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For the first time in history, wars are being analyzed according to their sole and unique cause: sociopaths and other slobery cretins, whose mental manipulations still manage to persuade normal people that they must kill each others. I warn you, I will not mince words.
There is, however, one important exception that I will respect: if, in the past, the armies and the military were considered intrinsically evil, today, however, in line with the general evolution of society, the democratic armies of the 21st century more and more defend freedom and human rights, and more and more fight against discrimination within their own ranks. Perhaps here more than anywhere else, we see the spiritual change at work. It would be unfair not to acknowledge this.
The order in not chronological, but instead in a kind of progression of the reasoning.
Navigate to the other pages: 
Date of first publication: November 2025
Date de last modification: none
These texts are a work in progress, a project spanning several years, so that they may contain missing parts and links to targets not yet created. Thanks to be patient. 🙂
Written in November 2022
Why to dedicate a Fil to the wars of my time?
War is a shameful disease, a syphilis of the mind, which deserves to be forgotten. It is the most horrific dis-reality afflicting this unfortunate world, while war instigators are nothing but scoundrels, filth, perverts, degenerates, sexual deviants, pedophiles, and backward cretins. They deserve nothing but contempt and lifelong imprisonment in underground cells, without light. (This is already a measured statement, we would like to be much more violent. But this violence would, in a way, justify them. So let them rot in silence.)
If I speak of wars, it is certainly not to glorify them, but on the contrary to dispel the lies which will inevitably emerge in the future, distorting the memory of my time and keeping future generations lured in sadness and hatred. Already, some of the information presented here has vanished from the internet, while enormous falsehoods are being perpetuated. There even was an attempt to preserve all of Wikipedia’s lies on the Moon, for millions of years. Fortunately, this spacecraft crashed. With such a burden, it was inevitable.
But the most insidious aspect of war is the ambiguity it fosters: when we enlist in the army, when we work for the weapons industry, when we pay taxes to fund the military, we do not know how these resources will be used: legitimate defense or sexual aggression. (Yes, you read that correctly: «sexual». This is the primary goal of war instigators, and it is what they ultimately achieve, as we shall see.)
This ambiguity reaches its peak when we ourselves are forcibly enlisted as unwilling soldiers, or slave soldier, (conscription or military service) under the threat of sequestration or even assassination.
However, it would be incorrect to equate my era with the past times and their senseless, mindless wars. The radical changes in society also affected the military, perhaps even more visibly there than elsewhere. Military discipline has even become a form of spiritual discipline! We shall explore this through the «French Method», a fundamental innovation in military strategy which, as of the time I am writing, is already removed from the internet.
It is also important to do justice to history. If the 1970s were the era of conscientious objection and of the rejection of war, this freedom was only possible thanks to the unanimous support for the armies which fought against the nazis in the 1940s.
And while the 1950s to 1980s brought their share of senseless wars, the conflicts in Yougoslavia, Libya and especially Ukraine have once again united people in the legitimate defense of freedom and democracy against the dictatorships of backward imbeciles. Ukraine even introduces an unprecedented phenomenon: 21st-century humans, intelligent, sensitive, and civilized, defending themselves against barbarians from the past, alcoholic, cruel, stupid, rapists. The contrast is so exaggerated that it has become a recurring joke worldwide.
The only remaining advantage for the cretins is their sheer numbers, laid in masses by idiot females devoid of any personality.
(Permalink) Written in June 2015.
I have an incredible privilege, that very few humans ever had throughout history: I have never seen war. At least, I have never found myself in a combat zone, even though my country has been at war several times during my life. Well, at 62, this can still happen. Let’s hope it never does.
The reason for this situation is, quite obviously, democracy and social progress.
For future generations, this situation may seem natural. And indeed, it is. But when they removed border controls within the European Union, we were in disbelief. We could simply cross without anything, whereas before, we had to present papers, documents, and endure stern looks as if we were criminals. Borders were the place where we felt the most the absolute power of governments, and the impossibility of escaping it: «Our country» was the confined space they allowed us for our freedom. Seeing this space suddenly multiplied by ten was simply dizzying. But in the end, we got used to it very quickly. Because this is how things should have always been.
My generation was also among the last to be subjected to military slavery (the compulsory «military service»). I only escaped it, due to my eyes problems. I still spent a year in the military school in Brest. A kind of softened version of the military service, but it was more than enough for me to understand. Only those who experienced it can truly understand: a stolen year of our, life where we were not allowed to be ourselves, a year filled with mockery, homosexuality and pornography, just at the age when we are seeking love. It counts for ten.
And yet, I cannot complain: the generation just before mine was forced to participate in the war in Algeria, under threat of being locked away in a military fortress for years, with no idea of when they would be released. They were forced to take part in arrests, forced population displacements, all while living in the fear of injury, death, and emasculation. Many suffered to the point of deep depression. And for those who returned, the trauma remains, still forbidden to speack about even fifty years later. One of my maternal uncles was the sole survivor of an ambush, his back broken by a mine which exploded beneath the truck he was driving, while his thirty comrades were hacked down by machine-gun fire. All of them «Malgré-nous», slave soldiers, forcibly enlisted. One of my paternal uncles served in Indochina, and the little he dared to recount was far from pleasant.
Even in times of peace, military slavery meant a year of boredom, a year of wasted life at an age which counts for ten, a year of uneasy promiscuity which fostered homosexuality, pornography, misogyny, and stupidity. This alone made conscientious objection worth it, in order to escape it.
(Permalink) Written in June 2015
Later, in the 1990s and 2000s, things changed. Already in the 1970s or 80s, the French army had issued internal notes prohibiting its special training (commandos) from being used by fascists. Then it developed the «French method»: respecting populations instead of considering them as potential enemies. And it demonstrated this in Somalia. In 1992, the UN launched the Operation «Restore Hope» to protect the populations from the «Mad Max» gangs of cretins mounted on armored vehicles terrorizing the country, as if acting out a dystopian movie of the same name. It was a historic event: the first operation in the name of the international right of humanitarian intervention, which was not even yet codified in legal texts at the time.
But the Americans failed, facing a racist anti-American alliance of all the fascists against them. Only the French managed to achieve something, thanks to the famous «French method», before the UN finally abandoned any action, leaving the country in a chaos.
I heard again about the «French method» later: the Indian army, which succeeded France in Somalia, learned from it, and they applied the method successfully to put an end to various conflicts which were poisoning entire regions, such as Kashmir. Not an end through the extermination of one group, but through reconciliation.
Of course, I searched for sources to substantiate these memories. I then had to acknowledge that neither the media nor Wikipedia ever mention the French method, nor regarding Somalia neither about Kashmir. There is not even a mention of it on the Internet. Yet I clearly remember descriptions of scenes where French soldiers managed to neutralize «Mad Max» Somali gangs in a quasi-non-violent manner, without bloodshed. As for Kashmir, I learned about it through articles in Buddhist circles, or through personal contacts on the ground (I had a godson in Leh, Ladakh, in Kashmir precisely).
This is how, even in the 21st century, official archives are capable of censoring one of the most important elements of the 20th Century: anyone reading Wikipedia in five hundred years will be as clueless about understanding our era as they would be reading the Bible to understand the pharaohs. This shows that technology does not change mindsets.
The French method has nevertheless since become a sort of standard for all the humanitarian intervention actions, starting with Kosovo in 1998 (I lived in Lavaur at the time, and a train carrying KFOR armored vehicles passed right under my window, coming from the paratrooper barracks in Castres). I remember a story from the former Yugoslavia about a lone French soldier neutralizing four fascists with his bare fists! (He was not personally at risk but had to prevent a radio with a secret decoder from falling into their hands). Sorry guys, but a big mouth does not make strength, only a larger cross-section for taking hits (about 400 yottaBarns for an average idiot)(The French pun is unfortunately impossible to translate).
Even recently (Libya 2011), humanitarian intervention actions are strongly criticized by «left-wing» reactionary intellectuals, who still see them as «Western interference», using the slightest targeting error as a pretext to denigrate the countries which use it (especially the USA, a regular target of all Marxist propaganda). To the point that this refusal has become the main factor of war and backwardness in the world today (as seen in the refusal by several cowardly governments to help Syria in 2011, which, in addition to incredible suffering for its people, led to the proliferation of various exotic barmy groups).
I would conclude that it takes far more courage to step into a street in an unknown country, wearing only fatigues, exposed to hostile shooters, than to fire from an armored vehicle (or even thousands of kilometers away, by remote control). The French method is not a form of self-delusion. In fact, the volunteer soldiers who implement it more resemble courageous firefighters than the sexually deviant torturers that France had sent to Algeria just some decades earlier.
The world has changed.
Any objections?
Objections of conscience? Every time I had the opportunity, I refused any participation in war or armament. Well, today, I would be more nuanced: we cannot refuse to help people in danger. But I will always keep a concern: when we enlist, or when we manufacture a weapon, we never know for what they will be used. Today, the weak point of the armies defending freedom and democracy is the rotten politicians who command them.
Added in December 2020: This spiritual evolution of the armies has also translated in many countries into the abolition of military slavery (known as conscription or compulsory military service). The official reasons are technical (The new forms of combat are no longer requiring large armies, but specialists with long training). However, I believe it is also an effect of the general demilitarization of society. The only exception is Israel, but they live under constant threat.
I remember that by the time (Chirac government, 1997. Yes, him), this abolition triggered a rearguard battle by the sadomasochistic marxist left, which viewed with suspicion the formation of an «anti-popular army». Some «feminists» even protested against the abolition, demanding equalization at the lowest level: compulsory military service for women as well as for men! In reality, the exact opposite happened: the army became a sort of vanguard in the fight against discrimination: racism, sexism, LGBT, harassment... Light-years away from my experience at the Naval College in 1971. A Lorentz factor of at least 20.
(Permalink) Written in October 2016
I see some people who are surprised by these dates. The start date, 1933, everyone knows very well why: it is the date when the German parliament gave full powers to a madman. But 2007???
The thing is that goods stolen by the Nazis remained all this time with concealers of stolen properties: banks, and even administrations. And it took all this time for the necessary actions to end these thefts.
Well, I wanted to find credible sources on the Internet, but there too I «curiously» came up against entire pages of 404 errors, expired domains, closed accounts. Even the Wikipedia page was littered with warnings about its «lack of credibility.» So I stick to a specific personal memory: in France, around 1995 or 2000, the newspapers published a list of several thousand people, heirs of parents murdered by the nazis, so that these people could recover the sums that had been lying dormant since 1940-44 in French banks or banks operating in France. I am certain of it, I even looked for some specific names in this list, just in case. I remember precisely that these people legitimately claimed the interest on all this time, to which they were told «not to dream», which in administrative language means that the interests of finance come before justice and Human Rights. And indeed, none of the banks which concealed the stolen goods were punished, or even charged. Hence the date of 2007 that I give for the effective end of the criminal activities of the Second World War, when the last known nazi concealment ceased. If anyone disagrees, let them put the receivers in prison and return their money to the victims, including the interest.
Added in June 2022: I finally found a reference far away on the US Wikipedia to the «Mattéoli Commission», between 1997 and 2000, in charge of the restitution of these thefts. 50 years later... Without any mention of interests, depreciation of the currency, and especially not of punishment for the guilty.
Added in April 2023: Christoph Meili is a Swiss whistleblower, who in 1997 caught UBS bank destroying nazi documents proving that some of their safes contained goods stolen during the Holocaust. It is «interesting» to note that he was harassed by the Swiss government, an accomplice of the criminals, and that justice was finally done in the USA.
◀️ See this section, in the thread on Saint Dizier
(Permalink) Written in September 2016.
In 1956 and even up until 1960, traces of the war were still visible. Of course, the damaged public buildings had long since been demolished, but the private owners did not necessarily had the means to do so, or they were dead and no one took care of their ruins. One of the worst effects of war is the general chaos of society: reconstruction and reestablishment of economic circuits can take years. Thus in France, food restrictions lasted until 1949, and until the early 1960s, we could still see ruins or temporary constructions.
My most terrible memory is in Reims, Rue de Courcelles, in a courtyard where my grandmother lived, with her Loulou new husband who had stolen our real grandfather. There was still there, around 1956, a ruined house, a pile of blackened stones and charred beams. (This house was in this enclosure at 49°15'33.16"N, 4°1'6.99"E. The courtyard is immediately to the east, the entrance was on Rue de Courcelles). Of course, I was told that it was «the war», and I understood that something monstrous had happened just some years before I was born. I wondered if the inhabitants were in their house when it happened, because they would have been crushed and burned. In my two and a half years old child's mind the idea that war is a dark, horrible and abnormal thing took shape.
Later, during our car trips, we saw other clues, such as a large brick building with an entire section missing, showing walled connecting doors.
Another memory is a bridge in Vitry le François, 48°44'24"N, 4°35'31"E. I give an approximate location, because there are actually two bridges, one over the Marne and one over the canal. Today everything is clear and no trace remains, but several years after 1956, there was still a suspension bridge in white concrete, probably built before the war. But the deck had been demolished and replaced by a single temporary track, made of large wooden beams, which made a characteristic noise when we drove over it. For this reason we called it the «thunder bridge» and we applauded every time! Of course we did not knew what this bridge meant.
Decades later, you could still see old factories with windows painted blue. It is only recently that I learned why: it was a measure to protect cities from bombing (by preventing the lights from serving as a landmark at night).
We had also visited the Fort de la Pompelle, near Reims. At the time, it was still as it had been abandoned in 1918, a vague chalky mound devastated by four years of gunning, where only the tops of some vaults emerged here and there. I was horrified at the idea of soldiers buried alive under the shells, a sort of strange black curse. A feeling that we probably no longer have, today that the fort has been restored and the galleries cleared, glorifying war while avoiding to evoke the abominable suffering it entails. A curious detail is that I imagined these soldiers in faded blue uniforms, without knowing that this was actually the color at the time.
There also were «the Americans», who moved in convoys of military trucks, the famous Dodges of the Landing, which we see in the films, and which I therefore saw with my own eyes. These convoys were compact and difficult to overtake, but they went fast enough to make this unnecessary. They were distinguished by a whistling noise unique for the time, due to the presence of a turbo. This, and some other details, gave the Americans a slight «magical» sheen, and I remember that people spoke of the «Americans» a bit like a superior race, and especially a lot of gratitude. And in fact, without their help, we would have remained under the nazi rule. A worried gratitude however, as with an unpredictable big brother, who tends to pull the covers over himself without thinking of others. In fact, the presence of a foreign army on French soil was not without protests, and finally De Gaulle asked them to leave. (Well, I think that it was mainly the communist left which protested, at the time it was still very much subservient to the USSR, and we did not yet distrust the latter so much: it was still «the Allies» and not yet «the Cold War»).
I also clearly remember the dull gray aluminium one franc coins, stamped with the shameful Pétain francisque. I had even asked my mother what this francisque meant, but she had not given me any details: at the time, we did not talk to children about politics. These coins remained in circulation many years after the war, and even after the introduction of the Nouveau Franc in 1960, they remained for a while as one and two centime coins. The fact is that creating new coins is expensive, and the symbols s were not the priority in a country where everything had to be rebuilt.
This proximity to the war made me feel uneasy: if it had happened just before I was born, then it could happen again at any time. Things like the torture shows in the Roman arenas are far away, we can think that the world has evolved since then, and that this can no longer happen. But the war and nazism were much too close to reassure oneself in this way.
However, the fact that my father was a soldier also incited a certain attraction to the military, and I remember that I liked the rhythmic music of the parades. It must be said that it was the only music we heard in 1956, before we had a radio! At the time military parades were still common. Today they would be incongruous.
This is clearly an example of opinion neurosis, which proves that I was a child like any other, without special faculties. It was necessary in any case, because any difference would have brought me merciless repression. Which could not be completely avoided, as we shall see.
◀️ See this section, in the thread on Saint Dizier
(Permalink) Written in January 2017
Korea, invaded by the fascists during the Second World War, was jointly liberated by the Americans, from the South, and by the Soviets, from the North. As these two could not agree to reestablish a Korean government, they each created their own, hence the division of the country in two, according to the 38th parallel, the line where the former allies met.
According to Wikipedia (January 2017, since we need to date the «truth» according to Wikipedia), in 1950 the North attacked the South, following which the UN decided the Resolution 83 authorizing military assistance to the South, to repel the North. About twenty countries responded to defend the South.
The «truth» according to the media is that the Korean War resulted from an American imperialist aggression attempting to invade the North.
How can we have in visible public places such different versions of the same event? To understand, we must look at things with more details. It is easy to check the existence of the UN Resolution 83. About twenty countries responded, allowing to quickly clear the southern plains of the Soviet tanks which had invaded them. However, liberating the mountainous North was much more complicated, and in any case beyond the UN mandate. This could explain why only the Americans persevered at this stage. They could have managed to liberate the North, but they came up against excellent Soviet planes, and masses of Chinese soldiers, on a very difficult terrain, resulting in a deadlock of the situation. The main useful conclusion that I see is the incredible ability of marxist propaganda to distort the facts, and to transform a legitimate defense by the UN into an American aggression, in the eyes of the future generations. They just have «not to mention» the preliminary Soviet aggression, nor Resolution 83, and to speak only of the actions of the Americans. And the latter, with their usual political, social and spiritual naivety, very easily lent themselves to this game, doing exactly what the manipulators expected of them, without seeing the trap or the consequences for their reputation.
(Permalink) Written in June 2023<
The purpose of these pages is not to recount the twists and turns of this war, but to understand its social and cultural stakes. So, I briefly remind that Vietnam was a French colony (referred to as «Indochine» in French), which expelled France after a terrible and bloody conflict, the «Indochina War» (in which one of my uncles was forced to fight). Few people could explain the details, but apparently, things evolved similarly to Korea: we ended up with a semi-fascist, semi-democratic South Vietnam, aided and occupied by the USA, and a North Vietnam, bullied and occupied by the Vietcong, a sadomasochistic cult of death massively supported by mao-fascist China and by the Soviets. Like several other U.S. wars, it ended with the withdrawal of the American army, without an apparent victory. It then did not took long for the Vietcong to invade the weak and isolated South, and reunify the country under the name of Vietnam.
Presented this way, all the blame falls on France and the USA. However, I say that Vietnam lost the war and that the blame for this defeat mainly lies with the Vietcong. Why? Because this fascist group imposed a dictatorial regime, persecuting the Vietnamese and keeping the country in poverty and economic isolation. If Vietnam had remained under American occupation, things would probably have turned out like in South Korea or Japan: the Americans withdrew on their own, and these countries became rich and democratic. But the vietcong did not wanted that: like all sociopaths, they preferred to destroy everything rather than to accept a good not coming from them.
So why do people consider that Vietnam «freed» itself from the Americans? Here again, we see the deleterious influence of marxist propaganda, unconsciously relayed by the media and by «independent thinkers» of an ignorant left. Indeed, even if these people were not marxists themselves (and not even «Soviet agents»), they all gleefully fell into the trap of marxism’s logical errors and mental manipulations: dualism, or binary thinking, which classifies people as intrinsically good or irredeemably bad. Or the sociopathic principle of blaming the victims. Thus, Marxist war propaganda found a disproportionate echo through our media, «thinkers», and politicians, far beyond the influence of the real Soviet agents or the small far-left circles (ultra-minority in the USA). It was enough to draw a parallel between the Vietnam War and colonial wars, without mentioning that the Vietnamese were suffering under the dictatorship and atrocities of the Vietcong, rather than supporting them. The proof lies in the fact that, after Vietnam’s defeat, thousands of «boat people» had to flee at the risk of their lives, including a great spiritual master like Thich Nhat Hanh, who was threatened in his own country for teaching meditation and charity. The fascist/marxist vietcong was not mistaken: a clear conscience is the most effective way to dispel the thinking errors of marxism. This is the real reason for their fear of spirituality.
The American pacifist movement of 1967-68 has been heavily idealized as a genuine youth movement, a sincere aspiration for peace, facing the Vietnam war they were forced to do. Even today, few dare to contradict this view. One «just» needs to remain silent about what the Vietnamese have endured since (I have met several, refugees in France), and the total failure of the vietcong government to ensure happiness and prosperity for the Vietnamese, turning the country into a mere satellite of the Chinese dictatorship. As for the American pacifist movement, its Marxist influence is too evident, along with the American-centric vision which too often afflicts this country, even in progressive or dissenting circles.
However, despite this massive effort, the pitiful manipulations of the marxists eventually backfired on them by creating a universal and non-partisan movement: those who formed the movement were sincere, their movement was authentic, it truly belonged to the Americans themselves, and it was the first in the world to reach such a scale: a visceral refusal of war itself, by young people well-placed to protest, since they were often forced to fight under the threat of prison or worse. For over ten years, military slavery was the terror of young Americans, in the era of the Hippies, free love and freedom, in the age when one leaves childhood to seek love and build one’s life. It is essentially for this vibrant pacifist movement that we remember the Vietnam War today, far beyond the miserable Marxist delusions.
The Vietnam War era was also certainly the peak of anti-American propaganda. However, anti-American and anti-«West» sentiments are still very strong today, even after the end of communism. As it often happens, the lie persists even if no one remembers who created it or for what purpose. At the time, communist Russia logically saw the United States, the champions of capitalism, as enemy number one. (At a pinch, they even provided a welcome counterbalance to capitalism’s arrogance, and many secretly hoped they would rid us of it.) But today, in putin’s corrupt Russia or in xi jinping’s absolutist kingdom, this claim no longer makes any sense: they are merely poorly imitating the USA. Yet the hatred remains, as pure anti-White racism, or as jealousy against a country which succeeded far better than their.
Hence, we logically still find expressions like «the West» or «the Occident» in Putinist or Chinese government speeches, but never «the international community»: they know all too well that they are not part of this «community», ha ha ha!
The big problem is that we see exactly the same racist terms in our own media, turning any world problem into a liberation struggle against the evil «West», without apparently realizing that they too are «the West». So, if you see any media using these expressions, close it immediately: they are presenting a biased version of the world, inciting hatred between peoples. Today, anti-Americanism is primarily the work of the media. So busy sowing hatred that they don’t realize they are also its target.
False pacifism and real anti-Americanism resurface today whenever wrongdoers are corrected by the international community. We saw it during the war in Libya, which, let us remember, was an international operation ordered by the UN to prevent dictator gaddafi from massacring his own population in Benghazi. Yet we heard false pacifists bleating that «bombs kill babies», without mentioning, of course, that the absence of those bombs would have killed far more. Unless gaddafi’s tanks were driven by babies?
Moreover, the weapons used in Libya were far more precise than in any previous wars: there were very few collateral victims. There were even «ethics committees» attached to command posts, which sometimes blocked operations! An innovation which overturns millennia of military thinking! But these committees were ultimately quite logical for a war aimed at protecting civilians. In any case, in a situation of self-defense, accidental victims are the responsibility of the aggressor.
During the war in Ukraine (written in July 2023), suddenly, by miracle, Putin’s bombs on Ukrainian apartment buildings no longer kill babies. Even when they target maternity clinics! This war has seen the return of a false, tearful pacifism, this time by «personalities» seeking to center attention on their egos, posing themselves as «negotiators». Each time with the same Munich-like proposal: to stop the conflict immediately, even if it means accepting Ukraine’s territorial losses. The reasoning is always the same: emphasizing the immediate cessation of human losses while carefully hiding the far greater losses that this attitude would cause in the future…
Indeed, everyone knows very well today that making concessions to a bully or a sociopath always results in far greater losses later. Everyone knows perfectly well that if Ukraine was to cease fire, Putin would seize the opportunity to rebuild his army and attack even harder later: Finland, Poland, the Baltic States, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Japan... with his allies always bleating that no one should defend themselves. Not to mention the suffering of the inhabitants of Donbas and the abducted children (ranging from 600 to 20,000 according to estimates).
It is nonetheless reassuring to see that, even if support for Ukraine does not take the «hippie» form of the 1970s, there is still an unprecedented level of popular and state support worldwide. As proof, during the U.S. national holiday on July 4, 2023, there were more Ukrainian flags than American ones in the popular parade! I also saw them in France.
Furthermore, far from being the exclusive domain of a contesting left or an intellectual elite, this support comes from all social classes and political orientations (except, of course, extremists. In France, the national front, financed by putin, is keeping a low profile). Dozens of countries are sending weapons, and even private individuals are pooling funds to buy tanks, drones, or other equipment. Those who do not want to handle weapons send humanitarian aid, which is also highly welcome, or they host refugees. My hat goes off to Turkmenistan, which donated truckloads of... electrical transformers, thus neutralizing putin's campaign to destroy civilian infrastructure.
◀️ See this section, in the thread on Saint Dizier
(Permalink) Written in October 2016.
I only became aware late that we were at war with Algeria. Strictly speaking, I do not remember when or how I found out. But at eleven years old (1964), when we went there, I knew that this war had ended just before. And I also knew that France was at fault, having learned at the Jean Moulin school that France had been right to chase away the invaders in 1944.
Yes, the classical trick of teaching children to do the good, while doing the evil. All you gain is a generation which does not trust the system, the generation of May 1968 and of communities.
The reason why my memory has not recorded a fact of this importance is probably because, at the time, young children were kept away from politics. The only access we had was «the news» on the radio, and generally speaking we children did not understand anything about it, or did not listen at all. «The news» was one of those scary things reserved for adults, like drugs (tobacco and alcohol at the time), or Mom and Dad when they were alone in their room, making it clear to us that going there at that time would entail serious punishment.
So I have no personal anecdote to tell about this war. It was later, through my mother, that I learned that on several occasions the Saint Dizier air base had been put on alert, and all the personnel confined for several days, including my father, in the great anguish of women. These things culminated in the sociopathic coup attempt by salan and his terrible OAS, where nearby all the troops were put on alert. I remember hearing these names on the radio, or seeing them written on the walls, without knowing what they meant. In fact, we came close to a return to fascism in those days. And the only ones who avoided this was the army, which refused to follow salan, despite the humiliation of the withdrawal from Algeria. And De Gaulle, who, on this occasion, had to risk his person, by going to talk to potentially hostile officers and soldiers, some of whom had just tried to assassinate him (Petit Clamar attack). In more he was easy to spot: his head was above all the others, in a sea of kepis.
I also learned later from my mother that one of my uncles was the only survivor of an ambush, several vertebrae broken by the explosion of a mine under the truck he was driving, his thirty buddies chopped up by machine guns. All of them «malgré nous», slave soldiers forcibly enlisted... knowingly sent to a dangerous zone so that the big bosses could pass safely one hour later. Take advantage of this little window opened on the real world... you won't find this kind of stuff on Wikipedia. (strictly speaking, this episode is quite well-known, I have seen it mentioned several times, but not the plot behind)
However, I knew Algeria through Tout L'univers, and things naturally fell into place in my head as soon as I was more informed about the current events: Algeria was clearly not France. However, it was only as an adult that I learned about all the torture and atrocities committed by both sides (right-wing sources reporting Algerian atrocities, and left-wing sources reporting French atrocities. «Left» meaning they deserve slaps on the left cheek, and «right» on the right cheek. Tie them two by two for the treatment, it will be faster).
What bothers me today is the complicit silence about these atrocities, war crimes and genocide (deporting villages to desert areas without resources is equivalent to a genocide). Thus, in France as in Algeria, our children in the street pass near murderers, torturers and rapists, who go unpunished. This cowardly consensus of not denouncing any of them, and the blocking of any publication and investigation for fifty years, is equivalent to being an accomplice, by all the cowards who know and who have kept silent during all this time.
Hence the interest of sites like WikiLeaks to denounce all these bastards. Unfortunately WikiLeaks veeeeeery quickly fell into the trap of power, using their information to weigh in on electoral campaigns (Denigration against Hilary Clinton, United States 2016. An imbecility which cost we know), often in total disregard for the anonymity of the victims. Thus the ordinary citizen, expelled, dispossessed, raped, mutilated, tortured, deported, pedophiled, still today has only his eyes to cry.
And hence also my assertion that the war never had a single political motivation: it is pure sadistic amusement, a sort of «vacation» that sociopaths grant themselves from time to time to escape the pressure of normal society. If this was not true, then no one would cover them once peace returned: all the guilty would be put in prison or in psychiatric hospital. If anyone thinks I am wrong, he just has to publish the lists.
◀️ See this section, in the thread on Saint Dizier
(Permalink) Written in about in 2022
The Algerian War did not come out of nowhere. It followed centuries of Barbary piracy, based in Algiers, towards the European coasts. Tens of thousands to several million villagers living along the coasts, from Italy to Norway, were kidnapped and enslaved in Algeria, in as bad conditions as the Blacks in America. It was officially to put an end to this deplorable state of affairs that France finally conquered Algeria, even if a mainly colonial motivation is suspected. This conquest was however accompanied by atrocities (The «enfumades»: entire villages of innocent civilians smoked into the caves where they sought refuge) and the betrayal of Abd El Kader, imprisoned while he had been promised freedom if he surrendered. (Yes, we still hear this name in the History of France, but never the smoking or the broken promise) (Never Lalla Fatma N'Soumer either, lol, yet the exact equivalent of an Algerian Joan of Arc kicking the French out of Algeria. So even in France in 2023, the official History remains that of the winner, doesn't it?)
The colonization which followed was therefore hardly better than the Barbary era, with Algerians being considered second-class citizens, despised and kept away from the progress and wealth that France was supposed to bring them, I personally saw this mentality still in 1964. At the time, native Algerians were officially called «Muslims», so as not to allude to the fact that they were not considered French citizens, and therefore deprived of the corresponding rights! Yet the Algerians had helped France, they fed the Revolution, and they sacrificed themselves during the Second World War. But they were never thanked (see the film «Indigènes»). The Second World War also saw the use of Spanish refugees as slaves, to build the railway tracks south of Béchar. I saw these tracks when I was there, from Béchar to Abadla. They were never used, cut off at the first flood of the local wadis. They have since been dismantled, only the ballasts remain, and even entire sections have been swept away by the multiple wadis on the route, sometimes on hundreds of meters. Finally, the Oued Guir proved impassable, I saw this place several times, we had to cross on a track remade at each flood. Today, the Djorf Torba dam regulates the Guir, but it is rapidly filling with sand, so its effect will soon be nullified.
History and Wikipedia say that the Algerian War was intended to liberate Algeria from French occupation. I say that this is false: the real goal of the National Liberation Front was to organize sadomasochistic activities, including against the Algerians. Independence being only the storyline of this role-playing game. As proof, Morocco and Tunisia had gained independence shortly before, without violence. It was therefore possible in Algeria, without the «necessity» of sadomasochistic games. The latter are therefore indeed a choice, and their own justification. The situation of occupation only provided the storyline to organize their scenes, according to the marxist role-playing which allowed them to harness the frustrations of the Algerians, to receive blind and unconditional help from the USSR, and above all to play at accusing any innocent person of complicity. And there is an implacable proof of what I am saying: even before killing the first French soldier, the FLN had assassinated all the democratic thinkers in Algeria. So it was the misfortune of the Algerians that they wanted, not their freedom.
On the French side, the sociopaths immediately played the game, with all the scum that France had in poorly purged of Pétainism, adding more sadistic torture and murders, in the army (salan, massu, bigeard, etc.), the police (the unspeakable papon) and politics, with Tartuffes like Mitterrand, who dared to present himself as a «socialist» after having managed the «internal affairs»: deportation of thousands of civilians during the war, many having died of hunger in the desert. And it is clear that all these people were not SSC (Sensical, Safe, Consensual, the ethical bases of sadomasochistic games between consenting adults), which places them among the worst criminals, the kind to never let out of their cells. All people who shame France, especially when the subject is raised in other countries. But if the subject comes up in the discussion with foreigners, I say loud and clear that even as a Frenchman, I refuse to bear this shame personally.
And still I am not complaining: the generation just before mine was forced to participate in the Algerian war, under threat of being sequestered in a military fortress for years without knowing when they would get out. To take part in arrests, deportations of the population, in fear of injuries, death, emasculation. Many suffered to the point of being depressed. And for those who returned, a trauma that they are still forbidden to talk about fifty years later. One of my maternal uncles was the only survivor of an ambush, his back broken by the mine which exploded under the truck he was driving, his thirty friends chopped down with a machine gun. All of them «malgré nous», forcibly enlisted slave soldiers.
It must be understood that the generation of French slave soldiers in Algeria were born during the Nazi occupation, that they had experienced the deprivation, and that they heard throughout their adolescence the educational glorification of the Resistance and the Allies, and the shame of nazism (as I myself heard at the time, at the «Jean Moulin» school!). The problem they faced was that they were asked to do the same thing as the nazis! Hence a shame that few dare to talk about today. Worse, the people of this generation had no political or social thought system where to place this feeling, and flesh out a refusal. Movements like Action Non Violente or the Ark of Lanza del Vasto did try to organize a politically neutral conscientious objection, but they were far too few in number. The marxists did oppose this colonial war, but marxists truly ready to pay with their person (sequestered in a fortress for an indefinite period) are ultimately far fewer in number than at the demonstration.
It was only after the end of the Algerian War that De Gaulle granted the right to conscientious objection, freeing slave soldiers from the danger of being sent to some unjust war. Such a right does not seem to apply to volunteers. However, in the 2010s, during the execution of military assistance missions in North Africa, it emerged that those involved had the right not to execute an order if they considered that the order constituted an exaction or a violation of human rights! It is clear that the page on the «Algerian War» had been turned.
When I went to Algeria in 1964, two years after the end of hostilities, I found a poor country, but undergoing rapid reconstruction. Of course, with the money from oil and gas, the FLN could administer the country with a great generosity. However, they were often criticized for having built a «rent economy», based on revenues from oil exports, without having really created an industrial fabric like the one which makes up the enormous strength of Europe and the USA. Hence the resentment of the Algerians, who feel like they have been cheated of something. And even today in 2022, they feel that they do not really control their country. Plus the divisions with neighboring countries, Morocco and Tunisia, maintained by the Algerian government, while the Maghreb is clearly a cultural and economic unit, calling at least to a constructive union.
◀️ See this section, in the thread on Saint Dizier
This is how I personally experienced the immediate post-war Algeria. But this is not speaking of war, you will say. This is what is remarkable: this sub-chapter happens only two years after the atrocious Algeria war.
(Permalink) Written in December 2016.
These three years spent in Algeria remain among the most beautiful of my life, and a moving memory. The main reason of course is that Algeria is a cheerful and sunny country, of a fantastic beauty. The Sahara has long haunted my dreams, and the further south I went, the stranger and more purple the landscape was. Today I still dream of being able to return to Béchar. I probably would not find everything I had known there at the time, but I could visit a whole bunch of magnificent or strange places in the surrounding desert, of which my father's fear had deprived us, such as for example the strange Djebel Oreid, where one would expect to see a djinn from the Thousand and One Nights emerge. In any case I explored everything with Google Earth, more than a hundred kilometers around!
The other remarkable point is that I received very little mockery from my high school friends in Algeria (Almost all French, because we lived apart from the Algerians). These sociopathic attitudes were almost absent, allowing me to normally have friends and group activities, all things I was deprived of in the previous years in Saint Dizier and in the following years in Mont de Marsan, where I was the regular target of abnormal sociopathic attitudes ruining any collective life.
I could not say why things happened this way in Béchar especially. Was it our situation in a kind of golden ghetto, in a country which was theoretically hostile? I do not think so. There certainly was racism and distrust towards the Algerians, but against all the warnings, things always went well with them. I even find fantastic that a people to whom we did an atrocious war were not angry after us in the end: the Arab hospitality and kindness had immediately taken over.
Another explanation would be that adults who agreed to come and work in Algeria at that time were subject to a positive selection. This could be true for high school teachers, who were volunteers, or technical cooperation workers, and therefore already altruistic or willing to help the Third World. However, most of my classmates were the sons of military men. I do not think that the sons of soldiers are particularly better than others; on the contrary, my worst experience of social perversity was with them (at the Naval College in Brest).
Another explanation would be that sociopaths did not attack other French people, because they considered them as «friends», in front of a common «enemy», the Algerians. I do not think that this is the right explanation either: sociopaths have very recognizable behavioral tics, even when they want to be our friends. These tics being unconscious, they have difficulty hiding them. Even today that I know these tics, my memories do not show any. Even racism was not very visible in our ordinary life. In addition, some of us had relations with Algerians, due to their situation as technical cooperation workers. For example, one of my brothers had made a friend of the son of the director of the power plant, whose employees were Algerians. I once visited this place, which still exists today (2025), an astonishing garden in the middle of a dark factory in the style of the 1930s: 31°35'2.91"N, 2°13'54.97"W. We ourselves interacted several times with the Algerians: shopkeepers, restaurants, street vendors, etc. and there too, things always went well. Those who did not like Algerians did not dare to mention it in front of them anyway, because of the very unfavorable balance of power: in Béchar, the immigrants were us, ha ha ha!
In fact, I have no explanation: there simply was no organized sociopathy in Béchar, neither among the French children, nor among the adults, nor among the Algerians we met. There were certainly individual incidents, but they remained isolated, without spoiling the general atmosphere.
Added in October 2021: In fact, yes, there is one thing which correlates very well with mockery and other abnormal behavior: the absence of girls. Apparently sociopaths and other sick people find in girls their «natural inferiors», and therefore they would not feel the need to inferiorize other men. But if there are no girls, then their unhealthy compulsion to make someone inferior pushes them to «feminize» selected men. What is remarkable is that they all choose the same targets instantly, sometimes in a fraction of a second. This points to clues which are significant to them, but that normal people do not deem important, or which they even not notice. I speak more about these diseases in connection with the Lycée Victor Duruy. In Béchar, there were girls, although at the time I did not paid more attention to them than to male friends.
Added in November 2025: another very known cause is complacency by the authorities in charge of keeping the social peace. Either the agree with the sociopaths, or they are cowards, or they just think those disorders are normal.
I am definitivement not the only one to keep a moved memory of Béchar. Search for «Colomb-Béchar» on youtube, there are a lot of nostalgic videos, showing it nearby as it was when I was there.
So these three normal years make a clearing of light, between the dreary years of Saint Dizier of the past, and the dark years of backward Mont de Marsan. That said, I would most likely not find this atmosphere again if I returned to Béchar today. Moreover, the Algerians have violated several of the fantastic landscapes that had enchanted me, and that no one will ever see again.
◀️ See this section, in the thread on Saint Dizier
(Permalink) Written in October 2016
You will probably be surprised when reading this subtitle: the official history does not mention a nuclear war on these dates. And yet there were indeed deaths. As a matter of facts, what happened is just as serious as a declared war: the total radioactivity spread in the biosphere by all the nuclear bomb «tests» far exceeds the one of Chernobyl and Fukujima, and is equivalent to that of a «limited nuclear exchange» as envisaged by the war hawks of the Cold War in the 1950s-60s.
So, even if none of these «tests» directly targeted a city, the number of deaths (by radiation) is roughly the same. Indeed, if we count the deaths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only a minority died from the thermal or mechanical effects of the bomb: the others died from radioactivity, and continue to die today from genetic diseases. Well, most of them received high doses. But you should know that radioactivity does not «dissipate»: if we disperse it over a territory a thousand times larger, a given person receives a thousand times less, and therefore has a thousand times lower probability of dying from it. But since there are a thousand times more people in this territory a thousand times larger, the total number of deaths remains the same! It is just that they are more difficult to prove statistically. This is the well-known principle of «acceptable thresholds» of irradiation of people, widely used to hide the effects of nuclear power: when the deaths become too difficult to prove. Thus the total number of deaths from Hiroshima is much higher than the official figures, but difficult to calculate. This is what specialists call nuclear hormesis: below a certain threshold of radioactivity, the guilty are immune from prosecution. Well, above that too, we have noticed since.
These are the additional, uncounted deaths that the nuclear «tests» killed. Roughly speaking, between tens of thousands and millions, from cancer and leukemia, plus congenital malformations and genetic mutations affecting future populations in undetermined but immense numbers. So the fact that these «tests» did not directly targetted cities does not remove their qualification of crimes against humanity, indiscriminately targeting civilian populations. I would even say that, without an officially declared war, they do not even have the excuse of being «acts of war»: they are simply crimes, heinous, senseless crimes, exactly like a serial killer who would have fun shooting people at random.
Moreover, some tests, Starfish and K, were deliberate ecocides, aimed at disrupting the ionosphere and the Van Allen belts. These «small» tests already had serious effects on electrical grids (Hawaii) and satellites (Telstar). Large «tests» could blow up all the electrical and electronic circuits in the world, sending us back to the Middle Ages.
The most remarkable thing about this is that each test has killed (and continues to kill) indiscriminately in all the countries of the world, including those which carried them out, nullifying all their pseudo-political justifications, and leaving, clearly visible by contrast, only their true motives of sociopathic sadistic amusement.
A specific memory I have of this wartime atmosphere is a brochure «savoir pour vivre» (To know to be able to live), published by the civil protection in France, in the 1960s, two-tone black and orange, which described all the measures to take in the event of a nuclear war: have stocks of canned foods, «clean» the streets with water, paint the windows with Spanish white, bury contaminated objects to «get rid of them», learn the siren code, take iodine, and other things of this kind. These brochures are still visible on Google images. What is remarkable is that all this knowledge was so quickly forgotten by the very ones who claimed to «educate» us: during the Chernobyl affair, in France the only official measure was silence, dissimulation. In particular, no one received iodine! A criminal attitude, which probably cost thousands of deaths from thyroid cancer, and, in some particularly exposed regions of the Alps, produced serious problems in children who drank milk from the farm. There is, at the very least, endangerment of the lives of others.
Another point that few will mention, is that this madness of nuclear testing had been effectively stopped twice. But both times, it was a… French head of state who restarted this suicidal race:
-The 1958 treaty between the USA and the USSR put an end to the tests. But De Gaulle started French tests in 1961, claiming to be «independent» (from the USA). The Soviets were not fooled by this trick, considering that the treaty had been violated by objective allies of the US. So they resumed testing.
-The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1996 was violated by Chirac, claiming he needed to «calibrate his computer simulations» before stopping. This violation served as a pretext for India, Pakistan and North Korea to do their own tests. India and Pakistan were wise enough not to continue, but North Korea...
Today, the probability of a nuclear war is less. But with at least 9 countries known to have bombs (USA, Russia, China, France, England, Israel, India, Pakistan, North Korea) and several others smart enough not to do detectable tests (Iran), and even some billionaires with means to do so, the risk is still enormous. De Gaulle and Chirac bear a heavy responsibility for this situation, for having upset the fragile agreements protecting denuclearization. In 1958, we could still have said that nuclear bombs were nazi weapons, and bury them under the taboo. But how to do it now?
A small «detail» little known to the general public is that it is possible to test nuclear bombs without producing an explosion detectable from a distance. I won't say how, because it is too dangerous. But others have thought about it. In France, this was done by the CEA, south of the town of Pontfaverger-Moronvilliers, 49°13'52.1"N 4°19'05.8"E. Yes, «they» detonated mini-atomic bombs, at only 20km from Reims! The place is still irremediably polluted and forbidden today. We can imagine that many other countries did it too, including the USA according to Wikipedia, and several billionaires also have the means to have fun in this way. The Moronvilliers center was decided under Mitterrand (Yes, him. Are you surprised?), continued under Chirac and Sarkozy, and moved to Dijon under Hollande (Yes, him. Are you surprised that he wasn't just an extra?). The most criminal thing in the affair is to have irremediably polluted a fascinating site, a series of chalky hills and valleys covered with forest, an oasis of nature in the surrounding agricultural desert.
(Permalink) Written in August 2020
Why to talk about this mini-conflict, seemingly without any global significance, of the kind that took place dozens of times during those grim years? Because something quite unusual happened, unnoticed at the time, but which was the first sign of a profound transformation in the military mindset.
Basically, in 1961, Goa, Daman and Diu were the last Portuguese colonial outposts in India. But India, independent since 1947 and emboldened by its experience of war with Pakistan, was no longer willing to tolerate these vestiges of the past. Operation Vijay enabled it to recover these territories in only 36 hours and 52 deaths.
Goa was slumbering peacefully under the Portuguese rule, a place of vacation and sunshine, far from the dictatorship of Tomás and Caetano, which even failed to spoil the lives of its people. The small Portuguese garrison was wishing for only one thing: not to be transferred to the terrible colonial wars which were raging at the time in Angola, Mozambique, and Portuguese Guinea (Today Guinea-Bissau).
So they were very upset when several Indian battalions showed up at their door, vastly superior in number, determined, battle-hardened, equipped with modern weapons and powerful artillery, demanding that they leave immediately. Yes, India, it is Gandhi, but not only.
In short, for the Portuguese, it was surrender or death. And a completely pointless death anyway: India's vastly superior forces left them no chance of saving anything. And they knew that anyway colonialism was being phased out. But they had to give the impression that they had put up a fight. Not too much, though, because the Hindus were not joking around. So I don't know exactly what happened, they will not tell, but I suspect that the two sides must have pointed out deserted areas to each other, so that they could make hear their cannons without hurting anyone. The fact is that these battles resulted in few casualties (52 in total), and the Portuguese surrendered after 36 hours. This was the decision of Governor General Manuel António Vassalo e Silva, in order to spare civilian lives. He also refused to apply the scorched earth policy ordered by Caetano: to destroy Goa rather than leave it in Indian hands.
Of course, Caetano was furious, reproaching his soldiers for not putting up enough resistance. The problem is that even when you are an ugly stunted dictator with big black-rimmed glasses, you should never step on your soldiers' toes. Indeed, power is only a convention, and Caetano was to learn this a few years later during the Carnation Revolution in 1974, when his military finally deposed him. We will see the continuation of this Fil, which led to the transformation of the armed forces underway in the 2020s. It began with a minor conflict of seemingly little importance.
We have not heard anything about Goa in the TV since then. What happened was that India applied its ethnic policies there. Horrible, you might think, given the meaning these words had during the wars in Yugoslavia. But Goa is in India, and these words have an entirely different meaning there: each people is allowed to live as it sees fit, with broad local powers, state by state, and even ethnic group by ethnic group, religion by religion. And Goa remained a very Western mini-paradise, which is today (2020) one of the states of India with the highest living standard.
Shortly after Operation Vijay, Goa was once again to play a global catalytic role. We have all heard that the Hippies fleeing the West had gathered in Kathmandu. There even is a film denigrating the Hippies, «Les chemins de Katmandou». In fact, they were received rather lukewarmly in Nepal (according to a Nepalese friend of mine), except for those who invested themselves in the Kopan Monastery, which was just starting up at the time. In reality, most Hippies went to Goa, where they had, in a way, spiritual India and Western comfort in the same place. Indeed, many Portuguese had stayed, and they were then considered by India as an ethnic group among the others, with their own rights. More, 450 years of Portuguese occupation had left deep traces in the minds of the people: the laws in Goa were much more favorable to Westerners and Hippies than in deep India.
But the joyful Hippie egregore quickly faded away, amid drugs, tramps and denigration. More the difficulty to truly live an ideal without the spiritual means to transform our conditioned minds. As a result, many Hippies returned to the West. However, they brought back with them spirituality, yoga, Hindu music and religion.
And those who stayed? They kinda blended into the landscape, practicing Hatha Yoga and adopting Hindu religions, especially the worship of Shiva. Therefore Goa is probably the place where the cosmic concepts of the New Age emerged (along with some other influences such as Bhagwan’s pseudo-ashram, to whom we owe Deuter, or Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who inspired a Beatles album). The New Age of the 1980s was a search for spontaneous spirituality, which did not trust the major religious institutions. It also was a very assertive musical style. (The sectarian influences mentioned above explain the flaws of the New Age, especially the devastating «to each his own truth», a nasty saying most likely signed Bhagwan, we can even hear him snickering every time someone comes out with this ideological virus). As a result, the New Age artistic style continues today and is spreading in several directions. But since the 1990s, authentic spiritual seekers turned away from the rotting remains of the New Age and other «new spiritualities», returning to time-tested spiritual paths: Hatha Yoga, Taoism, Buddhism, etc.
The arrival of electronic musical instruments in the hands of these former Goa Hippies was to have unexpected consequences: the emergence of a style of music called «Goa Trance», providing a backdrop for meditative reveries combining Shiva mantras, techno rhythms, and science fiction sounds. Yes, for those who don't know, Trance is religious music. Just like Negro Spirituals or Reggae. Which may explain why it is censored in France, ha ha ha ha!!!
Then this style migrated to... Israel. Indeed, young conscripts from this country are often sent on dream vacations to Goa... they brought the style back with them and made Israel the second home of Goa Trance. This is how the author of «Sol», Static Movement, aka Shahar Shtrikman, ended up on my Facebook friends list for this superb orchestration. Okay, it is not opera, lol, but I would like to hear singers performing Mozart or Wagner with warm, vibrant voices like the woman in «Sol», instead of squeaky voices which scare everyone away. At your orchestras, guys.
In more, the voice of «sol» touches me personally: one of my friends, the oumzé of the Vajra Yogini Institute, has the same voice.
(Permalink) Written in August 2020
When news broke of a military coup in Portugal, we were still reeling from the sociopathic coup in chile, which was still going on at the time. And for everybody, a military coup was synonymous with massacres, torture, death camps, bans on artists, bans on modern mathematics, etc. Above all, when the military held power, they never let it go.
So the first reaction was one of sadness and indignation: what, weren't they already fascist enough in that country?
So when, over the following days, news began to arrive about what had really happened, we were incredulous. The military wanted to restore democracy? A first in the entire Solar System. They were massively supported by the people, instead of massacring them? They must have been special military, who truly serve their country, instead of blindly obeying their government.
And this is what is interesting, and which tends to becoming more general today in 2020.
Since 1933, Portugal had been stuck in a dictatorship which left no room for other voices: single-choice elections, censorship of artists, the usual sadomasochistic practices by the political «police», and all the usual folklore of Zorglub's emulators. But above all, Portugal had been engaged for more than twenty years in a rearguard fight, as futile as hopeless, against the decolonization of its African possessions: Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau). The official doctrine was that these countries were an important source of income for Portugal. But over the years, the wars had ended up costing much more than these countries were bringing in! Their only justification then remained the stupid stubbornness of dictators, incapable of changing their minds or even evaluating the results of their decisions. Decolonization was happening anyway, even without wars, simply because of changing attitudes: many African countries gained independence without conflict, simply because it was the right thing to do. And where this change was not enough, there was strong Soviet military support (the «Cubano» in the film «The Gods Must Be Crazy»).
The Portuguese military also realized the futility of a conflict they would inevitably lose when African (or Soviet) forces had only them left to deal with.
But they had also learned the lesson of the Goa affair:
Their stunted dictator did not liked them (and he was ugly to boot).
Yes, the military also needs love, ha ha ha ha!
These ideas had been brewing for years in the Portuguese military academies. Until the day they remembered that power is nothing more than a convention. And that a convention has exactly zero points of defense against any weapon, even a simple slingshot. They organized themselves as the MFA (Armed Forces Movement). Everything was ready for a coup d'état, a simple demonstration of strength and organization, which took place in a single day, without any violence (except for a shoot out in the street by madmen from the political «police», which killed four people).
The massive popular support for their army tends to show that many people already thought like them, but could not express themselves publicly. They were simply fed up with their gray dictator, who kept their country in the nothing, while everywhere else in Europe abundance and freedom were flourishing. I remember that the first signs of this had already appeared in the Alentejo, where peasants had fought against the latifundia (large landowners who reduced their farmers to poverty). The military had kicked off their movement with the banned song «Grândola, Vila Morena», which commemorated the events in the Alentejo. With such a curtain-raiser, there was no doubt that they were serving the Portuguese people.
What was almost unprecedented about the Carnation Revolution was that the military did not seek power. In fact, after establishing an essential public safety committee, they quickly organized genuine democratic elections.
At this stage, things unfortunately went not so well: the communists claimed to support the movement, but they changed their position several times. (This is more common than we may think among armchair revolutionaries: it is ultimately much more comfortable to criticize others than to do the work oneself, ha ha ha!). This erratic direction broke the popular momentum of the movement, which was already frowned upon by European and American governments, who feared too radical a transformation of Portugal towards greater freedom, social welfare and less capitalism. The military, for its part, no longer wanted to interfere with the democratic process. So in the end, it was a «socialist» government (a sweet left, capitalism painted in pink which does not hurt the exploiters) which emerged from this troubled period. At their inauguration, they were presented with a satellite photo of Portugal by the American embassy (still a rarity at the time). It certainly was a very aesthetic gift, but also a way of saying, «Don't go too far, we are watching you». Demands for the redistribution of land from the latifundia in the Alentejo were quietly stifled. «Do not dream», as the media say when they bully the people.
Today, Wikipedia denigrates the Carnation Revolution by saying that it was «left-wing». This is a lie, one of Wikipedia's countless neutral, sourced and credible lies: the MFA never took a position in the right-left political spectrum. The socialists only came to power two years later, through popular vote, and all they did was reap the rewards that the military had sown.
Much like the Arab Spring in 2010, the Portuguese Revolution spread to other southern European countries, bringing an end to the dictatorships in Spain and Greece. But the Carnation Revolution remains the initiator of an unprecedented movement, where the military served peace instead of senseless conflict. The next step was to be the méthode française, during the conflict in Somalia. Today, even the American army was inspirited.
The Portuguese Revolution also served Africa: the Portuguese military recognized the liberation movements in these countries and collaborated with them towards a democratic transition. Of course, it was not always easy, given the multiple conflicting guerrilla movements and retrograde coups. But the Portuguese Revolution removed the last external source of violence from Africa, paving the way for an independent and peaceful Africa.
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