in the explosion.

So I knew very well what to expect, and I should normally have outright refused that job, without even going to the place. But I wanted to see by myself, rather than just repeating without checking what ecology magazines say.

And I was not disappointed. Right at the entrance, I was asked to have a gas mask at hand. A real one, hideous and khaki-colored. I don't know if I could have worn it with my glasses. But here I am, propelling myself inside this secret «Area 51» factory, to the designated workshop, with this WWI horror on the luggage rack of my moped. I barely dared to touch it, lol!

Arrived in the indicated workshop, I was made to wait ten minutes in a sort of rest room, with a guy all gray, another all yellow, and another all green (I exaggerate a bit, but they really looked sick) discussing accidents, stays in intensive care, and other such joys. I imagine it was not by chance that they made me overhear such a conversation: they wanted to know if I accepted the risks. And they knew. After ten minutes of this circus, another guy in a brown suit and tie showed up, this one in good health, who explained my job: cleaning drums which had contained tear gas. The same barrels they had emptied on the buddies during the summer protests. So I politely declined such a job, as much for my physical health as for my karma, lol.

This is how I «investigated», completely legally, in this state secret place, strictly off-limits to everybody. The weak point of governments is that they need staff. Who, in more, have eyes, with the bad habit of always wearing them.

So I saw by myself what takes place in some factories, where they deliberately take risks with workers' health, in total disregard of ecology. And it is not better than what you read in Greenpeace and other publications. So please consider them an objective source: I checked.

When I went back to the temp agency, the agent laughed, but I did not cared. What interested me was that he gave me another job. According to him, he would have even ended up finding me a permanent one, if I had not been faster than him.

I want to make it clear that I did not refused this job out of fear: some days earlier, I had accepted a job at Ruggieri, the fireworks company, where they sent me to handle explosives in a bunker. The kind of place you go alone, because «if it blows up, there is only one dead». I did what I was asked, without fear. But I still had eyes all around my head, handling that stuff, ha ha ha!

This continuation added in 2026: At the time, we were told that the phosgene was used to make hydrazine in a small factory linked to the space industry, in front of the AZF plant. But Wikipedia does not indicate any manufacturing process for hydrazine which would start from phosgene. So I asked ChatGPT, which confirmed that there is indeed no such process. But it adds that this statement could simply be a simplification for the general public, for a range of propellant-related manufacturing processes. For example, plastic binders like isocyanates, used in solid propellants, start directly from phosgene.

But ChatGPT does not confuse neutrality with doublespeak. It confirms that the little scenario with the three sick men was not naive, but rather an informal selection method, commonly used at the time in dangerous factories. The primary goal was to ensure that the employee accepted the risks. But more viciously, it was primarily used, in the event of an illness, to shift the responsibility of the risk onto the worker: «You knew the risk you were taking».

I would add the risk of being exposed to secret chemicals, making medical treatment impossible. This also was a common practice, even in factories where no hazardous products were expected. At the time I heard several stories like this, of people with serious or chronic illnesses whose boss refused to reveal the cause. Today, this is generally illegal in democratic countries (European Union Labor Law and REACH legislation, HCS and OSHA in the USA, similar legislation in Japan and Korea).

Finally, refusing this job was not a simple social exercise or activism act. I needed to work, with rent arrears. Refusing therefore had a cost. I shudder to think that for some, this cost is higher than the health risk: they have to be really desperate to accept a job like that.

EDI (1978-1981)

(Permalink) Written in March 2019.

I finally found a stable job at EDI (Edition Documentation Impression), a document creation and publishing company, which at the time was located Rue Bayard in Toulouse. (They have since moved to Blagnac). I won this job thanks to an industrial drawing test. I had not quite finished on time, but they liked the result. Industrial drawing would be my work from now on.

This finally allowed me to pay two months of back rent. I thank my landlord for her patience; many would have evicted me sooner. Which would have left me homeless and unable to find a job.

This situation meant that I had to meet with the boss after two weeks to ask for an advance on my salary. Still influenced by the staunch marxism of my former university friends, I was determined to adopt a very uncompromising and combative attitude towards employers. But meeting him completely changed my mindset: he was not a monster, but a human being like everyone else, and we were in the same boat: if the company went under, I went under with it. Moreover, I was in a position to ask him for a favor, and in more I was still on probation. I would have paid dearly for the slightest arrogance. He accepted my request, which allowed me to pay off one of the months of back rent. After that, with a full salary instead of erratic temporary work, this problem was quickly resolved.

Okay, I can see some of you probably imagining that I had «switched sides» and become a capitalist. No chance, lol! What happened is much more interesting, even if it took me several years to really understand it:

I was finally on track to the Middle Way in my view of politics and society.

I had met my Sujata. Sujata is the woman who helped the Buddha emerge from extreme asceticism. Okay, I know, a boss in a gray suit is way less sexy than a scantily clad Hindu naiad. But there is more to life than sex, guys. And no, sorry, but the Buddha did not touched Sujata. He just accepted her bowl of rice. He was the Buddha, eh!

Of course, the Middle Way does not make capitalism «nice». But the fact is, it is the least bad economic system which works in a society ruled by egos. This takes the blame off the shoulders of the «bosses» alone: it is the sum of all these egos which creates situations of domination and exploitation. And which allows bosses and social classes. Thus, every time a boss commits an abuse, they do so with the help of thousands of «workers» who have endorsed this system by not creating self-managed economic units without money. This is where marxism is completely off the mark: according to marxism, workers would spontaneously organize themselves to do away with capitalism and bosses. But they don't do this. Why don't they? For the vast majority, because they are simply bosses who were unsuccessful, expecting everything from the very system they claim to challenge. For the minority who tried, because they started to have «psychological problems», which led to the failure of their attempt. Because yes, economy is first and foremost a spiritual matter! Without spiritual work, without mastery of the ego, there is no True Economy, only capitalism. Therefore, if we want to eliminate capitalism, we must master our egos. Any other solution is either a sham or hypocrisy. See here, and also my chapter on economy, for a complete discussion on the solutions.

At this point I realized that the marxist influences I had received were a form of extremism. That this extremism was dangerous was certainly already a serious problem, but not the worst: it was above all completely counterproductive to the goal I had set for myself in life. Indeed, it led only to violence, hatred, and exclusion. (For violence, I did not needed to go far: it was the era of the Baader-Meinhof Gang. It was easy to join them.) Hence the Middle Way path: recognizing that capitalism is not right, but not mistaking the solutions: the real enemy is our own ego, not the uncompromising boss neither the sadistic riot police.

In fact, this entry into the «world of the work» brought me more comfort and support than «misery of the working condition». Indeed, I found myself surrounded by people who respected me and trusted me with important matters like air and rail safety. A radical change, then, compared to the «activists» who always tried to belittle me or to make me stand out. Of course, few of these people had the open-mindedness of ecologists or spiritualists (my next encounter), but I was not subjected to the recriminations and psychological attacks so common in circles which claim to «criticize society».

Of course, it was not perfect (Especially there was, an aggressive sicko at EDI, whom they had to isolate in his own office), but overall, I have much better memories of this period, compared to the constant accusations and psychological destabilization in «alternative» circles. Being accepted as a peer in such a prestigious place as the Airbus factory, and entrusted with responsibilities in such a complex and demanding activity, allowed me to find my center much more effectively than in «protesters» circles rife with unbridled psychological problems and constant, destructive «questioning»

I think this is one of the reasons why spiritual masters often recommend engaging in the world: if we remain in a confined environment, even one which strives to be better, the psychological anomalies of that environment then seem the norm, or we even internalize them, and we become unaware of these problems. (This is what happens to abused children, who do not realize that their situation is abnormal, and often do not even want to leave their sick parents.) The situation can then degenerate to an unbelievable degree (as in cults), and I was to see some astounding examples later on at the Faitg, more akin to Roman slavery than to any positive social alternative.

If there are some who do not «believe» in karma, there is nevertheless an example of instantaneous, constant, automatic, and perfectly observable karma: placing oneself above the others immediately brings us down below. It is just that the person who falls is the only one who does not see it. This is, unfortunately, a common trap when we aspires to a better world.

The Aérospatiale and Airbus.

(Permalink) Written in March 2019.

I went to work in internship at the Airbus plant in Blagnac, in a drawing office where our job was to update electrical diagrams for the Airbus A300, at the time the plant's newest success and pride. We were still saying «Aérospatiale», but it was already «Airbus Industries».

The office where I worked is still located at 43°36'44.53"N 1°21'29.42"E. The large adjacent hangar housed the A300 assembly line, the middle one was the former Caravelle hangar, and the third one to the east had just received the tooling to rebuild Transall aircrafts, which were indeed produced shortly after. I also spent time at the «Palais des Globes», 43°37'19.14"N 1°23'19.80"E, the Caravelle design office, so named because the immense drawing room was lit by hundreds of lamps. Aside from that, the factory and airport have changed considerably since then, with the demolition of old buildings, the construction of the new Blagnac airport terminal, and of course the enormous A380 hangars. Plus the large industrial area surrounding the Airbus.

The drawing work was interesting and ultimately quite relaxing. It familiarized me with the inner workings of the aircraft and the organization of the design process. Most of the time, it involved drawing modifications to the wiring diagrams in the fuselage or cockpit. Occasionally, I was given tours of the places, mainly the «avionics bay» under the cockpit, where all the aircraft's computers are located. Few people see these things, apart from the engineers and highly qualified workers who build them.

An interesting episode involved the Concorde: the Americans had only reluctantly authorized this aircraft, imposing restrictive conditions, such as reinforcing the fuselage panels. To this end, rivets had to be removed, additional panels fitted, and then re-riveted. My job was to design a small tool to hold the new panels precisely in place, so that the rivet holes would align. This was the only time I ever boarded a Concorde. I had noticed that the central aisle had curtains at regular intervals, a feature somewhat at odds with safety, which therefore could not be a mere fashion statement. The reason I was given was curious: in flight, subjected to aeronautical stresses, the aircraft flexes elastically. This is normal, but some passengers were alarmed to see the cockpit rising and falling tens of centimeters from the rear seats. Hence the curtains. I understand them, deep down, seeing the Caravelle's wings doing that was rather worrying.

My most interesting job was designing cockpit plans to test the lighting for Swissair and Garuda. The brightness of all the indicator lights in a cockpit can be adjusted to compensate for differences in lighting conditions, from full sunlight to pitch black. This required several dozen plans, one for each instrument. They were quick sketches, drawn in pencil on mylar, and then printed on diazo paper. Compagnons then did the wiring. It was certainly the most interesting job I was given, it is just too bad that I could not stay until the end for the testing. It made me familiar enough with that aircraft cockpit that I could (later on) easily use the Flight Simulator and EF2000 video games. I often fantasized about trying to fly a real Airbus with just that knowledge. Apparently, I am not the only one, there are several YouTube videos on this topic.

However, something I did not appreciate was that one day, one of my colleagues—I assume a trade union member—hauled me into his office and criticized me for working too fast. Twice as fast, he said, which was ruining their own situation. I was very annoyed because I wasn't pushing myself to work, and working more slowly would have made things incredibly boring.

Another similar incident occurred when I entertained the idea of applying for a job at the Aérospatiale company instead of being on internship. I asked another union member how to go about it. He told me, «We shall support you in front of the management». It was a scam: no boss hires based on revendication, especially not supported by a union. If you ever want to do this, you must apply directly to management, presenting it as an offer of collaboration, not as a demand, not even as recognition of seniority or anything like that. The only arguments in your favor will be your work and your successful integration into the team. Everything else will work against you. This advice was later confirmed to me by my colleagues at EREMS when I worked at the CNES, also in internship.

Ridiculous incidents, but which made me understand how unions, and more generally the «working class», actually organize their own submission, acting as perfect cogs of the system they claim to criticize. They even implicitly operate on a peer-to-peer basis with their «exploiters». Unions take profit from this by selling membership cards, and presenting themselves as indispensable, a kind of competitor-complement to the main power. The sadomasochistic far left portrays itself as a martyr, in order to drain our energy. The «proletarians» blame the system's failings on the managers, to avoid making any effort themselves, particularly the essential psychological work required to be able to work and live together without hierarchy or contracts. The very small number of worker-owned businesses or other attempts at a non-egocentric economy is proof of this (see here and my Chapter VI-8 on economics). We can extrapolate that this is ultimately the reason why support for marxism remains weak and purely verbal: a marxist revolution would force these people to work sincerely... which they don't really want. Marxists, but only at the demonstrations!

We need to talk about the Aéro canteen. That thing there: 43°36'34.16"N 1°21'43.61"E with those enormous pipes on the roof, to vent all the bad grease smells. At the time, ecology was still in its infancy, and still wrapped up in Charlie Hebdo-style rags, which did not helped the social integration of these new ideas. As for calling oneself a vegetarian, that was as bad as descending from a flying saucer (Note that I was not really a vegetarian at the time, just organic, and therefore eating little meat. But some people get everything mixed up).

So, on the first day, I went to the canteen like everyone else. A very proletarian, very Frenchie atmosphere. Hyper heavy Trade unionist food, I remember big pink sausages that looked like old thighs covered in cellulite, dripping with an unhealthy grease, which made me feel heavy and sick, just as it happened in Brest. Okay, I did not said anything, but still, when a guy asked me to drink some wine, I refused. «Well, you will get used to drinking in some days» he said, confidently. Really? It did not take me that long to whip up a hot meal in a jar, wrapped in several dish towels. By noon, it was still quite presentable. Besides, our building had a kitchenette that nobody else used, so that we had it all to ourselves.

Who, «us»?

Yes, there was an ecologist friend from the ATE who worked in the same building as me, just on the floor below. A meeting which seemed almost impossible, like something out of a novel, lol! Let us call him Michel. He was an engineer and a senior factory worker. It is a small world, isn't it?

The opening to spirituality

It is curious to think that it was through accepting society that I finally accepted spirituality. Sometimes there are enormous coincidences, seemingly benign, but which can actually shape our lives. I was destined to encounter spirituality anyway; only my anti-religious prejudices were hiding it from me.

(Permalink) Written in March 2019

Michel and I would meet for meals in the kitchenette of the Aérospatiale, or on sunny days, in a secluded patch of lawn behind trees arranged in a circle. (We did not knew it, but these circles were old craters from the war.)

We naturally started by talking about ecology.

But Michel had another passion. At the time, I was still under the direct shock of discovering the NDEs, and I was rereading Raymond Moody's book «Life After Life», with Klaus Schulze's «Timewind» playing in the background, or even worse, Tangerine Dream's «Phaedra», which seemed to recreate the stages of an NDE in a dramatic and mysterious mode. That overwhelming, slightly unsettling sense of mystery you feel when you discover these «impossible» things.

I do not remember how it started, but Michel began talking to me about relaxation, then Yoga, then meditation. The idea of NDEs had finally opened me up to spirituality: if you accept the survival of consciousness, then everything else makes sense, including parapsychology, telepathy, and even God. With one exception, however: following my experience in Nancy, I was still allergic to any organized religion. (As were many people at the time, and this is what gave rise to the New Age movement: spirituality without organized religion). So I needed something modern, ecological, self-managed. Michel was going to find it for me.

Since Michel was known at the ATE (Association Toulousaine d’Ecologie), he started organizing «relaxation» weekends. He was not saying «meditation», because some immediately bleated «no mysticism!» Clearly, they were already missing the turn we were taking. But there was no need to rub these people in the wrong way: Michel was introducing meditation without explicitly calling it that way. But organizing these weekends quickly taught him to become independent of the ATE, by organizing his teachings autonomously, in his own place. As for me, it was not me who left the ATE, they started to look unpleasant to me, because of this sectarianism and other reasons we are to see later.

Michel was very eclectic, and he introduced me to several spiritual paths. Aside from Hatha Yoga, which we shall discuss further, the path I have most closely explored is Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy. I even attended their introductory workshop at the Perceval School in Chatou, and we visited the La Mhotte School in Bourbon l'Archambault. One thing which greatly impressed me was seeing these children working harmoniously to prepare their meals, with only one adult present, without needing instructions, and without disputes or problems. Today, I remain convinced that the Steiner education is excellent at developing capable and responsible individuals, despite the hostility of wikipedia and anti-cult cults. And when you are responsible and capable, you can make up for a lack of formal education, whereas no university can truly make people capable and responsible.

Full of the enthusiasm of a beginner, I tried to organize a prayer group in Toulouse. But this kind of thing seems destined to attract strange people with «very esoteric» motivations. No wonder it remains so limited. Fortunately, group prayers do not necessarily require gathering in one place, which avoids this problem. I still do this alone today, lol

An interesting spiritual incident occurred at the Aérospatiale factory. It may seem odd, but to get to the cafeteria, we were allowed to walk through the Airbus assembly hangars. There always were seven or eight A300 aircraft at various stages of building, plus the stands and tooling around them. One day, an accident happened: the landing gear door suddenly opened while two workers were busy on it. One broke his leg, the other was killed instantly. It was quite a shock in a factory where corporeal accidents are a rarity.

Michel and I knew that a recent death makes certain phenomena more likely to occur. So we decided to walk through the workshop, next to the plane where the accident had occurred, meditating to see what would happen. But we could not stop, because that would have attracted attention and caused problems. Afterwards, we compared our perceptions. Michel told me he felt fear (from this man). I myself felt a presence: this man was still there, not knowing what to do once we are dead. But then, as we moved away, I felt him starting to follow me, because he could communicate with me. There I panicked a bit, especially since we could not stay on the place. I then instructed him, in meditation, to ascend towards an intense white light above him (the light of the near-death experiences), which could guide him. Then I came out of meditation to break the contact before losing control. The next day, we repeated the same procedure, but neither of us felt anything: the guy was gone. I hope toward a good afterlife.

Scientifically, there is no proof that our perceptions were accurate, and not simply our imagination. However, such things often happen near death, so I take this experience seriously. But I come with a warning: you don't become a psychopomp for fun or to get sensations. It is an extremely serious matter which, if handled incorrectly, can send a deceased person into a hellish experience. What I did is the only thing we should do: point to the light, the beauty, the kindness. Once connected to that, the deceased is in good hands. What happens next is no longer our concern. And the connection is severed anyway, once the deceased has entered another realm.

Caving

Permalink) >Written in March 2019

Another of my work colleagues, André Claustres, told me about his heroic and positive actions during the war, but asked me not to repeat them. Many people who lived through that era still fear being persecuted by the governments. In the 21st century, this seems impossible, but in 1945 it was a very real risk, with enormous ambiguities about the direction the liberated countries would take. And he was right: in France De Gaulle had to ward off the left in 1945, and the right in 1961.

On the other hand, André was a cave diver. As I was very interested in caving, we found a common ground, despite the big differences in personality and philosophy. He quickly suggested I dive, but starting in a cave, without training, would have been far too risky. So I declined. But he was still a good leader, so I trusted him, but within certain rational limits.

He quickly suggested I go out with the Aérospatiale caving club. They also provided the insurance and equipment, especially the famous acetylene lamps (They are called «calbombes» in french, that is bombs for calcium carbide. But I never heard of any exploding). I quickly understood why cavers prefer them to electric lamps: they provide a much better illumination. But in narrow passages, the gases are very dangerous, so electricity is better in that case. I think that today LEDs beat both.

Our first outing was to Labouiche. Of course, the section equipped for tourism does not count as caving. We went further, to the entrance of the siphon, where André and one of his companions would dive. My role, and that of the team, about a dozen people, was to carry the necessary equipment: compressed air cylinders, masks, etc. The dive did not led far, only to a narrow, squeezy passage where they would have to remove the harnesses («décapeler» in french, that is unharnessing the gas cylinders, a dangerous operation). Furthermore, the passage is extremely muddy, and the divers had to ascend almost by feel, holding onto the guideline laid down on the way in. This is also a very dangerous operation, as it is easy to go the wrong way, or even to lose the guideline altogether. This narrow and dangerous siphon remains unexplored to this day, and the source of the river is still unknown. Only a robot could force its way through.

Such an excursion outside the tourist area is very interesting, with the rimstone pool, filled with white concretions which take a beautiful blue hue underwater. This kilometer-long passage is also quite challenging, with some climbing involved. Archaeological excavations are also present: the question then arises as to how prehistoric humans, and later Gauls, could have accessed these deep galleries. They probably had an entrance which is now blocked.

The second outing was to the Tindoul de la Vaissière, a chasm north of Rodez where we have to descend on a rope, suspended from a parachuting harness. It is more than just a sporting challenge: we must not be afraid. It is a bit as with skydiving: if we mess up, the rocks are waiting for us 45 meters below. Well, under André's guidance, I went for it.

Fortunately, there was a tree perfectly positioned to approach the void safely, and to gradually get used to the feeling of being suspended by the parachuting harness, by gently lifting our legs. Once this is done, we just have to manipulate the rope extending from the descender and descend at our own pace. Actually, I was not afraid, knowing that André and his friends knew what they were doing. But during the kayaking trip with the Mont-de-Marsan scouts, I felt poorly supervised, and later in Corsica, I refused less dangerous activities because I did not trusted the person. Not out of fear either, but because of a murky situation, like being in front of a trap.

Nevertheless, I did not removed my harness at the bottom, to be sure it would be properly reattached on the way back up. Just like Haroun Tazieff did, lol

The Tindoul cave has an underground river about a kilometer long, which we followed to a siphon which was unexplored at the time. The goal of our expedition there was also for the two divers to go further than the previous explorations, while we carried the equipment. But there too, they encountered a narrow passage which would have required removing their harness. However, based on this information, others have since been able to go further: the siphon was passed, then a second one, leading to a large gallery. But the unbreathable atmosphere and the length of the underwater journey have not yet allowed progress in this wide-open passage.

Carrying a bulky, twenty-kilogram bottle through a rugged gallery is quite a physical feat. I got out fairly well, considering my poor physical constitution. Luckily, part of the passage formed a lake, and I was paddling with my hands in an inflatable boat to transfer the gear.

Seeing two people disappear into the dark water of the siphon, knowing all the dangers, scared some of the expedition members. So we were relieved to see their bubbles reappear, but a little disappointed that it was sooner than expected (because of the narrow passage). But this wait was interesting, because above the siphon is the opening of a passage with an almost perfectly cylindrical shape, one of the few beauties of the Tindoul, remarkably devoid of concretions.

In the same office as us at the Aérospatiale, there was a group of slackers who almost got me into trouble. André even attributed a shady affair to them: a man would have committed suicide after shooting his wife and children, following their cabal to make him believe he was being cuckolded. In short, behind a falsely jovial attitude, they were truly nasty people, very unsavory characters. But we were chatting while we worked, and the Tindoul came up several times. Some clearly showed their fear of this expedition into dangerous territory. In any case, none of them went.

▶️ See this section, in the thread on UFOs

Years 1970 (Toulouse) et la SAPT

(Permalink) Written in November 2016.

Toulouse allowed me to act concretely, about my interest in UFOs: there was an investigators' association, and of course, the GEPAN!

More precisely, this association was the UFO commission of the Société d'Astronomie Populaire de Toulouse (SAPT), which at the time was located in the Tournoer Tower, 9 rue Ozenne, 43°35'50"N 1°26'47.20"E. There was a metal shelter at the top of the tower for the telescope, which has since been removed. Today, the SAPT has moved to a very Tintin-esque location: the former Toulouse Observatory in Jolimont, a prestigious site in the 19th century, but that professionals had to abandon due to light pollution. The instruments are still there, well-maintained, as if we were still in 1880. Everything still works, and the visit is fascinating (on Sundays). The SAPT building is at 43°36'43.31"N, 1°27'45.25"E, and the website is http://saptoulouse.net. The UFO commission was active under the direction of Patrick Martinez, a graduate of the École Polytechnique. It was still operating until recently, but today (2016) I no longer see any mention of it on the website.

The years 1976 to 1980 were extremely positive for ufologists: numerous and influential associations conducted high-quality scientific investigations, compiled into vast databases (on paper at the time. I do not know if they have been computerized since). But above all, we saw UFOs as something positive (not harmful, in any case) and relatively simple: extraterrestrials visiting us, which explained all the oddities with the unknown technology of their spacecraft. There were even RR3 and RR4 (most of the encounters verified by investigations took place during this period) showing what appeared to be a gradual contact, quite similar to the protocols NASA later proposed for our own explorations. The impression we had was that the solution to the enigma was within reach, depending only on a particularly well-proven «rock-solid case», or even an initiative by the extraterrestrials themselves. It was in this frame of thinking that the films «Close Encounters of the Third Kind» and «E.T». were made, intended as educational films compiling the knowledge and hopes of specialists at the time.

What people born after since lack, to understand this era, is that ufology was serious: it was a science, admittedly an amateur science, but one which applied scientific methods and discussed testimonies verified by investigations. Above all, ufology focused on positive things. The fantastic media manipulation and boosting disinformation campaign which since completely destroyed its image had not yet taken hold. For starters, the idea that extraterrestrials were evil only emerged later (the first time I heard it mentioned was in 1981, and it was still very marginal). The racist denigration of extraterrestrials began in 1979 with the horror film «Alien», a clear attempt to negate the positive impact of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1976). This was not an isolated case, there had been similar films somewhat earlier, but which remained unknown. As proof, the people who made these films were well-versed in the UFO phenomenon, citing elements from real cases. The first I saw was a cheap staging of the Antonio Villas Boas case, turned into a bad horror movie. Some months later, the star in «Alien» is Zeta Reticulis, mentioned in the Betty and Barney Hill case. A small act of revenge forty years later: the reality of Saturn, seen backlit by Cassini, proved to be a thousand times more beautiful than the dark, fictional planet of «Alien». Even Titan and Pluto revealed somptuous landscapes, the beauty of which no one had anticipated at the time.

But above all, the media rarely spoke about ufology, and only to label ufologists and witnesses as crazy. This attitude, called censorship, or reductive disinformation (or simply idiocy), is certainly dishonest and harmful, but it did not really prevented informed people from working on UFOs, just as they did on everything else, once they understood that the media were lying. While today (2016), the media speak on behalf of ufologists to say just about anything, thus destroying in depth the UFO research. Thus, in 2016, the media have not lost their ability to «create reality» (Newspeak for «keeping people in illusions»), just like the Soviets were doing.

But enough of these nonsense, you will be more interested to know what we did at the SAPT UFO commission. First of all, we conducted field investigations. I did not personally participated in this activity, as it required having a car. But there was basic training in perceiving unusual phenomena, very useful for our work. Indeed, the majority of reports boil down to simple misinterpretations of unusual phenomena, or of familiar objects seen from an unexpected angle. For example, I remember someone who experienced a terrifying night, pursued by a luminous «craft», and fleeing at breakneck speed along the treacherous backroads of the Lauragais. But when asked «where was the moon?», this person suddenly slapped his forehead: what he had mistaken for a «craft» was none other than the full moon, with clouds rapidly passing by, giving the impression that it was moving. And of course, it was «following» this person! Such a report is, of course, of no interest to ufology, and it was not even archived. But today (2016), it would delight far-right media outlets like Yahoo, which would publish it prominently, linking it to their beloved conspirationism, between a photo of their dear Le Pen and the racist comments on their «forum».

But we also dealt with genuinely «serious» cases, meaning credible ones which withstood testing and verification. Unfortunately, at the time, I had very little information on the subject, and it was handled with a degree of discretion due to the need to protect the privacy of the witnesses. These investigation reports should normally still be in the SAPT archives.

Under Patrick Martinez's direction, we undertook another task: creating a database of the cases presented in the literature. At the time, there were about fifteen «foundational» books on ufology, plus two or three journals, which debated the various hypotheses (virtually all focused on extraterrestrials, some with a more scientific approach, others more spiritual). All were presenting «cases», either classic or new. Patrick thought it would be useful to be able to quickly compare the cases in order to make correlations and perform statistical studies. The chosen format was small index cards, each summarizing a case and including the standard credibility and strangeness ratings. The former indicates the case's reliability, based on the sources and the thoroughness of the investigation. The latter indicates its extraordinary nature, and therefore its potential to represent a truly unknown phenomenon. I do not know what became of this file, whether it is still with the SAPT or if Patrick kept it (I have not heard from him, and I cannot find him online anymore. Update 2025: an email to the SAPT about this went unanswered). In any case, using it without computers would have been a huge undertaking, and digitizing it would have been even more so. If ever anybody is still around to conduct such studies, after the systematic demolition of amateur ufology by the media and their beloved conspirationists.

We also reviewed the books published at the time. This was necessary, because fiction archaeology and pseudoscience were already trying to control the field. At the time, they were confined to fringe circles, but the publication of serious books in the same series as the nonsense was already a problem: many people refused to read books on UFOs, just from seeing who was publishing them.

I remember commenting on a book claiming to show photos of extraterrestrial activity on the Moon. I had to conclude that, despite all my goodwill and open-mindedness, I had not been able to discern anything artificial in these photos, only stones and rocks. A measured and polite conclusion, but without concessions. Unexplained things have indeed been found on the Moon since then, such as the Ina Caldera, TLEs and the auroras observed by some Apollo crews. But nothing tells that these things would be artificial.

I also had to comment on a new development: Bertrand Méheust's famous book, «science fiction et soucoupes volantes», in which he presented his «psychic» thesis: the mode of appearance, scenario, and content of UFO sightings reflect certain aspects of the human mind. This thesis, at the time, undoubtedly irritated proponents of the «bolts and nuts» extraterrestrial hypothesis (meaning that the saucers must necessarily be physical machines, simply using some unknown technology). Here too, I did not went further than describing the thesis, which, however bizarre it seemed to us at the time, accounted far better than machines for all the strangeness of the testimonies. This book did indeed open the door to John E. Mack's hypotheses, which I develop in my book «General Epistemology», namely that the appearing of a «UFO» would constitute a «domain» (in the physicists' sense) where the laws of physics are modified in such a way as to allow consciousness to interfere with the material world. Of course, at the time, nobody envisioned such things (even the «domains» were still unknown), but Méheust's book was not entirely unexpected: several authors had already noted (Henri Durant, I believe) that the content of the experiences, particularly RR3 and RR4, reflected the witness's psyche to some extent, for instance some people seeing angelic and benevolent figures, and others scary dwarves.

On the other hand, we unanimously condemned Pierre Monnerie's book, «The New Ufology», which was nothing more than a blatant attempt at internal sabotage. For example, stating that an unidentified flying object is «not conceptually a UFO» was simply a crude mind control trick, an attempt to blur the lines between «misunderstood» and «unidentified». We now know that Monnerie was not a ufologist, but that he had frequented these circles in order to present himself as one. Moreover, he was published by a different publisher than other books on UFOs, hostile to this kind of thing. Even back then, Monnerie had sown confusion among ufologists (most of whom were amateur scientists largely unaware of the mind controls used in politics). But above all, he paved the way for the media, who then simply had to present ufology as a conspiracy theory, and conspiracy theorists as ufologists. All of this, of course, without any investigation or verification. This is precisely what gives to lies their power: not depending on evidence to «exist». Whereas truth depends on evidence, investigations, witnesses—all things which can be destroyed.

I should also point out that Patrick was not just an ufologist. At the time, he worked as an engineer at the CEAT (a technical testing center located east of Toulouse), and he also was a well-known figure in amateur astronomy in France, participating in experiments and writing books, notably a guide to amateur astronomy. I saw him again later, back when >I was working at the CNES, around 1990, and he had opened a shop selling telescopes and astronomical instruments on Boulevard Carnot. Unfortunately, it was not a success: amateur astronomy is not widespread enough to justify a shop in such an expensive location.

While I have never seen a UFO, I did once get the «great thrill» when I was living on Rue des Couteliers in Toulouse. It was a furnished apartment with several beds. I had chosen one, but for some reason, one evening I was in another. Turning around, I suddenly saw a black cylindrical object floating about a meter above me, strikingly similar to the images of «cigar» UFOs popularized by a photograph from Georges Adamsky. It was astounding, a little frightening, and above all, very interesting! However, the illusion quickly faded: what I saw was a sort of crescent-shaped window in the wall above me, leading into another dark room. But it looked fantastic! So, even though I never «saw a UFO», I still experienced the thrill of those who do, even if only for two seconds!

▶️ See this section, in the thread on UFOs

Sleep paralysis, or astral travel

(Permalink) Written in July 2022

Sleep paralysis, also known as hypnagogic or hypnopompic experience, or simply nightmare, is a benign natural phenomenon which has nonetheless been the subject of frenetic and often dangerous fantasmatic activities, under the name of incubi and succubi, or more recently, under the name of alien abduction. Let us unravel this.

The most common experience is waking up, but with the sensation of being completely paralyzed. This is often accompanied by a host of other sensations, which can also occur when falling asleep: sounds, voices, wind, chills, tremors, sometimes explosions. We may also have the sensation of being crushed, suffocated, and, in the most advanced experiences, of being mounted by a creature who is sexually undertaking us. Traditional names reflect this experience: in German, «Alpentraum», meaning elf dream; In English, «nightmare» refers to a night ghost; in Old French, «cauchemar» meant a riding ghost. This, then, is the true meaning of the word, before it became so denigrated.

Neither psychiatry nor scientific psychology has anything special to say about these phenomena, which can happen to anybody, unrelated to any psychological or psychiatric disorder. Still wikipedia tries to discredit the phenomenon, and its experiencers, claiming that it is «hallucinations» (psychiatric disorders). They are simply dreams, just occurring with different characteristics than ordinary dreams, with a much more stereotypical content. The only striking fact is a clear positive correlation between sleep paralysis, NDEs, and positive traits such as altruism, trust, and joie de vivre. If you have these experiences, it is because you are somebody good!

This is not either a parapsychological phenomenon, although according to the work of Simon J. Sherwood, there is a high incidence of ESP and OBEs, we are to see this later.

My own experiences classically started during my childhood, with tremors, cold wind, and so on. Fortunately, my mother reassured me that they were just «dreams», but when you experience them without knowing what they are, it is terrifying. I was not seeing characters, but often a «whirlwind of air», which would swirl small pieces of aluminum foil, accompanied by a strong feeling of strangeness and fear. Other times, there were crackling sounds like a giant rattle. Then, as is typical, these experiences disappeared with adolescence.

But they returned during my time in Toulouse on Rue Joseph Vié, this time with sensations of floating above the bed. However, having read Lobsang Rampa and his advice on inducing astral travel, I began to practice in this way. (Warning: this specific advice from Lobsang Rampa seems to work, but I caution against his writings, which are not an usable spiritual system, and not even Buddhism) I think it worked somewhat, I was able to fly up and steer! However, the experiences were not frequent enough to really progress, so I only managed to leave the small apartment once. This earned me an ESP, which I was able to verify the next day! At that time, I was discovering spirituality, and I took these things very seriously, even thinking about practical applications! The major problem, however, is that we cannot induce these phenomena, so this training never resulted in a practically usable «astral travel gift», even years later in Lavaur.

On the other hand, I easily succeeded at something else. Indeed, my adult experiences often involved highly sexual, but ugly or pornographic figures. But after my time at the Faitg, I demanded beautiful experiences! So I did this: every night before falling asleep, I imagined the experience taking place, but with a beautiful female creature! It may sound incredible, but it worked, and my last visions did indeed showed very beautiful women. But the experiences became rare, making training impossible. I think Tibetan Dream Yoga is the logical continuation of this training. It takes many years to train, but at least we are not dependent on elusive physical conditions like sleep paralysis.

Fear also plays a major role in these visions. What could be more terrifying than a sinister figure groping us in the dark while we are paralyzed, especially without the insight of introspection? It is not at random if the word «nightmare» has been appropriated to describe any bad dream, or even any terrifying experience. However, there is no inevitability to this fear, and you can also use the training described above to accept the darkness and immerse yourself in a reassuring obscurity, without anything dangerous or hidden! This greatly reduces fear while encouraging more interesting visions.

It is important to note that this benign, harmless, and meaningless phenomenon has nevertheless been used at least twice by sociopaths to terrify people.

The first time was by the Catholic Church, claiming that night visions were demons, which they called incubi and succubi. For centuries, sadistic priests had fun terrifying people, claiming they were being harassed by demons, or even that they were guilty of this harassment! It must have been a turn-on for them, thinking of these sexually frustrated, terrified nuns being worked on every night by «demons with scaly penises»! But when we have even a little experience of sleep paralysis, we know that such caricature visions stem solely from the fear we have of them.

My experiences above do indeed indicate that if visualizing beautiful, reassuring women works, then thinking that the visitors are frightening demons works even better, and you can bet that many victims had terrifying experiences showing fully formed demons, with horns, hair, tails and all. Indeed, their fear created the very problem that the perverse priests claimed to be denouncing. Hence the guilt-inducing discourse of these priests, designed to amplify fear. A classic scam, intended to maintain power over people, see to indulge in sadomasochistic sessions called «punishment».

But the most curious thing is to see the highly rationalistic and materialistic wikipedia (both French and English) endorsing this theory, asserting without batting an eye that an incubus «is» a demon, and even describing the entire genealogy of these demons! They had to increase guilt, instead of freeing people from it. Well, someone did add the «scientific explanation» above. But while saying it is hallucinations, that is while still keeping people in a state of guilt and fear of being insane. And while denigrating science in the process. Always remember that wikipedia is a libertarian site, not a free site.

The second, and more elaborate, manipulation was that of the «alien abduction», that we shall see in the chapter about my second stay in Toulouse

The SNCF

(Permalink) Written in March 2019

With my internship at the Aerospace having ended, my last year working at EDI saw more varied activities, including SNCF blueprints. By the time, I knew almost all the tracks in the region, thanks to these blueprints. Line plans, on rolls thirty centimeters wide, but sometimes over ten meters long. And electrical installation plans, which familiarized me with SNCF's special reliability methods. I even spent some time at Toulouse’s Matabiau train station, more precisely in a building called «La Tour d'Argent» (The Silver Tower), because it is covered in shiny metal: 43°36'43.27"N 1°27'20.14"E.

The most interesting about trains is how to ensure too their high reliability. While the problems are different from those encountered in aviation, they are just as demanding, with just as many human lives at stake. However, these methods are often very rustic, some dating back to the early days of trains in the 19th century. Some examples:

🐩The brakes are «fail-safe», meaning that any loss of brake pressure results in their closure, automatically stopping the train. Especially if a car detaches on its own on the track, it is immediately stopped, instead of hurtling off towards unexpected places. Incredibly, American trains do not adhere to this basic precaution. A serious oversight, responsible for horrific accidents like the one at Lac-Mégantic: 47 persons burned alive.

🐯Electrical relays do not use springs, as they can collapse, rust, etc. Instead, the weight of the armature keeps the relay open, and the magnetic field must pull it upwards to close the contact. Railway workers say that the relay «rises» or «falls». Even electrical diagrams reflect this arrangement, showing the horizontal contacts below the coils!

🐴In small stations, we could still find systems of bronze bars, moved or locked by bronze keys, which controlled the switches and signals. Thus, to open a switch to a siding, a key is required, which is only accessible when the train stop signal is activated. To close the latter, another key is needed, which is only available when the switch is closed, and so on. Such an ingenious system dates back to the very beginnings of trains in the 19th century, before electricity. I do not know if it is still used today (2022), but its robustness, simplicity, and effectiveness have ensured its remarkable longevity.

🐐A similar system still exists in India: on single tracks, drivers can be seen grabbing large wicker hoops. Attached to each hoop is a key guaranteeing their right of way on the single track, ensuring that there is no other train coming from the opposite direction.

I enjoyed this short time working on one of my passions: trains. Especially since the railway workers were friendly and approachable, we could chat about their jobs. My only regret is having been stuck in the offices, when there is so much to see in the depots and workshops at Matabiau.

However, my time at EDI was drawing to its end.

The Hatha Yoga

(Permalink) Written in March 2019

Michel learned the basics of Hatha Yoga from a group in Brittany, the Centre d'Etude et de Propagation du Yoga, now the l’Université Occidentale de Yoga, affiliated with the Fédération française de yoga. Thus, even though it was a small group, it offered guarantees of seriousness, and of not being a cult. When I attended (1980), it was just starting out (1978). As the internet links disappear, I have copied the content (2019) (I translated):

History of our school

Our school was founded in 1978 within the Centre d'Etude et de Propagation du Yoga, (C.E.P.Y) by Jacques Dubreuil and André Delli-Zotti. Initially, it was affiliated with the école de formation de l'Union Régionale des départements de l'Ouest (U.Y.O), itself part of the Union Nationale de Yoga (U.N.Y). The originality and specificity of the method taught by our school subsequently necessitated the autonomy of the training program and the independence of its teachers.

Attempts to unify the profession with the aim of creating a national diploma have thus far failed in France, resulting in several independent schools and federations (Fédération nationale des enseignants de Yoga, Fédération des Yogas traditionnels, Fédération française de Hatha Yoga and the Fédération française de Yoga...).. Our school has chosen to affiliate with the Fédération française de yoga.

Our training, like that of other schools, is based on the European minimum training program, the only current agreement guaranteeing students the transmission of genuine competence in Hatha Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, and Raja Yoga (Tibetan Yantra Yoga is taught less frequently).

Our school has undergone several successive evolutions and, in recent years, has become the Université Occidentale de Yoga, partly due to the geographical location of its headquarters and partly due to its mission of teaching a Yoga adapted to Westerners. Our teaching of classical Yoga disciplines has expanded to include the field of natural health, to which Yoga inherently belongs.

It was then under the guidance of Jacques Dubreuil and André Delli-Zotti that I began studying Yoga and meditation. More specifically, I attended three or four retreats in Brittany, where we alternated between Hatha Yoga basics, mantras, relaxation, and meditation, in a friendly atmosphere and discussions conducive to spirituality. We had one retreat in Morlaix, several in Guingamp, and once in an Ursuline monastery which rented a space for such activities. I have excellent memories of these moments of profound exchange and shared laughter.

This group and their retreats served as the model for Peyreblanque in my novel «Stranded on Earth».

However, I did not continued attending this group for several reasons.

There was the cost and the travel, of course. At the time, it was by train, given the distance.

There were some incidents with difficult people. Once, I suggested going to the beach with a couple. But when I got there, they completely ignored me, making the experience pointless. They later said that I was not capable of independence! Another one violently attacked me about vegetarianism, which I was not even claiming to be at the time (but as I have already said, some people mix everything up). This guy even went so far as to write a book claiming that spirituality is about going to the pub! He easily found a publisher for this kind of nonsense, presenting himself as a «Breton artist». But he did not found success, thankfully. So I quickly understood that spirituality is not simply about adhering to ideas, or that the spiritual community also has its sharks, just as I had noted in the ecology group. I was just running through the same series of problems, as on a mountain road passing several times in the same spots, but each time higher. I feature such a manipulator in my novel «Stranded on Earth» as a warning to all those starting out in spirituality: you'll always encounter them. Even in Tibetan Buddhism, I have met several, including among genuine Tibetans. In fact, I had witnessed a case where karma is always immediate and automatic: in spirituality, declaring or believing ourself superior to others immediately and automatically places us below them. But you will not be surprised that very few boast of having obtained this scientific proof, ha ha ha ha!

There also was the difficulty I had in achieving «beautiful» Hatha Yoga postures, due to my lack of flexibility (my tendons are five centimeters too short). Something I was told was my fault, that I needed to «learn», and in more, by a teacher! Who apparently did not liked me. Which demonstrates that, just like in a company, the worst people are promoted, for lack of ability to make a real work.

But the ultimate reason is that I had, in fact, integrated the spiritual lessons of Hatha Yoga: I no longer needed the postures! Nor the retreats. Indeed, the goal of Hatha Yoga is not to develop the body, but to understand the non-duality between action and relaxation, and from there, all the other non-dualities. I had already begun this task with my encounter with macrobiotique Zen in Bordeaux, but it had remained unfinished, as it lacked the meditation. Later, my understanding of non-dualities developed to the point of providing the basis for the first part of my book, «General Epistemology».

So, I no longer needed anyone to meditate with, and I got into the habit of doing it alone. Not at regular times, because of my perpetually changing activities, but several times a day, and in bed before falling asleep or after waking up.

I was also beginning to understand that orgasm is a prime opportunity for meditation. So I took advantage of my tendency to have them often. But I did not yet knew how useful it would be to me.

It was at this point that I left Toulouse for the Faitg. But I since heard from Michel: he finally gave up his job as an aerospace engineer, boring to him, to become a yoga teacher with the CEPY. Apparently, there are enough people interested for him to make a living that way.

The music of the 1970s: the free radios

(Permalink) Written in July 2020

We have seen how the music of the 1970s brought a form of liberation. But the 1970s, especially the end of the decade, also saw the rise of free radio stations, aiming to provide a real culture, and for some a more explicit information than the systematically censored media.

Free radio stations were initially called pirate radio stations, because they appropriated frequencies without authorization. Indeed, at the time, there was no legal mechanism for allocating these frequencies outside of the mainstream thinking: only ideologically normalizing media outlets had broadcasting licenses.

Earlier, in the 1960s, pirate radio stations using amplitude modulation had existed, which required powerful transmitters and large antennas. They could therefore only operate from ships in international waters, generally broadcasting politically charged, left-wing programs and playing rock music. But since the 1970s, the FM band had become accessible to any receiver. Its range does not extend beyond a large city, but it only requires transmitters of some dozens watts, which can be located in an apartment, making them much more appropriable. The late 1970s thus saw a proliferation of such local radio stations. Of course, some had politically engaged programming, but most simply broadcasted music or promoted community spirit, often run by neighborhood associations or municipal organizations. Overall, it was quite pleasant. Nothing truly bad, in any case. At the time, there was no rap, nothing vulgar or fascist.

I could not help but notice the civic potential of uncensored radio stations, at a time when the media systematically stifled any independent idea or thought. I came close several times to participating in one or another of these free radio stations or publications, but never actually had the opportunity. Moreover, every new channel of expression is almost always immediately taken over by just another ideology, and from that point on, my contributions were no longer accepted.

The one I felt closest to, however, was Radio Cristal (or Crystal), run by the Toulouse chapter of the Rosicrucian Order AMORC. This was the period when I was beginning to frequent spiritualist circles, so I knew several of the organizers, and I donated all my vinyl records to them when I left Toulouse for the le Faitg in 1981.

I did not knew it yet, but a spiritual radio station, rather than a political one, was much closer to my ideals. And indeed, Radio Cristal was beloved in Toulouse, having brought several years of high vibrations to the city. I am proud that my records contributed to that.

But apparently, high vibrations presented by a gentle African voice greatly displeased the politicians, who had to find a way to silence them. The election of the «nice left and social» François Mitterrand in 1981 had brought hope for the legalization of these radio stations. But Mitterrand the Cunning was in fact just as rotten as Giscard the radioactive, and he had found a vicious way to censor the free radios, far more effective than confiscating the emitters. All it took was to allocate all the frequencies to stations under strict ideological control. And the way to achieve this without being seen as the KGB was to have these stations financed by advertising! The most radical way to kill the vibes was to entrust anonymous «advertisers» with the task of «democratically» tightening the noose of ideological control, under the threat of funding, instead of unsightly censors or a political police force. Stalin would have had a good laugh!

The scheme was initially proposed by the newspaper «libération», that rag which had already managed the feat of introducing a host of scatological and reactionary ideas (even entire pages adorned with Nazi crosses under the guise of the punk movement) while remaining labeled left-wing and progressive. I remember an article denigrating «the sad vision of community radio stations» and advocating advertising as a means of funding. Advertising funding thus became one of the basic scams of the media, and it continues today on the internet: it allows to conceal who actually runs the media outlet and its true objectives. The principle is probably some heavily overpriced ads. This allows the real power not to be visible in the organigram of the company, and not either in business directories.

The reactionary government of Mitterrand therefore listened to the «vox populist» of Libération: a new law allowed the legal allocation of frequencies to radio stations which agreed to broadcast advertising. Effectively excluding all the genuine free radio stations, censored by advertising boxes with no content or vision, stealing their frequencies. Radio Cristal especially, had to shut down overnight. And this is not even Mitterrand's dirtiest trick. No, not even the terrorist attack against the Rainbow Warrior. The people of Burkina Faso know.

Since no sensible person invests in advertising-ridden radio stations, the 1980s were an era of utter nonsense: the «radios caca» («crap radios») crude and contemptuous, or arrogant right-wing stations like NRJ. But these stations apparently had significant funding (probably from overpriced ads commissioned by anti-social think tanks, as we would see later with climate denial on the internet). This is what Mitterrand's «socialism» really was. Oh, the thousands of Algerians deported and starving to death in the desert knew this for long.

We can also consider pure disinformation media like Fox News to be a continuation of the crap radios. As outrageous and contemptuous in their content, if not their language, they are no longer mere pranks for teenagers lacking of fart humor, but powerful tools of political influence in the hands of professional manipulators: climate change denier morons, fundamentalist fanatics, and hateful tyrants nostalgic for the Cold War.

This paragraph was added in 2023: Of course, today Wikipedia comes along with a completely different story, claiming that the radio stations themselves requested «commercial status» because they felt «constrained» by their non-profit status. The lie here is evident in the Wikipedia text itself: they only mention two or three right wing commercial radio stations, thus ignoring the hundreds of non-profit or municipal stations, and speaking for them. It is then clear, that there has been a massive infiltration by ambitious young capitalists, with the support of anti-life figures from the 1950’, like Guy Lux, Dalida, and Johnny Hallyday. They reportedly sought commercial status to create their own reactionary radio stations like RFM and NRJ, which had supposedly been their plan from the start. But they were clearly speaking for all the others—the dozens of local, community, and independent radio stations whose frequencies were massively hijacked without any compensation. Always remember that Wikipedia is a libertarian site, meaning it supports the system, not freedom.

It was not until 2000 that the internet allowed again for free expression. And even then, around 2010, Google's indexing of interesting sites began to slip back behind advertising sites and «social networks», repeating the same censorship as Mitterrand. No wonder, given that Google is essentially an advertising company… which quickly realized that ideological manipulators were willing to pay far more than the companies which produce something useful. This is how they were able to amass billions of dollars, likely also from heavily inflated advertising costs offered by powerful anti-life groups. Hence the fundamental importance of not depending on the «GAFAM,» this small group of cool-fascist companies which increasingly control the internet, like a yuppie KGB.

Today, the continuation of the free radios are the web radios, generally with music programming, each in a different style. However, they too are victims of harassment, this time by the major record labels, and the best ones had to close. For example, the beloved Radio Gaia (A Voz do Planeta) and Radio Polska Stacia, which raised the vibration of Second Life during the Elf Circle era and introduced the beginnings of Elvish music and Space Ambient, had to shut down abruptly. (Parenthesis added in 2025: you will say, this is because of the laws on copyright. But it is worth noting that these laws were applied only on these styles. No rock, reac rap or crap radios never were closed. Indeed, the free radio stations have to pay the major record labels to play today music, while conversely, the major labels pay reactionary radio stations to play reactionary music.)

This will continue as long as musicians will let them be published by the major labels, or by other groups of exploiters trying to replicate the same «business model» on the internet.

Okay, these days musicians have more respectful alternatives. But the main problem for the free web radios in the 2020s remains finding royalty-free music, or finding money to pay. And royalty-free music of sufficient quality! «Free» music sites are unusable because at least 99% of the content there is rubbish.

Today, most terrestrial radio stations have also migrated to the internet. There are even hundreds now, instead of the dozen or so permitted by the AM or FM bands. But if you look at the playlists, you will find all the traditional reactionary stations, but the New Age and ambient music are hard to find, or not even mentioned.

Actually you can still find them easily, on youtube. It indeed has efficient algorithms, which often do relevant suggestions. But to be able to hear at it cleanly, without being assaulted by advertising, you will have to use a protected browser like Brave or Opera.

Self-management experiment: le Spectaclier

(Permalink) Written in February 2021

Given my interest in a better society, I could not miss this opportunity to create a self-managed music store. Especially since we were starting to see the emergence of music which fostered open-mindedness, like Jean-Michel Jarre's: to make them known was then becoming a socio-political stake. However, this experiment has been one of the reasons why I now say: spirituality first, social or politics second. Never the other way around! Every time this principle has been «forgotten», things failed.

The Spectaclier looked like an ordinary music records store on Rue Cujas in Toulouse. But its aim was to be a self-managed cooperative, distributing records and organizing concerts. At first look, all good. Above all, we could promote OUR music, the music of awakening, not the inexpressive bleating of the media.

So, naturally, I participated in a meeting to form a management team. One of the tasks was to elect a group of managers. A dozen candidates put themselves forward, including me. The result was quite curious: the number of votes obtained decreased linearly with… the order of the candidates on the list! It was even very precise. In short, people were taking ballots at random, and there were none left for the last ones. Being the last person to register, I therefore received the fewest votes… completely unrelated to what I had to offer! This is one of the reasons why I now think that opiniopathic people vote statistically at random, even if each one of them is very sure of his opinions. In the case of the Spectaclier, it was truly random, because in fact, nobody knew any of the candidates! We were going to entrust the management of a company to complete strangers!

This approach poses a serious problem for the management of a non-profit organization: strangers can easily show up at a general meeting, and completely hijack or destroy the organization, without any legal recourse. I later saw the solution at a general meeting of the Vajra Yogini Institute: only certain certified members have the right to elect the management.

I still took this minimal vote as a rejection of my participation: these people had clearly heard my presentation. So I stopped contributing to that group. But I still came to the store some times, hoping to find music censored elsewhere.

Useless: they also had very oriented opinions about «good» or «bad» music! And yes, the synthesizer was «scandalous», just like guitars were in the 1950s, lol!

Foreign music: no way! There were crates full of them, but woe to anybody asking to hear it!

Jean-Michel Jarre? He is French. But they did not liked him either, and I got yelled at again: «Oh, that's easy music». If it was easy, then why was he the only one doing it? In fact, the «easy synth music» was the disco, flat and inexpressive, which was also starting at the time. But it would be an insult to Jarre to equate him with the disco. (Disco is the «modern» replacement for the «guinche», ancient popular dance with the accordion, in the 1950s. But I still prefer the accordion, despite my feelings explained in the link.)

After two or three remarks like that, I stopped going to the Spectaclier, which, in any case, had nothing more to offer than the others.

In fact, this attitude stemmed from a significant unspoken tenet: the Spectaclier was not promoting «music» in general, but only «French popular song», and even then, «popular» had to be understood in the marxist sense: with left-wing social or political pretenses. This was very limited, often ugly and lifeless, and in any case, scotomized without lube by the media.

The affair ended some months later: they organized their first concert with the Aerospace Cultural Center (the Airbus factory). To do so, they had invited a well-known TV singer, whose name I do not remember. They were hoping to attract a large crowd with a celebrity. But it was a fiasco: the TV does not advertise self-management.

The store closed shortly afterward, and we never heard from the Spectaclier again.

Too bad? Yes and no.

Too bad for self-management, to bad for music.

But a spiritual lesson… or a management one: we do not succeed at something simply because it is our opinion. Facts always bring us back down to earth.

Moreover, a problem started to arise at the time, the magnitude of which was not yet fully understood: the music «majors», these labels created in the 1930s with the first records, which pocket 80% of the records sale price. The fortunes amassed in this way allow them to make and break trends and artists, depending on their political agendas. It was them who legitimized the reactionary «fish sellers» in the 1930, them who sang for the occupiers in the 1940, them who imposed the accordion in 1950 and found guitars «scandalous», them who normalized rap and satanic music in the 1980 while censoring the New Age, and it is still them in the 2000s who ignore the Ambient music, still with the same anti-vibration, anti-life, anti-freedom agenda. Worse still, any music published by these major labels remains their captive for 70 years or more, practically unusable outside of private settings. So no way to play it in concerts, films, etc. It is only now (the 2020s) that we are starting to see a measurable output from independent artists or published by independent labels, which also is of significant quality. Some even offer their music for free, but this is only possible if they receive donations, which allow them to live without needing a «job».

The reality is that no one manages artists. Not even self-manages them. The only thing you can do to help them is to have a sufficiently full checkbook. Yes, really, and this is how we got Mozart, Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci: thanks to patrons. Patrons who allow artists to live, to have a studio, equipment, and above all who promote their work! Even the TV bleaters only exist because the major labels pay them millions and the media gives them free advertising. Well, if you are not as rich as a patron, there are still many ways you can help: small donations, and above all, promote their music, leave reviews on their websites, like their youTube or facebook page, etc.

The Planetran

(Permalink) Written in December 2020.

This name comes from a 1978 study by Robert M. Salter, of the RAND Corporation: a train levitating magnetically in a vacuum tube, reaching speeds of several km/s. The idea was published shortly afterward by Sciences & Vie magazine, with their usual enthusiasm for this kind of extraordinary vision.

I confess that I too was struck by this vision, and have fantasized about it quite a bit. Typically, the music that goes with it is Jean-Michel Jarre's Equinoxe Part 4, when I think of this shuttle silently sliding along at an extraordinary speed in a dark tunnel surrounded by mysterious machinery. Guaranteed takeoff!

To the point of including the Planetran in my novel «Dumria», written in 2000, and creating a VRML scene of a Dumrian Planetran shuttle, ported to the Halcyon system in 2018. In 2015, I provided technical, historical, and social details about this fantastic Dumrian travel machine in «Lokuten», including some exclusive information:

☻Switches without moving parts or auxiliary machinery: on a curved track with a camber, the shuttle chooses its path by adjusting its speed. Centrifugal force then sends it onto the upper track, or gravity sends it onto the lower track. Absolute reliability.

☻Elimination of airlocks in stations: Salter's study mentioned three successive airlocks, with 20 minutes of pumping time, which is longer than the journey itself. In my proposal, the shuttle arrives at a gate in a wall separating the tracks from the platform. The volume of air to be pumped is then reduced to a few tens of liters between the platform door and the shuttle door.

☻Electric field doors are used to push residual air out of the high-speed tunnels at very low pressure. The shuttles pass through them without slowing down.

☻Another type of vacuum pump is turbomolecular, with the rotor completely surrounding the tube.

☻Supersonic waterjet tunnel boring machines have no wear parts and are faster than cutterheads.

☻Personal shuttles, even as a form of housing. They are parked underground and arrive at the station on demand. Even animals use this system. I study the enormous social consequences of such easy and economical travel: seasonal migrations, frequent relocations, etc.

☻On the other hand, the reclining seats in my virtual model are part of Salter's study.

But today, when we talk about Planetran, we hear:

BROOMM BROOMM BROOOM HYPERLOOP BROOMM BROOOM ELON MUSK BROOMM BROOOM HYPERLOOP BROOMM BROOOM ELON MUSK HYPERLOOP ELON MUSK HYPERLOOP BROOMM BROOOM ELON MUSK HYPERLOOP ELON MUSK HYPERLOOP ELON MUSK HYPERLOOP ELON MUSK BROOMM BROOOM HYPERLOOP BROOMM BROOOM ELON MUSK BROOMM BROOOM HYPERLOOP ELON MUSK HYPERLOOP ELON MUSK HYPERLOOP ELON MUSK HYPERLOOP ELON MUSK BROOMM BROOOM HYPERLOOP ELON MUSK HYPERLOOP ELON MUSK HYPERLOOP ELON MUSK HYPERLOOP ELON MUSK HYPERLOOP ELON MUSK

I am laughing, or rather not: I find it prettily pathetic to steal other people's ideas, while giving them a different name, to make it look as if you are the author. In reality, it was not even Salter who started it: the first person to talk about a network of ultra-fast underground trains was Michel Verne, the son of Jules Verne, and several science fiction authors developed the idea throughout the 20th century. Salter was, however, the first to conduct a real technical and economic feasibility study, back in 1978. I do not know who commissioned this study, but the Rand Corporation usually does them for the US government. It is not Salter's personal work, in any case, since it is the Rand which holds the copyright.

The media likes to attribute miracles to their god ELON MUSK. So we shall see what he can really do. Indeed, it is easy to lay some nicely painted tubes in the desert. But in a city, by expropriating thousands of people, and with all the necessary reliability to accommodate the general public, it is a totally different story.

If ELON MUSK had read Salter's study in its entirety, he would know why no one had attempted such a project before him: the enormous cost of underground tracks, which would have to be built entirely from scratch, unlike trains, which already have a vast network, or airplanes, which don't need tracks. It was this need to rebuild everything which already doomed Bertin's Aérotrain (as well as its British counterpart, the Tracked Hovercraft, and Grumman's American version), abruptly rejected by the French government in favor of the TGV. Indeed, the TGV could run on any existing railway line, and therefore exist everywhere immediately without prior investment, whereas the Aérotrain required creating thousands of kilometers of costly track from scratch. The drawback is multiplied tenfold with the Planetran, which requires tunnels, and in more ultra-straight.

In my Dumria fiction, the installation of this system spans a good millennium, in a non-egocentric economy much better suited to large-scale efforts without immediate returns. I even notice a problem that no one seems to have considered: crossing active tectonic faults will misalign the tracks within some years. Even the Dumrians have not found any other solution than to... slow down. Then the only advantage left is the silence of these installations, and their near-zero ecology impact. This allows them a nomadic life, changing location with the seasons, even living in their shuttles. Well, it works in my fiction, because they have superconductors, whereas on Earth it remains «a hope»…

The Association Toulousaine d'Ecologie, continuation and end

(Permalink) Written in March 2019

Attendance at the Association Toulousaine d'Ecologie's buying group had become unpleasant, as we stumbled on new members who claimed to know everything and considered all the others as idiots. There even were individuals who appeared out of nowhere, appointing themselves leaders and claiming to reform all our methods, or even violently opposing what we were already doing. This atmosphere of constant conflict led to a halt in new memberships, the departure of former members, and confinement within an increasingly restricted and toxic environment. But at the time in Toulouse, there were no other ways to campaign for ecology, and very few other ways to obtain organic food. The only alternative at the time was a Vie Claire store, which we boycotted because the managers had organized a petition for... maintaining the death penalty!!! It may seem unbelievable, but there is a far-right ecology movement, thankfully small in number.

Yet, there was a palpable buzz of positive ideas, with farmers converting to organic farming and more and more people talking about ecology issues. But the Charlie Hebdo style still confined us to a milieu of young leftist sympathizers. The ATE unfortunately confirmed this view.

One example of an incident which displeased me: a demonstration in front of the EDF (French Electricity Board) headquarters (at the time, on Allée du Président Franklin Roosevelt). Granted, it was against nuclear power. But why to block the street, thus inconveniencing dozens of drivers who were completely innocent and did not even knew why they were immobilized? I kept my distance and made a quick getaway to avoid the pathetic scene of my friends being forcibly removed by the police. In principle, this action was supposed to be Gandhian non-violence. However, two essential ingredients were missing: a clear goal and a legitimate target. For people stuck in traffic without knowing why, neither of these conditions was met.

Before the Greens neutralized it, ecology was riding high, and many people supported it. This is how the ATE came to be invited to the major annual exhibition in Toulouse, at the exhibition center, among nearly a hundred exhibitors, mostly businesses. All very well. However, ATE's leaders far exceeded the limits assigned to them, inviting the Committee Against the Death Penalty to their stand, and especially UFC-Que Choisir (a French consumer rights organization), which launched a fierce attack on the other exhibitors. It was way too much, and we never were invited anywhere again. Hatred of society has a price. But in this case, it was ecology which paid, not the activists.

With invitations like these to the Toulouse trade fair, ecology seemed poised to become an integral part of society. It already was, in scientific journals and in certain industry publications like «L'Usine Nouvelle». It is following incidents like the ones mentioned above that it is viewed so negatively. The blunder has not been rectified yet (2024), and neither «gender» «studies» nor the legalization of marijuana will improve matters.

Under these circumstances, it is understandable that the buying group also ended up degenerating. This degeneration first manifested itself in the emergence of problematic personalities, but that it was «not appropriate» to criticize. For example, there was a little jerk named Eric (Beware of homonyms), who inspired the young manipulative, negative «E...» in my novel «Stranded on Earth». This guy was at every protest, a typical ecologist, playing the nice little anarchist. He even wore a black beret with strands of hair blowing in the wind, like Che Guevara. But in real life, he was totally negative and discouraging, criticizing everything and everyone, and always taking the opposition during group discussions. His partner, Françoise, was even worse: a bigoted, angry and authoritarian atheist. She once tried to staff the desk for one hour (which we all did every week). Furious at having to make an effort to be helpful to others, she wrote an article in our newsletter, ridiculously titled «Group Purchasing and Class Struggle», where she explained the terrible exploitation she had endured for over an hour: giving change, filling out forms, etc.! I still have a copy of that article, lol! The worst was probably a poor, pregnant, sick friend, anemic from eating nothing but wholegrain rice, to whom these scumbags simply said «assume-toi» (Take care of yourself). Even today, 44 years later, she is still the one I think of when I hear that contemptuous expression. Apparently, their class struggle did not defended her.

That, plus another idiot scribbling on my order form, making it illegible, and yet another who verbally attacked my mother for no reason, meant I only went to meetings to be of help: the pleasant and stimulating atmosphere of the beginning had completely vanished. We could not even discuss organization anymore, some people systematically contradicted us, trying to push the buying group towards capitalism.

But one evening, as I arrived at one of these meetings, I suddenly found myself face to face with the woman who would become my partner for nine years.

That was my second-to-last meeting: at the last one, I overheard a pornographic remark in front of everybody, belittling our new relationship. (Done by a «friend» who had turned my proposal down some months earlier. What was she jealous of, then?) That was the (big) straw that broke the camel's back (which already was well bellow the ground): I was disgusted and I never went back.

I don't know how long the ATE survived after I left in 1981. Most likely not long. By 1985, in any case, it was gone. The Association Toulousaine d'Ecologie has vanished from history, there is practically no mention of it on the internet today, nor of its former members, not even on Facebook, nothing. Even its leaders have disappeared. As if they had been erased by the Matrix.

Yet the seeds we sowed sprouted, so our effort had paid off. So I later learned that the buying group, managed by completely different people, had become a cooperative (thus sidestepping the psychological problems which have sunk so many attempts at a non-egocentric economy). When I returned from the Faitg nine years later in 1990, I found this cooperative in a different location (cleaner and more welcoming, with a friendlier team). Then it became a small supermarket, which still exists today in 2020: «Grandeur Nature,» at the southern end of Avenue Jules Julien, exit 23 of the southern ring road, 43°34'23.55"N 1°27'9.78"E. Organic food no longer needed activists: it had become commonplace.

Added in 2023: Today, a company called «Association Toulousaine d'Ecologie», founded in 1983 at 21 rue des Amidonniers, can be found in the business directories. It was likely created during the final throes of the non-profit organization I knew. It is therefore probable that the latter was closed down between 1981 and 1983. Today, there is a Bioasis store there, selling... CBD, ha ha ha ha! This is probably another continuation of the Association, but the name of the director, Francis Giordano, does not ring a bell.

Paragraph added in 2025: The fact that the ATE had two successors clearly demonstrates its relevance. But, whether capitalists or leftists, those who took it over had to destroy the original first. Hence the infiltrations I witnessed, this eagerness to poison the atmosphere, in order to «demonstrate» some unknown impossibility of a non-egocentric economy. But they gained absolutely nothing from it: the buying group had no funds, just some simple tables and a broom.

I consider the end of the buying group an abandonment, not a failure. Indeed the experience had clearly shown that it provided economic ease and freedom, while being lightweight and easy to manage without much work. But it demanded discipline and altruism, two qualities which are still sorely lacking. This is why people are still not yet ready to do without the methods of capitalism: wages, contracts, etc. Clearly, capitalism, its pollution, and its inequalities are the cost of cultivating ego, egocentrism, and selfishness.

This is why I consider economy to be a spiritual discipline.

And anyone who criticizes capitalism without confronting their own ego has a corpse in his mouth (a repurposed May 1968 slogan, ha ha ha!).

I found back two or three former members when I returned to Toulouse in 1990. One had become a punk, another saw Buddhism as a «cult». Their pathetic failure to make something as simple as a buying group had ruined them from the inside out. Or maybe they were in the ditch, from refusing the turn to spirituality. Certain faults are unforgiving.

The only one I could locate today is running a... committee against Linky smart meters!

This last member has a rather astonishing story. At first, she was quite nice, and I liked her (as a friend, more being still possible at that point). But it quickly became clear that she was a fundamentalist atheist, a dreadful ideology which makes make all the life choices in the wrong way. She started cutting her hair «so as not to be romantic», and denigrating her breasts as being «just glands». Then she became angry, bombarding everybody with unfair and vexating remarks, and even at the «tolerant» ATE, people started to turn away from her. Not to mention unspeakable things with feminists, things that... I was not spoken about! (It was about «self-help», so-called training sessions for «self-managed» gynecological exams among women, in reality a heavy-handed incitement to become lesbian by fiddling with each other's sex. Knowing her, I suppose she must have put her foot in it in epic proportions, and rightly so in this case. I can't help but laugh when I picture the scene, it is a shame she didn't had a cell phone to film it!).

(Permalink) Then she wanted a baby. But with her unbearable personality, she could not find any dad, not even some irresponsible one-night bloke to impregnate her. Few women can boast of such a feat: being sexually rejected by every man! And it was not her physical appearance: she was quite desirable, despite her efforts to appear unattractive. She eventually went to Peru and returned some days later with a baby. Yes, I saw him, a handsome, assertive little Inca boy, who must have made it very clear to her that a baby is not a toy. But I was stunned that someone could simply show up in a completely foreign country and take a baby, just like that, with nothing. Can you imagine a Peruvian woman coming to France to take a baby? This was around 1980. I hope that Third World countries are better equipped today to defend themselves against these kidnappings, this new form of slavery (and against the abomination of «surrogate mothers»), which at best serve to satisfy bourgeois fantasies, at worst to pedophiles. In any case, the legalization of same-sex adoption in the West must have led many countries to outlaw the kidnapping of their children. The Tibetans did not wait that long, they stopped giving children up for adoption since the 1960s.

My partner in Corsica

(Permalink) Written in March 2019.

Well, if I am talking about my partner in the past tense today, it is because, as you probably guessed, the relationship ended badly. But it would be petty to take revenge on her... and yet irresponsible not to denounce what destroyed our relationship. So I shall tell the story in the next section, but with some too personal details removed, and without giving her name. Indeed, our children should not have to suffer the consequences. Noisette (Hazelnut) is a nickname that I completely invented for her for this text, you will see why in some lines. A nickname she would not dislike, I think: she accepted one of the same kind.

So, I suddenly found myself in front of her, in the middle of a work meeting for the ATE's grouped purchases, and apparently, the attraction was mutual. A petite brunette with short hair, wearing a hazelnut-colored sweater. Nothing remarkable, but she seemed cheerful and happy. She was at the ATE to sell her hazelnuts, which she had harvested on an estate where she lived in Corsica. Two large burlap bags full of organic hazelnuts, which we would have no trouble dividing up. She was very pleased with her sale, which provided her with enough to live on for several months.

After the meeting, we found ourselves, I no longer remember why, at the foot of the large building next to the Roguet MJC (Youth Center), where she was staying with one of her sisters. She invited me in for tea. I then ditched the other ATE member I was discussing with: the opportunity was too good to miss, to finally realize my dream of living with a woman. That very evening we kissed, sealing the deal!

But it was not easy, as she lived in Corsica, and I was in my apartment in Toulouse, where my mother was also living at the time. She had her hazelnut trees, and I had my electronics projects, plus my job at EDI.

For a while, I entertained the idea of moving those electronics projects to her place in Corsica. But it was a crazy idea: she was living in an old-cottage, without even electricity. I would have had to install a turbine or something. At the time, I was still optimistic, but I realized the scale of such a project, which would have delayed the useful work for several years.

Anyway, I still went to see her in Corsica. Inevitably, the first ship I boarded was called the Napoleon... and the music was playing «Papa Noël» by Tino Rossi, ha ha ha ha! The night was not great, with rolling, seasick people, and again skating on vomit. This time I handled it a bit better, lol. But there was no way I could really sleep in those conditions, so I watched the night landscape as soon as the Cape Corse came into view.

Oddly enough, I struck up a conversation with a German guy... who happened to be Noisette's roommate! What a small world sometimes. Actually, the explanation is simple: people recognize each other by their vibe. This is how we connected together, among hundreds of people sharing the same bridge.

Once I got to Noisette's place... she was not there! I spent several days waiting for her... I was about to leave, thinking I had been royally stood up, when she finally showed up, accompanied by a Corsican man named Tony. It turned out she was in his place, with his mother and family. So I was invited to spend Christmas with a Corsican family! Which I was not complaining about at all. The Tony in question had a chestnut flour mill (that he called polenta) at the foot of the Sant Pétrone (not to be confused with the Sant Petru, further south). This is how I ended up spending several days with them, including Christmas, discovering the Corsican spirit and the Castagnitche (This is how Corsicans say, even though it is spelled Castagniccia, the land of the chestnut trees).

The most thrilling moment was climbing the Sant Pétrone at night, reaching the summit with the sunrise!

However, here occurred an incident which began to make me realize that Tony's hospitality was not gratuitous: there was a kind of cave, or more likely an old mine gallery, and he wanted us to go inside as a sort of «test». The problem was, it was steep and slippery, full of dead leaves and wide cracks: we probably would not have been able to get back up. So I refused, standing up to Tony, and even to the easily influenced Noisette, who wanted to obey him. We already saw that I am not a coward, but not reckless either: going down into that hole under those conditions was a definite risk. Especially since that nobody knew we were there. Knowing the continuation, today I wonder if it was not outright a kind of trap.

I made the trip to Corsica three times, hesitating between a complicated relocation of my electronics activities to a medieval setting, or trying to bring Noisette back to Toulouse. Not easy either, since at the time I was sharing my modest apartment with my mother.

I still managed to put up a new partition wall in that house during my few days there, slightly insulating the corner for the bed.

The relationship with this Tony guy deteriorated considerably: Noisette told me he had raped her, no less. The fact is, he gave her his whole collection of sexually transmitted diseases: pubic lice, gonorrhea, herpes, and probably some others. Sir Tony was going to satisfy his needs with the lowest prostitutes. Having sex with a naive young ecologist must have excited him. He was «kind» enough to warn her about gonorrhea before Noisette gave it to me. I still got the others, though. Pubic lice are easy to get rid of, but for herpes, 40 years later, I still have to keep acyclovir at hand wherever I go. If you hear that a guy gave me herpes, do not misunderstand: the way it happened, that pork is definitely the responsible. That herpes contributed to my later decision not to get another partner after Noisette left me. I would have been forever haunted by guilt if I had defiled another woman with that filth.

(Added in 2019: Nowadays there are penis sheaths, 100% effective against diseases and 100% effective as masculine contraception, instead of those pathetic condoms that tear up or slip off after ten minutes. But I am 65 now, so I am saving myself for the afterlife, where there will not be these kinds of problems.)

In all I made three trips to Corsica, where it also emerged that Noisette had had a dispute with her German roommate, the one I had met on the boat. At the time, not yet knowing Noisette's darker side, I had not understood the German's seemingly paranoid attitude. In fact, I later realized he had become hypersensitive, which often happens when you live amidst constant accusations and scolding. I learned he had started beekeeping elsewhere in Corsica, with another German. I hope they managed to make something of it.

Another hostile visit some months before my stay resulted in an article in the newspaper «Libération», with the headline «(Noisette's house): Hippie commune or nazi training camp?» I already knew that «Libé» had become a rag, but not yet that they were racist enough to imply that a German would necessarily be a nazi! In any case, it is a perfect example of rotten journalism, which has done so much to discredit Libération after so many others: a non-existent affair, a tall tale blown totally out of proportion, the whole published without the slightest factual verification.

There were other unpleasant episodes, like hitchhiking to Bastia for gonorrhea treatment. An unpleasant city, with idiots who insult us for no reason in the street. It was there that took place the astounding scandal of three police officers forcing a woman to undress on the beach, on August 24, 2016.

At one point, we were picked up hitchhiking by two Corsicans. They told us what they expected from mainlanders who came to form communities or do environmental work: «You're welcome, provided you live like us». So we were clearly very unwelcome. I hope a new generation of young Corsicans will want to break free from these lame affairs, because under these conditions, no one will come to move their country forward for them.

In short, this Corsican saga had been chaotic, and if I had had the experience I have today, I would have gotten out of there long before. Why do people have to create such complicated problems for themselves?

Oh yes, right, complicated problems are a Corsican specialty, just like polenta, donkey sausages, or the broutche.

Well...

So it won't be surprising that Noisette finally showed up at my place in Toulouse one day in early 1981, definitively angry with Corsica and with everybody she had known there.

Her house was rented to another German couple with two young children. For two or three years, these people lived there in that dark house, without electricity, without running water, in filth, cold, and under leaky roofs, washing all their clothes by hand and cooking over a wood fire... with two young children. Why to put themselves through such an ordeal? To be able to live close to nature! They finally gave up, fortunately in time for the children to start school. Nature is wonderful. But not at that price!

As French author Alphonse Allais put it, we should build cities in the countryside. It is a joke, but the modern eco-project is indeed to have all the comforts in a natural setting, without destroying this nature.

Still we did had some good times in Corsica, though, like the time Noisette heated a bathtub over a wood fire, outside in the snow... I took a bath like that, and I came out completely naked in the snow, without feeling the cold, thanks to the hyperthermia from the bath! This certainly was very funny, but if you want to imitate me, know what you this:

🐡Do this without wind. It will not work with wind.

🐠Add the water before lighting the fire. Don't do like that idiot I saw once do at the Faitg, who lit a huge fire under the bathtub... before adding the water!! The enamel was completely ruined.

🐱Extinguish the fire before getting into the water. Otherwise, you can get seriously burned or be asphyxiated.

🐺The protection against the cold only lasts two or three minutes, so you must dry yourself and get dressed immediately. Otherwise, naked in the snow, your life expectancy is about one hour.

There also are some strange stories. If you visit Corsica as a tourist, you do not see these things. But if you live with the Corsicans, you share their spirituality, which is based on communion with nature. Especially with Tony's mother, who was very interesting, I regret that everything ended so badly without me getting to know her better. For example, in Corsica, an owl entering the house is a sign of impending death. This happened at Noisette's house, and indeed, there were two deaths: Noisette's goat and donkey, in the days which followed. She hinted to me that someone had most likely performed a witchcraft ritual against her. Fortunately, we were meditating, which would have protected us, by diverting the spell onto the animals. Coincidences, the rationalists will say. But in places which are still wild and unspoiled, like Corsica, the shamanic spirit is still powerful, unlike in the prosaic world of concrete and cars. I was able to see this myself by meditating on the spirits nature around our place. After some days, the initially hostile nature seemed much more welcoming. This is why I take these things seriously.

The situation in Toulouse was not stable: the three of us were crammed into a small apartment, me working, and Noisette who could not bear the town (especially our small, gray courtyard) and was constantly getting angry.

We had to find something.

It was again Michel who pointed us the direction.

Memories of Richard Trigaux:Toulouse and the ecologists (1975-1981)

The leftists (continuation and end)

The zonards (Continuation and end)

Drugs, filth and vermin (Continuation and end)

Feminists or feminists?

The Association Toulousaine d’Ecologie

The True Economy

Beware of the GARI

The siloviks 1

The Occitan Conservatory

Libertine eco-love

The nervous breakdown

Ecologie 78

The anti-nuclear movement and Creys-Malville

Attempts at alternative work

The Toulouse «Poudrerie» chemical factory

EDI (1978-1981)

The Aérospatiale and Airbus.

The opening to spirituality

Caving

Years 1970 (Toulouse) et la SAPT

Sleep paralysis, or astral travel

The SNCF

The Hatha Yoga

The music of the 1970s: the free radios

Self-management experiment: le Spectaclier

The Planetran

The Association Toulousaine d'Ecologie, continuation and end

My partner in Corsica

Memories of Richard Trigaux:
Toulouse and the ecologists (1975-1981)