Politics V: Guns and Democracy

Democracy means rule of the people (= from Greek demokratia, demos = people, kratos = rule).

Ruling means to have the power to enforce one's will, if necessary against any resistance. So in a democracy the people is supposed to be able to enforce their will in the state against any resistance from a particular elite or the government.

While power was based on physical strength in a primitive society, today it is based on firepower. Those who have more firepower, have the power. There is no other power, which is not derived from control and ownership of weapons. Nothing else matters when one is faced with superior weapons. The one with the gun is the one with the power. He can decide not to use his gun and voluntarily take orders from an unarmed man, but this is only his decision. And his decision is the only one that counts. Whatever freedom he may have granted his unarmed opponent, he can take it away at any time. 

Now let's have a look at modern so called "democracies". Since they are supposed to be ruled by the people, we should be able to assume that it is the people who hold the superior firepower. In this case the people would have the power to make the ultimate decisions and remove and install governments at any time. 

We all know that this is far from true. There are strict regulations on the possession of firearms and only the government owns all significant modern weapons. Although these weapons are carried by individual soldiers and policemen, they are not their property and only issued to them under very restricted conditions for a limited time.

Therefore it is the government that rules the state, not the people. The word "democracy" is nothing but a lie. 

There is an odd ritual called "elections", in which the people are made to believe that they are asked for their opinions and are free to cast a vote and thereby exercise some kind of power. But the truth is that whatever the people vote, does not matter. The options that can be voted for are strictly limited. In practice this means that all established parties have exactly the same program. And no matter who wins the elections, everything stays the same. A typical example are the Democrats and the Republicans in the U.S. There is no real difference between these two parties. Membership in a particular party is independent from the political stance of a politician, and nothing in U.S. policy changes, whether a Democrat or a Republican is U.S. president.

In some rare occasions, when this system of limited options doesn't work just perfect yet, it can happen that the people votes for a candidate that is not in agreement with the ruling class. Such unfortunate cases are either solved by election fraud or the result of the elections is simply ignored. Because it is those who have the guns, not those who have the votes, who have the true power. Those with the guns can either decide to do what the majority voted for, if it is in agreement with their interests, or they simply don't do it. And there is nothing the voters can do against it.

This is not just a theoretical case, there are lots of examples in recent history, that election results are simply ignored, when the people with the guns don't agree with the outcome. The takeover of the Egyptian military was just the last example, although it might be disputed whether it reflects the will of the majority of the people or not. Other examples are Zimbabwe, where President Mugabe simply stayed in office after he lost the elections in 2008. Nobody cares about election results as long as he holds the weapons, because only weapons are power.

Power is based on weapons and only on weapons. In modern so called "democracies" unarmed people might have the impression that they are not oppressed, because the government does not interfere with their affairs. But the only reason for it  is that their interests don't conflict with the government's interests. It is a false freedom, because it is based on the condition that the opinion of the people coincides with the opinion of the government. This granted freedom can be taken away at any moment, if the government wants. The people are slaves to the whims of the government as long as they are outgunned by the government. Their opinion is irrelevant and they are totally powerless.

This situation has neither anything to do with freedom nor with democracy.

In a democracy, the people must have the ultimate power in the state. The citizens must have more and better guns than the police force. They must be able to force the government out of office by their superior firepower, not just by votes. Elections are no expression of power, they are only opinion polls to predict the outcome in case the weapons decide.

To establish a democratic state, the police needs to be disarmed as a first step. Perhaps they can be allowed to carry a revolver with six rounds for their self-defense. But automatic guns must only be owned by private citizens. If these automatic weapons should be carried around all the time is a different question. It is not the job of the police or government employees to threaten the citizens.

In these rare cases that more firepower is needed against a criminal gang, the police can ask the citizens for assistance and establish an armed militia of free citizens for this purpose. There is no need to keep a standing heavily armed police force. A policeman is not the superior of the citizen. His duty is to serve and protect. And nobody wants a servant who is better armed than himself.

A system of government is not defined by elections or other empty rituals or spurious words, it is only defined by the possession of weapons. Who has the weapons, rules the country. In a monarchy the king owns all the guns. In an oligarchy it is the upper class who has control over the weapons. And in a democracy, it must be the people who have the guns.

Using this criterion we can for example see that the United States of America is not a democracy. It is a monarchy. President is just a title of the monarch who controls all the weapons in the country for a period of 4 years and cannot be removed from power by the will of the people (only by the will of the oligarchy under certain circumstances).

If we want a democracy, all weapons must be taken away from the police and returned into the hands of the people.

What is Islam?

There is a profound misunderstanding about the term Islam. It is often by its members and outsiders likewise considered to be a religion. While there is no doubt that religion is part of it, it is not its primary feature. The current conflict between Islam and other cultures is not based on different beliefs, but on cultural characteristics, which have no religious justification and can neither be found in the holy scripture of Islam, the so called "quran", nor in the biographic anecdotes of its founder Mohammed, the so called "ahadith".

There is no "divine commandment" to grow a beard, to wear Arab-style clothes, to cover women in black coats, to speak Arabic or whatever else distinguishes the typical muslim from other human beings. Why would muslims pray towards Saudi Arabia knowing that their god doesn't actually live there, but is supposed to be omnipresent? All these characteristics of Islam are simply not of a religious nature.

Some quote the rejection of the divinity of Jesus and the concept of trinity as a proof of Islam being distinct from Christianity. But christian beliefs are not homogeneous. Many christians like Jehovah's Witnesses also reject these concepts. Muslims have far more in common with Catholicism than many other christian sects like the Church of the Latter Day Saints have with Catholicism. 

Muslims are christians. They are just one branch of it like Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Jehova's Witnesses, Nestorianism etc. Mohammed did not found a new religion, he brought Arian Christianity to Arabia. He was for Arabia, what was Saint Patrick was for Britain. Since he was illiterate he could not bring the original christian bible with him but had to retell episodes from it as he remembered them, which were later compiled into the "quran". Essentially the quran is a collection of bible comments. The book itself has no chronological structure and remains incomprehensible, if the reader has not read the bible before. Without knowledge of the bible stories, a reader of the quran would have no idea what its statements refer to. There is nothing new revealed in the quran, which could not already be found in the bible with small inaccuracies about details, where Mohammed's memory apparently failed (e.g. confusion of Ismael with Isaac).

However the conflict between Islam and the christian world is not about those religious details, it is about culture. It is about the role of women in society, about behavior code and laws, in short about the so called "shariah", the islamic code of laws. And laws are not a matter of religion, they are a matter of politics. Therefore the conflict between Islam and the rest of the world is a political one, not a religious one.

Many particularities of Islam like the pilgrimage to Mecca or the Arabic name "al-Lah" for their god were the result of a political compromise between Mohammed and Abu Sufyan, the leader of the Quraysh tribe that ruled Mecca in order to negotiate the surrender of the city. The Quraysh did not want to lose their income through pilgrims that visited the pagan shrine kaaba. So the Quraysh gave up all other gods apart from their supreme god al-Lah and forced Mohammed to include the kaaba into his state religion.

If Islam is no religion, so what is it?

Islam is definitely a culture. it is the Arab culture to be precise. The term "Islam" means submission and it refers to the submission under the rule of the Arab conquerors who submitted the entire Middle East in the 7th century. "Muslim" can be translated as "one who submits", and it means he submits to the Arab rule. Neither "Islam", nor "muslim" are religious terms. Arabs call their religion "deen"  Deen is sometimes wrongly translated as meaning any religion in general. But the term deen does not include Buddhism, Hinduism or Paganism. They are called "shirk", not "deen". Deen only refers to the religion of Mohammed. And this includes Christians and Jews, which are together with the muslims called "People of the Book". "Book" hereby refers to the bible, not to the quran. So Mohammed and his contemporaries were quite aware that they were part of the one christian religion. There is even a hadith (anedote from the life of Mohammed), where the pagan temple guard Sulami refers to the advancing muslim army as "christians" [Ishaq, 565]. Islam was only meant to be a political term referring to the subjugated peoples. When Mohammed's contemporaries referred to their religion, they called it "deen", when they referred to the political dominion of the Arab tribes they called it Islam.

Islam is Arab culture imperialism. It is the way how Arabs spread their hegemonic power over the world. The goal is submission to Arab supremacy. Muslims have to speak Arabic, to adopt Arab clothes, Arab customs.and Arab laws. They have to show reference to the homeland of Arabia during daily prayers and pay tribute to the principal shrine of the Arabs during a pilgrimage. It is not a matter of faith, it is a matter of loyalty to Arabia. 

You become a muslim by swearing a loyalty oath to Mohammed, the first leader of the Arabs who united their tribes. This loyalty oath is called "shahadah". It is not sufficient to believe in al-Lah, who is considered to be the same as the christian and Jewish god. This only gives you the inferior "dhimmi" status, which means having to pay tribute to the Arab overlords and not being allowed to bear arms. Being a muslim is only a matter of loyalty. The faith does not count. If you don't swear the loyalty oath to the first Arab leader, you cannot be trusted in the eyes of the Arab imperialists.

Different Concepts of States

The Western world makes a huge mistake when categorizing Islam as a religion. It is something quite different. Its nature is political. It is not a religion, it is a nationality.

To understand the concept of muslim as nationality, we have to look at the history of our modern concept of a state. If we say "state" we mean a nation state. This is a concept that has come up with the "Westphalian System" in the 17th century after the 30-Years-War. A state became a territorial unit that included all human beings within its border. People were subject to the laws of the territory where they were. They became members of the state by birth in its territory (ius solis) or by being the off-spring of somebody born in its territory (ius sanguinis). The nation state is limited by its territory. It is a territorial state. A person travelling into the territory of another state doesn't take his laws with him. He becomes subject to the laws of the state in whose territory he is.

Before this concept of a nation state, there was a different concept of state, the "nation of personal loyalties" (German: Personenverbandsstaat). It is typical for tribal or feudal communities. A person belongs to a tribe or to his feudal lord, no matter in which territory his tribe moves. This kind of state does not include a particular territory, it includes people. As a member of this state, you remain always a subject of its laws, no matter where you go.

This is the concept of state that Islam as a nation is based on. A muslim is subject to islamic shariah law, no matter where he goes and in which nation state's territory he resides. Belonging to Islam as a nation supersedes all modern (Westphalian) concepts of nationality.

It needs to be understood that the nationality of a muslim cannot be French, American, Egyptian, Lebanese or whatever. His nationality is muslim. A muslim cannot have any other nationality, and he will only obey to the laws of his nation, the nation of Islam. The concept of "nations of personal loyalties" was common in the time when Islam as a nation was born. And Islam has not adjusted its understanding according to the Westphalian System. Islam remains a Personenverbandsstaat.

If we understand this, we will understand why muslims behave as they do, why apostasy is considered treason and why it is often incompatible and incomprehensible for outsiders. If we keep thinking of Islam as a religion instead of a nation, we will never understand the nature of the problem with Islam.

Practical Consequences

We have to understand that Islam is a nationality, not a religion. Muslims are christians but belong to the nation of Islam. Islam is not identical with a religion, but it has a state religion, which is a form of Arian Christianity.

Muslims cannot have any other citizenship but Islam. This means nobody can be a French Muslim or a Nigerian Muslim. He is either French, Nigerian or Muslim. 

Muslims are a state on their own and have their own laws, their own language, their own writing, and their own traditions. They will not obey to the laws of other nations. The islamic ummah (community of all muslims) should organize in a way so they can issue their passports to their citizens. Other citizenships and passports need to be revoked. 

Since muslims take their laws with them and will not submit to national laws, this has to be taken into consideration when interacting with them. Since different sets of laws apply to citizens of nation states and citizens of "nations of personal loyalties", interactions become quite difficult. Rules for such interactions need to be established from case to case and otherwise must be avoided. A disengagement and segregation between citizens of these totally different concepts of states will be necessary. Muslims must be assigned certain zones where they can live according to their laws, but they should not be allowed to leave these zones as long as they don't become citizens of a nation state and formally resign their loyalty towards Islam (i.e. Arabia). Otherwise a conflict between incompatible sets of law cannot be avoided.

Muslims belong to the Arab nation under the definition of a "nation of personal loyalties" and they should be treated as such. Outside of Greater Arabia they are foreigners and should not be allowed to hold another passport.

Politics IV: Property

The justification of the existence of a state is that it is a social contract (→ Rousseau) among its citizens in order to protect their physical integrity and their property from from possible hostilities among them. Therefore the main principle of every state has to be the protection of its citizens against physical harm and to defend their property.

In this post we will have a closer look at the concept of property.

Property means that the proprietor can dispose of his property in any form he wishes and that he is the supreme authority over it.

Unfortunately this concept has been thoroughly undermined by the modern state. The state itself claims supreme authority over any property making it effectively the real proprietor of every property in its territory. This idea is not only held by the last communist states, but also by supposed capitalist states who claim to respect the property of their citizens. The truth is, they don't.

No state has the right to interfere with whatever a citizen does with his property. A citizen neither needs a permission nor a licence for whatever he wants to do with it. Requiring any kind of business licence, construction permission is illegitimate. No law can be established over the property of a citizen, because the proprietor is the ultimate law-giving instance over his property. The sovereignty of the proprietor supersedes the sovereignty of the state in this matter. A state that does not respect this principle is illegitimate.

Another important issue is the concept of "intellectual property", which includes copyright, patents and so on. This concept is in contradiction of the concept of material property. 

There can only be one owner of an item, not a material owner and a intellectual owner. If an item is lawfully acquired, it becomes the sole property of the one who acquired it. There cannot be an intellectual proprietor else telling him what he is allowed to do with his property and what not. With the sale of an item the previous owner has ceased any claims and property rights over it. If he did not wish this to happen, he should not have sold the item in the first place.

Example: If a music CD is purchased, it becomes the sole property of the buyer. He can do whatever he wants with it. He may listen to it, he may make backup copies and he may allow friends to listen to it and give copies to his friends. If he was not allowed to do this, he would not be the proprietor.

The concept of "intellectual property" is not only incompatible with material property and therefore practically inapplicable, it is furthermore a major obstacle for technological progress.

Under current patent law inventors cannot build on existing ideas, if they have been patented. They have somehow to reinvent the wheel in order to improve an item. Patent law suits have slowed down the entire IT sector. "Intellectual property" has become a big business that allows to make money without producing anything. It is such a big business that the state has been bribed to defend the interests of the big intellectual property holders, and they have formed powerful syndicates to abolish the concept of material property. Today there are few crimes, which are as strictly persecuted and with such long jail terms as copyright infringements. For copyright infringement you can be imprisoned for 20 years and more and authorities will hunt you down all over the world. It is much easier to escape punishment as a murderer as for copyright infringement.

A further negative side-effect of  "intellectual property" is that the quality of its products is declining significantly. Every intellectual product that is only produced with the intention to make the maximum possible amount of  money from it, has lost value in itself.

A book should be written because an author has to tell something. With the current copyright business, it is only written, because the author tried to guess what the readers would like to read, so he can sell more copies. The author has no message at all. He cannot even afford to have a message, because this message might offend some of his readers and therefore diminish the market that he can reach with his book.

The same is true for the movie and the music industry.A movie cannot afford to be controversial or surprising. It has to target the whole audience and it has to have all the usual elements in it.that each of these audiences expect including special effects, happy end, family values, things that can later be turned into merchandise etc. The magnitude of these project is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. When there is so much money involved in the marketing of intellectual property, nobody can afford any experiments. Everything has to be according to reliable patterns that have formerly proved success. So instead of new movies we get sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots etc.

In the computer industry commercial software has not the main purpose to be useful, but to sell more. They have become marketing tools and are generally inferior to similar software which has been produced without "intellectual property" involved like open source products.

Intellectual property must be abolished. It undermines the concept of real property and it is responsible for stagnation and a decline in quality.

Politics III: State and Religion

One of the major absurdities of modern human societies are the concept of "Freedom of Religion" and "Separation of Church and State".

Religion is a term, which summarizes every kind of irrational human behavior. It is the antonym of education. When this relic of infantile behavior remains in adult human beings, it becomes a mental disorder.

How can a mental disorder claim freedom to be practiced? Freedom of Religion is essentially not different from "freedom of being schizophrenic" or "freedom to remain illiterate". Why should a state protect such aberrations or deficiencies of the human mind?

It is the duty of the state to encourage its citizens to seek education. This can be done by opening institutions of education like schools and universities to the public. Some states even provide free education to their citizens. But a school where religion is taught is not a school. Religion is the negation of everything education stands for. Students are supposed to acquire knowledge in schools and to learn methods of rational thinking. Religion does the opposite. It opposes and denies knowledge and discourages rational thinking. It is diametrically opposed to the efforts of a school.

The state therefore needs to protect children whose judgment can easily be influenced either in a positive or in a negative way from such harmful influences like religion, which could seriously threaten their mental health.

A school that permits the presence of religious teachings in its curriculum or religious symbols in its buildings and facilities is no school. And a state that permits them has failed its citizens and especially its future generation - its children.

Freedom of religion is no human right, because it is no individual right in its current definition. It is a violation of human rights, because it gives privileges to religious organizations so that they can break the laws and disrespect the individual rights of its members.

In the name of freedom of religion children are physically mutilated (circumcision) and coerced into boring and absurd rituals. Neither their human rights nor their dignity are respected. Therefore freedom of religion is not only no human right, but a gross violation of them. If privileges of religious organizations are protected by a constitution, it is a proof that the whole concept of human rights is not respected in this state.

Of course no citizen can be banned from believing whatever he wants and to practice whatever he wants in private. But this is not necessarily the case in public where it might become a nuisance for others (e.g. prayer in public places). When religions demand exceptions from laws, this is incompatible with the rule of law.

There are numerous examples where religious privileges are used to break laws and to undermine the principles of any legitimate state:

• Physical mutilation of the genitals of children
• Disrespect of animal protection laws by practicing ritual slaughter
• Noise pollution by church bells and loudspeakers from mosques
• Coercion to force certain dress codes on adolescents

Privileges like these violate the principle of equality before the law and are unacceptable. A state that grants privileges to religious organizations is illegitimate.

The separation of church and state is one example of such illegitimate privileges. There can be no separation or non-interference between church and state. This means there can be no separate realm for religious institutions to practice their unlawful traditions. The church, which is named here representatively for all religious institutions, must remain below the state authority and has to obey to the law like any other citizen.

A state has to be committed to rationalism and should therefore not recognize any religious institution.

Religion is a permanent cause of intolerance, violence and social disorder. It does not respect state authority and the rule of law. It should therefore have no place in a modern state.

Therefore the only right that might be granted to adult religious people is not to be reeducated by force. But tolerance towards religion should not go any further.

Politics II: Marriage

Recently the topic of same-sex marriages has become more and more popular. Many countries have changed their family laws in order to allow homosexual couples to be able to marry just like heterosexual couples. For some it is an advancement towards equality and against discrimination based on sexual orientation. For others it undermines the basic principles on which human society is built on.

This controversy is caused by the fact that marriage has a totally different meaning for people depending on their educational and cultural background.

Marriage as Partnership or Slavery?

In the Western society marriage means a kind of partnership between two people. It is historically derived from Hellenic/Roman and Germanic customs that paired one man and one woman together for reproduction purposes. Following the frequent contact among different civilizations, this European understanding of marriage has been paralleled with a completely different phenomenon in Middle Eastern and African societies. 

Such a concept of partnership between a man and a woman did not exist there. But the concept of slavery existed there. And women were considered natural slaves. They were purchased and became part of the household of their owner. Depending on personal wealth a master could have either one or many female slaves.

When Europeans made contact with these cultures, they misunderstood the nature of this relationship and mistranslated it as marriage. What was translated "wife" into English actually meant "female slave". This mistake in translation is first of all visible in the fact that for these cultures it was quite natural that a man could purchase as many women as his wealth allowed, while no female slave could of course have several masters. But even this observation did not make Europeans reconsidering their wrong translation, so up to the present day female slavery is totally legal in Arab and African countries, because it is not translated as such. However women are still exchanged against a certain amount of money or cattle and nobody considers this to be ethically wrong or thinks of human trafficking.

Even in the grammar of Bantu languages, we can still see how this misunderstanding is based on a wrong translation.

In Swaheli the sentence "Ali marries Sheila" means "Ali alimwoa Sheila".

So we should assume that "Sheila marries Ali" would mean "Sheila alimwoa Ali." But this is not the case.

The correct sentence is "Sheila aliolewa na Ali". "Aliolewa" is actually the passive form of "alimwoa" So the literal translation into English is "Sheila was married by Ali". It is grammatically impossible that a woman marries a man, she can only be married by a man.

The reason is that the verb "-oa" doesn'Ät mean "to marry" in the first place. It means "to purchase a slave girl".

Therefore the correct English translation for "Ali alimwoa Sheila" is "Ali purchases Sheila". And "Sheila aliolewa Ali" is "Sheila is purchased by Ali." It is quite logical that you cannot say Sheila purchases Ali, because Sheila is the slave, and a slave girl doesn't buy her master.

This is the actual understanding of "marriage" in many non-Western cultures. It is not a mutual relationship between two equal partners. It is the relationship between a master and a slave, two different roles that are not equal in any way.

This is why same-sex marriage is so radically opposed in those primitive patriarchal societies. It is unthinkable that two persons of the same gender could marry, because who would be the master and who would be the slave? A marriage has to be an unilateral relationship between two complementary social roles.

But even in Western countries there is a strong opposition against same-sex marriage, but mostly by religious conservative persons. The reason for it is obvious: Their understanding of marriage is based on the bible, which is a scripture of Middle Eastern, not European origin. Therefore the bible doesn't have the European concept of marriage as a partnership, but marriage as a master/servant-relationship.

Biological Concept of Marriage

Another argument against same-sex marriage is based on biology. Its main purpose is considered to be reproduction. Therefore it has to be between a man and a woman. The nuclear family is supposed to be the basic reproductive unit of the human society. This nuclear family is believed to consist of two parents (father and mother) and the children. This idea is based on the biological model that the father produces sperm cells and the mother produces egg cells. The fusion of the sperm cell and the egg cell becomes an embryo, which eventually develops into a child made of the two cells from both parents, mother and father.

Unfortunately this model is based on a misunderstanding of the fertilization process. The zygote (embryo cell) is not the result of the fusion of two cells (sperm and ovum). It is only the egg cell that develops into the embryo after the sperm cell injects its genetic data into it. The sperm cell itself dies after this process. The resulting embryo does not contain a single molecule from its father. All of its substance including all cell organelles are product of the mother. What remains from the original paternal chromosomes are only copies of their DNA sequence. The original DNA gets lost during the further development of the embryo, either metabolized or left in the placenta cells. There is no material link between the father and the child. They have only genetic information in common.

In other words the father only has the the copyright of a little less than 50% of the genetic information of the child. He makes no physical contribution to the child.

To fully understand what this means we have to take a closer look at the following situation:

If one of two monozygotic male twins impregnates a woman and she gives birth to a child, then both twins are equally fathers of the child. The one twin who had intercourse with the woman is not "more father" than his twin brother who might not even know the woman. The child has approx. 50% of the genetic information of these twins without any difference between them. There is no way to determine, which of the twins was the one who had sexual intercourse with the woman. There is in fact no biological distinction between these two fathers.

We have to understand that the term "father" is an abstract concept. It does not refer to a physical link between father and child. It only means that the father has provided about 50% of the genetic information of the child. He contributed information, not physical substance.

A child has actually only one parent - the mother.

Therefore in a biological sense the nuclear family only consists of mother and children, no father.

The single mother/child family therefore reflects much more the biological background than the father/mother/child family, which is only a cultural construct. And in many countries the single mother/child family becomes more and more the reality in the society.

This is the true basic unit of the human society.There is no biological justification to include a father in the nuclear family unit. The laws of our society should reflect this biological reality. Children belong to their mother, and their mother only. There is no biological justification to grant any privileges or authority to fathers. And therefore marriage between a father and the mother of a child is totally meaningless.

The relationship between a man and a woman should not be subject to any law. And it should not be allowed that anybody can claim any legal privileges from such an arrangement.

Why Marriage?

We have seen that marriage between a man and a woman has no biological justification. Furthermore we have seen that the concept of marriage has been abused to justify ethically questionable practices like female slavery. Marriage is therefore an immoral concept that is incompatible with human dignity and has been instrumental for the institutionalized oppression of women and children. It is the cause of many ills in our society. It should therefore be abolished.

It is unacceptable that our modern state recognizes this primitive and immoral practice.

Marriage should not be extended to same-sex couples. It should be outlawed even for heterosexual couples.

Politics I : No Victim - No Crime

There are many legal definitions of crimes depending on the different jurisdictions. Since these definitions are different, they are apparently arbitrary and invalid as universal definition or general principle.

In fact every human being knows quite well, what is a crime without the need of arbitrary codes of law that are only locally valid. 

Universal Definition of Crime:
Crime is the initiation of violence or the threat thereof.

Definition of Violence:
Violence is causing physical or material harm to somebody (victim) without his/her consent.

These definitions cannot be disputed even by a criminal. For example a thief would not dispute that theft constitutes a crime and argue that it should not be persecuted, because he trusts that the property that he acquires by his illegal act will later be protected as long as his illegal act is kept secret. If he did not trust that his illegally acquired property was protected, the theft itself would not make any sense, because the acquired property could be taken away from him at any time and he could not claim protection for it. The concept of protected property is a prerequisite of the action of theft. Without this concept, theft would make no sense. Therefore the universality of this definition of crime cannot be disputed even by persons who intend to break this rule, because if they dispute it, it would turn against themselves. This definition of crime is therefore a tautology.

However modern laws go far beyond this definition of crime. They have established so called "victimless crimes". Known examples are laws against drugs, the possession of weapons, prostitution etc.

These laws are a logical problem. They openly violate the definition of a crime as the initiation of violence. By disrespecting the principle of not initiating violence, they take away their own justification. If those who establish these concept of "victimless crimes" dispute the principle of non-initiation of violence, they have to accept that violence can be initiated against them on the same legal grounds. 

Persecution of anything that doesn't fulfill the above definition of crime constitutes a crime by itself.

If persons who possess drugs or weapons and have not harmed anybody are persecuted by the state, then the state itself has initiated violence and becomes a criminal. The victim would have the legitimate right of self-defense and to use violence against the unprovoked aggressor, which is the state in this case.

By disrespecting the principle of "not initiating violence", laws have lost any logical justification, because if the initiation of violence is legal, violence could even be initiated against state representatives without provocation. By disrespecting the universal definition of crime, a state deprives itself of any legitimacy and turned the rule of law into a reductio ad absurdum. A law that punishes victimless crimes is no law, because its premises are contradicting. Such a law is only an arbitrary act of aggression.

The Path of Logic

Manual for using logic and reason in daily life.

Download PDF file

Download MOBI file (for Amazon Kindle eReader)

The Spirit of Neo-Luddism

It was almost exactly 50 years ago on December14, 1962 that Mariner 2 reached Venus and sent radio signals back to Earth. But the space age shouldn't last for long. 10 years later NASA launched their last flight to the Moon. Today NASA is criticized for being"lost in space" and having no clear strategy for the future.

What happened with the space program is only the peak of the iceberg of the pathetic situation of mankind today in general. Since the beginning of the 70s there is an apparent decline in technology with only on exception: semi-conductors and computer technology. There can be no doubt that this technology has immensely advanced and continues to advance. But apart from that, there is nothing positive to report.

• Mankind is not able to get to the Moon anymore. A second attempt by the so called Constellation program utterly failed and had to be cancelled.
• The space shuttle was never able to fulfill its expectations (launch from any airport, cheap, fully reusable) and is now also cancelled.
• Long range travel with supersonic speed cannot be achieved anymore since the Concord has been grounded.
• At the beginning of the 70s mankind was just a small step away from commercial nuclear fusion reactors. No progress has been made since then and even nuclear fission reactors are shut down worldwide (Germany, Japan).
• Prototypes of sophisticated car engines were developed in the 60s and early 70s with electric fuel engines or pistonless rotary engines (Wankel engine). However we still drive cars with primitive combustion engines based on the design of Nikolaus Otto at the end of the 19th century.

An entire generation has obviously refused to do anything to advance mankind any further. And this phenomenon is not only visible when it comes to technology but also in the mindset of our current generation.

• Any technological progress is perceived primarily as negative.
• Any investment in a space program or new technologies (e.g. magnetic levitation trains) is considered to be a waste of money. However feeding unproductive masses in order to multiply their numbers is considered useful spending.
• Creationism has become a widely accepted and equally valid theory along with evolution.
• Religious superstition has returned and displaced humanism and reason (Evangelical christianity has become more and more influential in the US. Islam has resurged first in Persia 1979, then all over the Middle East.)
• Human rights have become undermined. Censorship has become more and more accepted to suppress whatever is considered offensive, blasphemous, immoral, or not politically correct.
• The state has been empowered to enact arbitrary laws in total disrespect of individual freedom as long as it can be claimed that it is for the common good (e.g. public health, security, etc.)
• Preindustrial tribal cultures have their primitive traditions equally valued as modern humanist philosophy.
• The gold standard was abolished in the beginning of the 70s creating the perfect means to accumulate wealth without producing anything and playing with virtual numbers, effectively establishing a financial aristocracy. Now even primitive tribal chieftains from the Arabian Peninsula can enjoy full respect of the international community by joining the financial aristocracy.
• Theoretical physics with its useless mathematical models without any practical application has superseded real science and engineering. Physics has become a matter of faith where we have to believe the revelations of this new academic clergy who alone have the authority to decree "scientific truth" (Big Bang, dark matter, singularities, n-dimensional string theory etc.).

All this is the result of the irrational neo-Luddite mindset of one generation: the so called "baby boomers". They have brought humanity to an effective standstill and led us on a path back into the medieval Dark Ages.

Why is it that old sci-fi  movies from the 60s look more futuristic than a sci-fi movie of today that only excels in unrealistic special effects that tell no story? This is the spirit of today. The generation of the last decades prefers impossible dream worlds over the real world. They don't care about what is possible or not, because they prefer thrilling entertainment in the safety of their homes. This is what led to the success of computer technology, which enables these impossible dream worlds to become true, even if it is only on a computer screen.The only important thing is that no risks are involved.

Even modern wars must not cause any harm anymore. They are fought remotely with drones controlled from 10,000 miles away on a screen by an employee with an 8-hours office shift. The military obviously very much enjoys playing war, much more than 40 or 50 years ago, when wars were actually dangerous and involved the threat of a nuclear holocaust. But today's wars should not be too real with real casualties on either side. It has become easy and fun to attack another country, since no real risk is involved and its outcome will not change any status quo. It just keeps the usual conflicts going on. Before one side can win, a cease-fire is declared, so both sides can keep their face and go on with their eternal conflict. This is where the generation of today prefers to spend money on, instead of funding space missions.

Humanity is definitely on the wrong track. There is no way that we will ever progress again, if we continue on this path. We have to go back to the way of thinking that was still prevalent in the 60s and start over. Whatever mankind has done since then should be discarded, because nothing good has come out of it.

We need a new positive way of thinking. We have to embrace progress and technology. We have to understand that the future of mankind is in space. We don't need to waste our efforts on Earth. Earth has already been colonized by man. There is nothing more that we can hope to achieve here on this planet.

We need better engines, better energy sources (nuclear fusion) and new visions for the future. We have to get rid of superstition and religion, tribalism, ethical indifference and a nanny state that promotes wrong values. We need to be willing to take risks, to open our minds up for new ideas. We need bravery and courage, not an urge of safety and social security. We have to understand that quality is more important than quantity. It is better to put effort in one expensive but really advanced invention than equipping the masses with cheap junk technology for their entertainment.

If mankind manages to build a colony on another planet, it will be remembered for all human history. But nobody will remember, if we manage to equip everybody on this planet with the latest model of the iPhone,r a flat screen TV with 3D capability or an economic car. We should make positive sci-fi movies about the future, not negative dystopias that are so fashionable these days. 

We need to put an end to the spirit of neo-Luddism of the baby boomer generation, or otherwise mankind will have no future. 

The "Big Bang" Cult

Astronomer at the California Institute of Technology have just corrected the supposed age of the oldest known galaxy to 13.3 billion years using photos by the Hubble telescope. This means that this galaxy already existed in the form as we see it today only 380 million years after the supposed beginning of the universe. 

Nevertheless they still stick to the obsolete Big Bang theory.

How would galaxies as they exist today have formed after just 380 million years and then continued unchanged for the next 13.4 billion years in a totally different environment? The universe was much smaller, hotter and denser in this time. It was shortly after its energy condensed into matter. There is no scenario imaginable how matter would have aggregated into galaxies with fully developed stars in such a short time. So if you apply common sense then the Big Bang theory has now been utterly disproved. There is no way that the Big Bang could have occurred 13.7 billion years ago, and an earlier date doesn't fit into current models of this theory. But theoretical physics simply refuses to accept the overwhelming evidence. 

Fact is that the Big Bang theory cannot hold anymore. We have to accept some kind of steady state theory as cosmological model. The steady state theories have their own problem too, but at least not such serious problems as the Big Bang theory, which is totally unable to explain the observations that we can make with our telescopes.

The universe has no beginning, at least not in form of a Big Bang. This is now certain beyond any doubt. The Big Bang theory is dead, so dead as any scientific theory can possibly be. And those who deny this fact can only have other motives than scientific reasoning. Theoretical physicists have become just as stubborn as creationists. They insist in a similar theory of a young universe in spite of plenty of evidence for the contrary.

This recently corrected age for the aforementioned galaxy is not the only example for objects that are simply too old for a universe created by a Big Bang. Globular clusters have also be suspected to be possibly older than the "Big Bang universe" due to their composition of stars. And objects, which are apparently too old for the universe, are not the only problem that the Big Bang theory has.

For today's theoretical physicists the Big Bang theory has become unfalsifiable. For this reason it ceases to be a scientific theory. It is a faith.

The Big Bang theory is part of a creationist cult, because without it there would be no place for a divine creator of the universe. But all observational evidence points in the same direction: The universe has no beginning, so it was not created, and therefore there cannot be a creator.

The Big Bang is no science anymore it is a cult, with a creation myth not different from the book of Genesis or Greek or Sumerian mythology.

Half-Knowledge

There are three distinct approaches of forming an opinion about a certain topic:

The first one is based on what I'd like to call "naivety". This means someone has little or know knowledge about a topic and forms his opinion based on his first impression and simple conclusions from his own direct observations.

The second one is based on what I'd like to call "knowledge". This means one has some kind of knowledge about a topic, but this is either incomplete or partially based on wrong data.

The third one would necessarily be based on "full knowledge" and would therefore be the optimal approach.

I'd like to explain this further by an example, which is quite fitting for our current season of the year.

Some years ago during Christmas time there was an article in newspaper somewhere in Latin America, which had conducted a survey among school children about the meaning of Christmas. The children were asked, why Christmas was celebrated. In Spanish Christmas is called "Navidad", so this allows no direct conclusion to a Christian background from its name.

One child answered that Christmas was a family holiday, where everybody comes together and has a big family dinner. Another one told the journalist that it is a holiday where children get a lot of gifts. A third child answered that it is a celebration of peace worldwide.

So the journalist who wrote the article was outraged that today's children were totally unaware of the original meaning of Christmas and that it had lost any spiritual meaning to the young generation. Of course he was convinced that the children were totally ignorant of the truth and that Christmas was the celebration of the birthday of Jesus Christ.

At least this was what  he had learned. And assuming that his education was so far superior than that of these children, he could only pity them for their lack of knowledge.

However he was wrong. There is no record about the date of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. The church declared arbitrarily the 25th of December to be his birthday, because it was the date of a pagan festival (winter solstice, Saturnalia), which was very popular. In order to erase the pagan background of this festival, they gave it a Christian meaning. So they established the tradition to celebrate Jesus' birthday at this date. Although most other Christmas traditions had nothing to do with Christianity but with the original pagan meaning, e. g. the Christmas tree, the candles, the Christmas gifts etc.

Therefore the seemingly ignorant school children were far closer to the truth than the outraged journalist with his half-knowledge about the topic. In fact Christmas has far more to do with gifts, family and peace than with the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, which is very unlikely to have occurred on  a 25th of December.

I this example the children based their opinion on naivety, while the journalist based it on half-knowledge that led him farther away from the truth.

Hardly anybody of us is free from that kind of half-knowledge. And many of us make the same mistake as this journalist. We assume us to be more educated than seemingly naive and ignorant people but we might ourselves have misguided opinions based on our education that is possibly incomplete or contains false data. 

The problem is that the one whose knowledge is incomplete or false is never aware of this fact and believes his knowledge to be complete and true. He simply cannot know that there is more necessary data to form a correct opinion. 

To demonstrate how ubiquitous this phenomenon is, I will give another example. 

A common cold is a viral infection of the upper respiratory tract.

Some naive people frequently try to treat this disease with antibiotics.

This behavior is vehemently criticized by physicians and scientists. Since a common cold is caused by a virus and antibiotics are only effective against bacteria, this treatment is totally useless and might even be harmful due to the negative side-effects of antibiotics... - according to their opinion, which is again based on half-knowledge.

The empirical fact is that antibiotics are indeed effective against a common cold. Some scientists try to explain this fact away by attributing it to the placebo effect of those antibiotic. However antibiotics are even then effective, when they are not expected to be so by the patient in cases when they are prescribed against a totally different disease stopping the respiratory infection only as a side-effect.

The reason is that the human body is a more complex system than the simplistic mechanical model of those physicians and scientists. The most severe symptoms of the common cold are not caused by the virus itself that is responsible for the initial infection but by opportunistic bacterial infections of the affected respiratory tissue. And against these opportunistic bacteria antibiotics are quite well effective. Once the opportunistic bacterial infection is suppressed, the immune system can deal with the remaining viral infection much faster and more efficient.

Again the half-knowledge of those scientists and physicians who learned that antibiotics don't work against a virus has misled them to an opinion, which is farther away from the truth than the naive opinion of those people who have no clue about the mechanisms of infections at all.

Half-knowledge is dangerous. It can lead to inferior decisions than even total ignorance of a subject. The problem is that we can never be sure, if we have really full knowledge about a topic or only half-knowledge. This is why we should always be skeptical about everything we believe to know. We should not right away discard any naive opinion of rather ignorant people who form their opinions just on personal observation and no education. We should always question ourselves and what we have learned from our education.