Before the troops "invaded" the Café de la Paix (the café of peace — see above), this was a place for artists to meet: Matisse, Piccaso, Gris, Serverini, etc... 

Gris wrote to his art dealer — a German:

"... don't forget that at the present nothing is more important than the opinion of a concierge. Every day one is aware of the petty malice of one's neighbors... An anonymous letter is the most favored method."

Picture and quoted text from The Art of the Parisian Avant-Garde and the First Word War, 1914—1925 by Kenneth E Silver...

But today there is nowhere to turn. The wild lands and rich ecosystems that once supported hunter gatherers, nomads and the refugees from imploding early states who joined them now scarcely exist. Only a tiny fraction of the current population could survive a return to the barbarian life. (Consider that, according to one estimate, the maximum population of Britain during the Mesolithic, when people survived by hunting and gathering, was 5000).In the nominally democratic era, the complex state is now, for all its flaws, all that stands between us and disaster.

So what we do? Next week, barring upsets, I will propose a new way forward. The path we now follow is not the path we have to take.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/24/end-civilisation-t...

The simple way out of this comedy of errors is to shut down the down bull feed from politicians. Politicians are by definition arrogant and borderline psychopath for their desire to be up-there and decide our future. Bullshit. The system has strong "public service" and this is where the soft revolution should come from. The "public service" should not take ANY NEW DIRECTIVE from the politicians and carry on as if politicians DID NOT EXIST as well as their directives (which are mostly self-serving) FOR AT LEAST YEAR. Full stop. No more dithering with new this or that. The dice has been cast ten years ago and work from there. BING!

On January 20th, CBS News bannered “Terrorism no longer the military’s top priority, Mattis says” and opened:

There is a major change in U.S. military strategy. On Friday, more than 16 years after the 9/11 attacks, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said terrorism is no longer the No. 1 priority.

The report said, “Maintaining a military advantage over China and Russia is now Defense Secretary Mattis’ top priority.”

On January 18th, the Trump Administration had issued its crucial document about how it will implement America’s national defense from now on. This document, the National Defense Strategy 2018, represents a continuation of U.S. President Barack Obama’s vision and intentions, but extends Obama’s hostility toward Russia, by adding Trump’s hostility toward China.

In December 2017, U.S. President Donald Trump had issued his National Security Strategy 2018 (the NSS2018); but, in keeping with his prior commitment to leaving to the generals the implementation of his national security policy, the Pentagon has now issued this National Defense Strategy 2018 (the NDS2018), which is signed only by Trump’s minister for war (Secretary of ‘Defense’), “Jim Mattis”; and it’s considerably more informative on what the practical meaning of NSS2018 will be. The meaning is: replacing hostility against “radical Islamic terrorism,” by hostility against Russia and China.

This — building upon Obama’s imperial vision — is now Trump’s ‘Defense’ policy. Trump’s campaign talk had been against ‘radical Islamic terrorism’, but was merely bumper-sticker lying, to win votes, from an electorate that believed the differences between today’s Democratic and Republican Parties are more than bumper-sticker deep (which might once have been the case, but no longer really is).

In continuation from Obama’s National Security Strategy 2015, which had accused Russia 18 times of “aggression,” Trump’s National Defense Strategy 2018 (NDS2018) effectively declares at least an economic war against Russia (as if economics were also in General Mattis’s portfolio), but it goes even further to include China as being now also America’s enemy.

It thus officially restores, in effect, the Cold War — the war against communism — that had existed until U.S. President Richard Nixon’s visit to China, during 21 to 28 February 1972. It also intensifies the war against Russia, even now, 37 years after the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union and end of its Warsaw Pact and end of its communism, had ended the Cold War (but only on Russia’s side, not really on America’s).

Trump’s new document (through his agent Mattis) says that non-state terrorism (Al Qaeda, etc.) is no longer the biggest threat to America’s security; these two “authoritarian” nations pose the biggest threat to America, says the NDS2018. This document asserts: “It is increasingly clear that China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model — gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions.” (“Authoritarian” is now what “communist” once was — the U.S. Government’s verbal bugaboo, and America’s official excuse, for invasions and coups.) It continues:

The central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security is the reemergence of long-term, strategic competition by what the National Security Strategy classifies as revisionist powers. It is increasingly clear that China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model — gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions.

China is leveraging military modernization, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce neighboring countries to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to their advantage. As China continues its economic and military ascendance, asserting power through an all-of-nation long-term strategy, it will continue to pursue a military modernization program that seeks Indo-Pacific regional hegemony in the near-term and displacement of the United States to achieve global preeminence in the future. The most far-reaching objective of this defense strategy is to set the military relationship between our two countries on a path of transparency and non-aggression.

Concurrently, Russia seeks veto authority over nations on its periphery in terms of their governmental, economic, and diplomatic decisions, to shatter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and change European and Middle East security and economic structures to its favor. The use of emerging technologies to discredit and subvert democratic processes in Georgia, Crimea, and eastern Ukraine is concern enough, but when coupled with its expanding and modernizing nuclear arsenal the challenge is clear.

It then says, “Rogue regimes such as North Korea and Iran are destabilizing regions through their pursuit of nuclear weapons or sponsorship of terrorism.” So: those four countries — China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran — are now the top targets for the U.S. military to defeat.

The NDS2018 document continues, “Both revisionist powers and rogue regimes are competing across all dimensions of power. They have increased efforts short of armed conflict by expanding coercion to new fronts, violating principles of sovereignty, exploiting ambiguity, and deliberately blurring the lines between civil and military goals.”

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/01/27/trump-officially-restores-cold-war/

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The Parade Ballet in Paris, 1917, was a famous "affaire"... The music was poopooed by a theatre critic who then got a postcard from the composer, Erik Satie (a clever satirical composer), telling him he was an arse-hole. As well if my sources are correct, Satie called him "mon cher amie" which in those days would have meant that Satie intimated that the critic was a "poofter". Because the note had been written on a postcard that could be read by the "concierge" (and the postman), not on a paper sealed in an envelope, Satie was taken to court, charged with defamation, and had to fork out a ridiculously small sum (possibly one dollar) and had to spend 8 days in prison. 

Meanwhile, Picasso did not recognise his returning mates, famous artists who had been sent to fight at the front and had been marked forever with the stench of war. But Picasso had his own problems. Having started the Cubist movement with Braque, he had a few physical brawls with fist fights in the bars of Paris against some "traditionalists" who though Cubism came from Germany! Cubism was typically a French/Spanish collaboration between Picasso and Braque. The Munich style was far from it, though some French "artists" used the embolden germanic statuesque style to create a Cenotaph dedicated to the fallen French soldiers, which was loathed and dismissed by Marshall Foch. The same style evolved into the Germanic Third Reich constructions. Meanwhile, we are still building our apartment blocks along the lines of the Bauhaus movement in Germany, 1920s — except our ceilings are lower to "pack 'em in"...

Meanwhile the first German made Australian cars are here...