Nostr notes by jerryk

Ah, but you're missing the point. The problem is the total ...

2026-10-22T20:54:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…s4cc
_________________________

Ah, but you're missing the point. The problem is the total control and institutionalization of the process, and the extreme legal restrictions. Sure, the Pope could experiment with steam engines and gunpowder if he wanted, God help the local blacksmith if he did! He would be burned at the stake.

So, sure, we have highly regulated institutions playing games, but, there are too many restrictions. If no one is allowed to have more than a few pounds of Uranium without the FBI taking it all, no progress is possible.

It's fascinating how the media say "we know fusion is possible, we have it in stars!" We sure do, we also have it extremely efficiently, if rather dangerously, in H-bombs. However, no one can experiment with H-bombs, to try to make this technology feasible. Instead, people are compelled to experiment with fusion toys, that never seem to go anywhere, at all, ever. The most obvious source of fusion power is strictly off limits. Thus, no progress, just endless fusion toys. Claims of progress are easy to make, and generate a culture of scientific futility, endlessly.

Ah, but it has been banned, just like research on steam and ...

2026-10-22T17:35:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…r6et
_________________________

Ah, but it has been banned, just like research on steam and explosives was in the medieval Europe. You're just so used to seeing this banning as "essential", that you don't see it that way. Just like the medieval mind saw classifying scientific research on steam power and explosives as dangerous witchcraft. Of course we have to restrict research on Uranium explosives, it could destroy the world! Of course we have to restrict research on steam and explosives, it could burn the whole village down!

Same thing, don't you see?

Current restrictions on nuclear research rule out any meaningful progress, ever.

Outlawing steam engines wasn't superstition, they were ...

2026-10-21T19:34:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…fa57
_________________________

Outlawing steam engines wasn't superstition, they were extremely dangerous when they were poorly understood, and they still are dangerous. Calling them "witchcraft" was a medieval fire code, effectively, just like outlawing nuclear weapons is now. The parallels are extremely close. Thus, it took over 1500 years to develop the steam engine. We seem to be on about the same timeline, for developing nuclear fusion.

If you've ever read "Voyage au bout de la nuit", you ...

2026-10-21T17:27:42Z

If you've ever read "Voyage au bout de la nuit", you know just how brilliant, controversial, pessimistic, analytical and important Louis Ferdinand Celine really was. He was a genius, with language, with culture, with human psychology, with helping our understanding of the darker sides of the human condition. Like William Somerset Maugham, Celine was a trained, practicing physician, and this advanced scientific training, and wide ranging experience of real human suffering, helped him understand and articulate a range of human experience in French that had scarcely been touched before. Unlike Maugham, Celine was heterosexual, so his writing and experiences were not so intensely focused on issues related to illicit sexuality and the implications and consequences of illicit sexuality. And, of course, at the time, homosexuality was still quite illegal, which certainly colored Maugham's existence, and somewhat reduced the generality of his observations.

In contrast, Celine's clinical medical observations of the human experience were most instructive for almost everyone. So, how could such an objective genius come to support the Nazis, be a Nazi collaborator, and a rabid antisemite who favored a military alliance with Adolf Hitler? A very interesting question, no?

It's necessary to consider the very, very difficult and uncertain situation France found itself in, in the 1930's, to find the answer here. The French were terrified of having another Western Front in France, with millions of dead French soldiers over a period of years. They constructed the "impregnable" Maginot line in an effort to make the war comparatively painless, and localized, if there had to be one. Of course, this was based on the usual error in war, preparing yourself ideally for the previous war. Of course, WWII, was nothing like WWI, certainly not in France. There were some similarities in Russia between WWI and WWII, but none at all in France. And, up to a point, that's exactly the way France wanted it!

Because, as we know, France gave up very quickly indeed, once the Nazis invaded them. Once it was clear there was going to be an enormous cost to fighting the Nazis, the French gave up. Immediately. If the French hadn't constructed the Maginot Line, if they had prepared for an active campaign against Germany instead, if the British had been willing to provide the level of military assistance they had in WWI, the Nazis probably could have been defeated at this point, rather quickly, possibly as soon as the Nazis invaded Poland. However, neither Britain nor France had any intention whatsoever to fight for years on another Western Front, with millions of deaths. No way, Jose. And so, they didn't. Let the Russians and Germans fight it out, no problem for us! And, so they did.

So, what does Louis Ferdinand Celine do? He advocates an alliance with Nazi Germany, to achieve exactly the effect that ultimately was achieved by the successful Nazi invasion of France. All Celine effectively did, was prophecy exactly what would happen, what everyone in France was planning to do, and do it openly, rather than pretending not to do it. Celine himself had precisely zero impact on the war, his writings were not inconsistent with Nazi philosophy, but, they did nothing to advance it, or propagate it, Celine was far too anchored in the real world and his own imagination to actually help the Nazis achieve their delusions in any way at all. He fled France at the end of the war, was convicted of war crimes eventually, but almost immediately pardoned, and then returned to France to pursue his medical and literary careers.

It is instructive to compare Celine's fate with two other well known "traitors" and Nazi collaborators. Ezra Pound was a prominent American poet who had lived in Italy for decades, and saw no particular reason for anything so trivial as another World War to interfere with his habits there. He had thoroughly enjoyed living in Mussolini's fascist Italy, and was sympathetic to it. So, he continued to broadcast his essentially literary analyses, with the odd bit of fascist leaning historical and economic perspective thrown in, even after the US entered the war against Germany, Italy and Japan, at the end of 1941. This was a mistake. Pound should certainly have recognized this, and the fact that his judgement was so bad as not to recognize this, explains his ultimate fate -- charged with treason, sentenced to confinement in a mental institution on grounds of being mentally incompetent to stand trial. He was released a dozen years later.

William Joyce, also known as Lord Haw Haw for his virulent pro-Nazi propaganda broadcasts, was a sincere fascist of Irish descent, who actually was an American by birth. His family were Ulster unionists, and he actually fought against the Irish Republicans with the British Black and Tans in the 1920's. He was marked for execution by the IRA. His politics veered to the extreme right, and he saw in Adolf Hitler a kind of savior for the cause of the British Unionists, and British Imperialism, and advocated a close alliance between Nazi Germany and Britain. With the advent of WWII, he fled Britain under a false British passport, and was eventually naturalized as a German citizen. This technicality of using a false British passport was used to justify his execution for "treason" by the British. His German naturalization made his US citizenship forfeit, so he could not be executed by the Americans for treason.

So, we have Louis Ferdinand Celine basically prophesying France's position in WWII, accommodating it, and largely keeping out of trouble, despite being "condemned" by France, and almost immediately pardoned. We have Ezra Pound rather self-indulgently ignoring reality completely, and confined for a dozen years for ignoring reality. And we have William Joyce pursuing his obsessive ideals, becoming sufficiently traumatized by his experiences to become extremely dangerous to the British, and after undermining British morale one way or another for many years, the British had become sufficiently tired of dealing with him that they found a totally spurious legal pretext to kill him "legally". That's the way the cookie crumbles.

#louisferdinandceline #frenchliterature #frenchhistory #maugham #englishliterature #williamsomersetmaugham #wwi #wwii #worldhistory #philosophyofhistory #britishhistory #nazis #antisemitism #ezrapound #worldliterature #americanliterature #ireland #irishhistory #treason #propaganda #williamjoyce #lordhawhaw #law #uslaw #britishlaw #philosophyoflaw

What makes a witch? Anybody know? The concept ranges widely from ...

2026-10-20T16:26:12Z

What makes a witch? Anybody know? The concept ranges widely from the benign self-help psychology and healing of most contemporary Wicca spells, to poisoners, adulterers, murderers of all types, to great sorcerers and mages who can virtually accomplish the impossible -- teleportation, telekinesis, shape-shifting material transformations, etc. So what is a witch, really, then?

In the Western Judeo-Christian tradition, witches are generally seen as evil, not good. Although the concept of "good" witches seems to be present too, to some degree, particularly in non-Western cultures. I think in a very broad sense, in all cultures, witches are seen, at best, ambivalently, because they violate social norms. Witches always violate social norms. They have powers and practices that simply are not normal in the societies they titularly belong to. Witches are marginal outsiders, never to be entirely trusted, always considered to be a potential danger and a threat. In particular, they were clearly outside of the power of contemporary authorities, so, whatever the average nobody thought of them, the powers that be did not like witches one little bit!

So, we have the mass witchtrials and public executions in the late middle ages and on into the Renaissance, and even the European enlightenment. Indeed, perhaps the most famous of them all, at least in the US, occurred in Salem Massachusetts, in 1692 and 1693, when some adolescent girls decided to have some fun by getting their elders tortured, hung, and pressed to death, by accusing them of witchcraft. In other words, the concept of witchcraft can easily be generalized to apply to any form of social condemnation for any reason whatsoever, or no reason at all! Indeed, frequently, witch trials were very dangerous to everyone, because they degenerated into mutual accusations on all sides, in which anyone and everyone in the community could, and would be themselves accused of witchcraft.

The concept of the Salem witch trials was generalized by American writer Arthur Miller to the so-called communist witch hunts in the United States in the 1950's, in his superb play, "The Crucible". Now, there was nothing particularly unusual about fear and hatred of communism in the US, a very young J. Edgar Hoover had a field day deporting "reds" from the US to the USSR in 1919 and 1920, during that particular era's "red scare", following the successful Russian Revolution of 1917. However, there was something a bit different about the early 1950's, it wasn't a communist revolution people were fearing, or terrorist acts, it was nuclear war. People were, in the US, quite understandably terrified of nuclear war with the USSR, Josef Stalin was still in power, and Stalin had never shown much tendency to play by any rules set by the West. Americans had never had to fear annihilation or takeover since their very inception, they were protected by two great oceans on either side of their huge nation. However, with airplanes, missiles and nuclear weapons, these oceans ceased to be an overwhelming obstacle or defensive barrier. Indeed, in all out nuclear war, they ceased to have much significance, at all. America and Americans could be utterly annihilated, if Josef Stalin and subsequent leaders of the USSR willed it.

This resulted in a level of irrationality leading to the "duck and cover" training for schoolchildren -- as if hiding under your desk would protect you from H-bombs -- the literal "burning" of the Rosenbergs in the electric chair for supposedly giving away atomic secrets, and the systematic persecution of anyone, anywhere in the US who had left-wing leanings. Now, how this could possibly have protected Americans from nuclear bombs, is far from clear, but, that's the nature of fear of witches, isn't it? The outsider is a threat. Anything new is dangerous, and if people are nervous already, they may react violently. However, in times of danger, it may be precisely the new that is essential, to survive!

Fear of nuclear weapons has largely defined the world for over 80 years now. Yet, these "weapons" are by far the cheapest and most efficient source of raw energy and power the world possesses, or may ever possess. The whole concept of controlled nuclear fusion is an attempt to fantasize some means of producing nuclear fusion with no inconvenience or risk. This may not be entirely possible, the fusion in stars is inconvenient and risky, you see. It is there in the H-bomb. It could certainly be used for some practical applications, like space propulsion, but, it is so controlled and regulated that necessary experimentation is totally illegal. Possessing more than a few pounds of Uranium is a serious crime, everywhere.

Effectively, nuclear weapons, even working on them, even atomic energy, are the new "witchcraft". As the medieval Church outlawed all work on steam engines or explosives, and declared such work "witchcraft", so, now nuclear energy and nuclear weapons -- which may be one and the same thing -- are outlawed. There is no clear scientific method in the history of science, but, we do know for sure that outlawing the most obvious and important energy sources clearly obstructs progress. The witchcraft of nuclear weapons must be unleashed, for the future good of humanity.

#witchcraft #wicca #witches #sorcerers #metaphysics #linguistics #philosophy #history #sociology #philosophyofhistory #witchtrials #arthurmiller #thecrucible #americanliterature #literature #ussr #atomicenergy #nuclearweapons #hbomb #abomb #atomicenergy #uranium #mccarthy #mccarthyism #capitalism #communism #philosophyofscience #scientificmethod #rosenbergs #psychology #psychoanalysis #historyofscience #cleanenergy #fusion #controlledfusion #spacetravel #sciencefiction

For physicists, Albert Einstein's Special Theory of ...

2026-10-19T19:29:17Z

For physicists, Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity is as self-evident as the fact the earth is round. Indeed, physicists will openly mock and ridicule anyone who questions that time is actually as much a physical dimension as space, and call them "flat-earthers"! The relation between space and time is absolutely proven for physicists, and most engineers, they see nothing more to say about it.

As absolute proof, they regularly declaim that it would be "impossible" for GPS to function without special relativity, all the calculations would quickly go much too far out of whack to be effective. And, indeed, here's the code for it right here:

c
#include <math.h>

#define CLIGHT 299792458.0 /* speed of light (m/s) */
#define MU_GPS 3.986005E14 /* Earth's gravitational constant (m^3/s^2) */

/**
* @brief Computes the relativistic clock correction for a GPS satellite.
*
* @param semi_major_axis The semi-major axis of the satellite orbit (meters).
* @param eccentricity The orbital eccentricity.
* @param eccentric_anomaly The eccentric anomaly (Ek) in radians.
* @return double The clock correction in seconds.
*/
double calc_gps_relativistic_correction(double semi_major_axis, double eccentricity, double eccentric_anomaly)
{
/* Relativistic constant factor: F = -2 * sqrt(MU) / (c^2) */
const double F = -4.442807633e-10;

/* dtr = F * e * sqrt(a) * sin(Ek) */
double dtr = F * eccentricity * sqrt(semi_major_axis) * sin(eccentric_anomaly);

return dtr;
}

So, case closed, right? After all, one of our most important technologies, the Global Positioning System relies absolutely on this code to "get it right", and this code is based on relativity theory. So, relativity theory must be absolutely true, right? Space and time really are related, and time is a physical dimension just like space.

But, not quite so fast. First of all, the disruptions from other noise sources like atmospheric and topographic distortions are thousands of times greater than anything predicted from relativity, and some of these effects are just as systematic for extended periods as relativistic effects are predicted to be from Einstein's theories.

However, there is definitely a drift in values. It doesn't particularly conform to special relativity predictions, but it is present, and some mathematical correction is indeed useful. This simplifies when and how empirical corrections must be made, and this is very useful for the system.

What's really happening here, is that engineers are just using special relativity as a convenient shorthand to refer to drift properties that exist, but really are not understood very well, at all. The equations themselves are a kind of "empirical correction", quite independent of Albert Einstein.

Albert Einstein is being used here as a sales promotion and public relations tool by GPS engineers. The global predictions of his theories are certainly not proven by GPS, there's nothing in GPS proving that space and time are related, that time is another physical dimension, just like space.

If anything, it's precisely the opposite. The need for regular empirical corrections to the predictions derived from special relativity proves that special relativity is actually false! It is wrong!

However, the public craves certainty, it seeks heroes who it can trust, and Einstein has fit the bill here for over a century. Einstein will not let you down, guys, really and truly! And, engineers really don't care how they get people to trust them, and pay them, as long as they do trust them, and pay them. So, let's keep saying "relativity", let's keep saying "Einstein", people will buy our product!

Now, the problem is, what if Special Relativity really is total nonsense and disinformation, and we really can get to the speed of light and beyond, with no problem at all, just with good old Newtonian mechanics, and maybe H-bombs. What if all those perfectly inhabitable "slime worlds", with no other life but single celled organisms on them could be ours for the taking, but good old Albert Einstein and relativity and GPS and engineers seeking steady work for themselves are getting in the way? That would be a shame, wouldn't it?

#physics #gps #relativity #specialrelativity #einstein #alberteinstein #engineering #marketing #sales #coding #technology #scientificmethod #philosophyofscience #publicrelations #spacetravel #exobiology #sciencefiction #science #newton #isaacnewton #mathematics

If you look at any form of media whatsoever in the US these days ...

2026-10-18T19:11:02Z

If you look at any form of media whatsoever in the US these days -- TV, radio, internet, youtube, religious stations, football games -- you will be inundated by ads attacking Democrats as "tax and spend liberals". Indeed, the Democrats specified may not even be ones you can vote on in the upcoming elections in a couple of weeks, the Republicans have limitless money from Elon Musk, they can spend as much money as they want just to make sure Democrats themselves can't run any ads during this period. No doubt, the Republicans are hoping to "force" people to vote Republican, using this media blitz, by some sort of social pressure or behavioral manipulation. It remains to be seen how successful this campaign will be, but, if the polls are any indication, it seems to be backfiring.

Now, why might this be the case? Well, for one thing these advertisements are irritating and monotonous. The attacks are obviously coming from the Republican Party, since they are always attacking Democrats, so, people will naturally resent being bombarded with this kind of nonsense day and night, and they will blame Republicans for them, not Democrats. Also, most Americans now want the rich and corporations to be taxed more, not less, and attacks of this type might well be taken as compliments. Yes, those Democrats are doing exactly what we want them to do! Finally, since Elon Musk is known to be paying for all this total garbage, and since no one believes a syllable Elon Musk ever says anymore, from hard experience, people simply tune out this nonsense attacking the Democrats, most of the time, anyway.

The real issue is these midterms is probably taxation, more than anything else. Sure, Trump is in a disastrous losing war with Iran. Sure, Trump's violent mass deportations of immigrants have antagonized most Americans. But, behind all of this is the desire of Trump to keep taxes low for his rich friends. Trump is attacking the rest of the world in hopes of stealing enough wealth that he doesn't have to tax his rich friends to pay for the deficit, and for benefits. Unfortunately for Trump and his rich friends, Iran is fighting back most effectively, and Iran is winning. This is being desperately and frantically denied by economists, who insist that Iran is on the verge of "economic collapse". The problem with the whole concept of "economic collapse" of course, is that economists do not understand very much, at all. Just some limited principles, under certain circumstances. So, predictions of "economic collapse" are generally rather meaningless. Trump is deporting immigrants to stir mass hatred to distract supporters from their problems, so they fail to recognize economic collapse in the US itself.

The real issue then remains, how to keep taxes low, no matter how much it hurts ordinary Americans to do so. Most Americans don't earn enough to pay much if any tax, they are just living day to day. Wealthy Americans are heavily invested in the stock markets, because corporate taxes and taxes on capital gains in the markets are very low now. Corporations like SpaceX earn nothing, they lose money, but, they are government subsidized, it doesn't matter, they can lose money forever, their products can be totally useless and destructive, nevertheless, stockholders will always make money, forever, these companies will never go out of business, they won't be allowed to. This is the Elon Musk paradigm, the ultimate government subsidized Ponzi Scheme.

However, there is a point at which the chickens come home to roost. The point at which people will no longer be able to support their own poverty caused by the trillionaire oligarchs. And, the point at which the total lack of productivity of the system, makes the system unable to defend itself militarily against attacks, as we are seeing now with the US military in the Middle East. Useless multi-billion dollar nuclear aircraft carriers are sitting ducks to Iranian and Houthi drones costing perhaps a few thousand dollars. But, as long as they are subsidized and untaxed, the corrupt military contractors will continue, as before.

Most Americans want the corporations and the billionaires and trillionaires to be taxed into submission now. The government cannot possibly be as counterproductive in its use of money as these serial criminals. The GOP would be advised to become aware of its problem with taxation.

#foxnews #media #massmedia #advertising #elonmusk #uselections #democrats #republicans #politics #uspolitics #economics #politicalscience #donaldtrump #classwar #iran #usmilitary #ice #immigration #massdeportation #taxes #taxation #markets #stocks #ponzischeme #spacex #billionaires #houthis #gop #philosophyofhistory

The "Unveiling". That which is hidden, shall ultimately ...

2026-10-17T16:15:30Z

The "Unveiling". That which is hidden, shall ultimately be known. It shall be known through death and destruction, through trial and terror. Thou shalt learn through suffering.

These are the signs of the Apocalypse, the Great Revelation. And, after? A renewal, a return to an idealized golden age, a true Utopia for all.

So, what are we to make of all of this? Is it real, is it symbolic of something real and important? Serious practicing Christians certainly do believe that "the end times are coming". They've believed this for two thousand years of course, and always thought it was imminent, just around the corner. Indeed, to some extent the reason Christianity became more pragmatic and materially oriented after a century or two, is that it became clear that the Apocalypse was, frequently anyway, not imminent at all! So, rather than motivate Christians by simply saying, "Hey, Jesus is going to return and destroy all the unbelievers within a year or two, for sure, so, you'd better hop right on board, now!", they had to demonstrate that there already existed some good practical reasons for becoming Christians in this world. Things like social services, which the Christian Church was the main provider of during the Middle Ages. Thus the devotion to the Church.

So, what do we really need the Apocalypse for, anyway? What good is it? Why not just have good government, and systematic improvement to a higher level of existence, without any need at all for catastrophic events like an Apocalypse?

I think the problem is, we frequently do not have good government at all, yet we have no idea whatsoever what to do about it. We do not have systematic progress, we have no "scientific method" to guarantee progress, whatever scientists may say to the contrary. So, what to do?

Why, have a revolution, of course! Revolution, Revelation, Apocalypse -- they are all the same things, you see. Radical change is always radical revision, it is always going to unveil itself as something fundamentally new and different. And, with the new and different, there is the distinct possibility of improvement. Some improvement, anyway.

But, why destroy, in order to create? Where's the logic in that? Because that which exists, naturally and inevitably opposes that which does not yet exist, and prevents its growth and development. Out with the old, in with the new, or society stagnates, and ultimately dies.

#apocalypse #newtestament #judaism #zorastrianism #norsemythology #greekmythology #hinduism #buddhism #christianity #mysticism #metaphysics #earlychristianity #philosophy #metaphysics #scientificmethod #philosophyofhistory #government #politicalscience #revolution

One of the most highly publicized, and apparently most heinous ...

2026-10-16T16:38:21Z

One of the most highly publicized, and apparently most heinous "crimes" under the current Trump administration, is "Felony Voting". This concept has even been extended somewhat lately to the concept of "Felony Citizenship". Now, what's all this about exactly?

What it's really all about, exactly, is criminalizing everyone except Donald Trump and his immediate family. This situation is about to be reversed of course, and that's what this midterm election is all about. There's nothing so special about Donald Trump, he's just a salesman. He's an aggressive, effective salesman, however, still, just a salesman.

And, he's become a very, very nasty salesman, too! "You buy my product, or I'm coming after you," seems to be Trump's motto in his second term of office. And, most people in the country, and in the world now, are getting just a teensy weensy little bit tired of it, too. We see a truly astonishing array of unlikely allies systematically pummeling Donald Trump these days -- Democrats, Independents, MAGA stalwarts, all major news networks including conservative FOX news, President Zelensky of Ukraine, Iran, the Houthis, Iraq, the International Criminal Court, the Nobel Prize Committee, almost all major leaders in Europe, Canada, etc. They say that politics breeds strange bedfellows, but, this particular political orgy is really the most extraordinary thing, don't you think?

It's not entirely clear what is going to be done with Donald Trump next year, but, I suspect he isn't going to like it at all, and neither will his family. And, then we shall see who exactly is going to prison -- all US voters and US citizens, or Donald Trump and his immediate family.

#politics #uspolitics #uselections #donaldtrump #barrontrump #erictrump #melaniatrump #geopolitics #media #newsnetworks #uscitizenship #usvoters #fox #foxnews #marketing #sales #zelensky #ukraine #iran #iraq #nobelprizes #icc #europe #democrats #maga #republicans #independents #crime #law #uslaw #criminality

The film DOA (1949), starring Edmond O'brien is a gritty film ...

2026-10-15T16:16:03Z

The film DOA (1949), starring Edmond O'brien is a gritty film noir with an extremely unusual plot. Maybe a little too unusual! The story hinges on an accountant and notary public who has been poisoned for reasons unknown, by people unknown, and has been informed by doctors that there is no known cure, and he has only days to live. The film sees him scrambling desperately in the time remaining to him, to find the perpetrators, and ensure that they are "brought to justice". Haven't seen too many reports of stories like that one in the news lately? Gee, I wonder why!

Now, there are a number of rather serious problems with this plot. Actually, if you think about it, it's hysterically funny! OK, I've been poisoned, doctors can't cure me, I only have a few days to live. I know what I'll do! I'll ensure the perpetrators are brought to justice! And, then, I'll die a happy, fulfilled man!

This is really letting an eye for an eye justice get a bit out of hand, don't you think?

First of all, in 1949, did they really think doctors were omniscient? In 1949, didn't doctors disagree with each other sometimes, rather frequently actually? In 1949, couldn't some doctors try experimental treatments in desperate cases, where patients were declared terminal? If a doctor tells you, you are terminal, and they can do nothing, do people generally totally give up? I guess some do, but plenty try to deal with the problem with their own home remedies, even if doctors don't know what to do, and sometimes they succeed.

Sure, I know it's just a movie. However, I'm not sure this whole concept would even be playable these days. It would seem too absurd. People would focus on trying to survive first, and, then, go after the perpetrators, it's human nature, we're built to survive, it's in our genetic code. But, for some reason, this entire concept was plausible to audiences just four years after WWII, and at the dawn of the atomic age. Why is that, exactly?

The point is, this movie was made just four years after WWII, and at the dawn of the atomic age. The entire American population had just been subjected to an unprecedented level of bureaucratization in order to win WWII, the individual had no significance, the individual did not expect to survive. We can see this exemplified in brilliant german actress Marlene Dietrich using her genius to transform Hans Leiper's melancholy, existential pacifist WWI poem "Lili Marleen" into an anthem of victory in English for WWII. This was a feat comparable to turning "Where have all the flowers gone?" into "Flight of the Valkyrie"! Essentially, the individual had ceased to exist worldwide, by the end of WWII, something George Orwell noted in "1984".

So, while these days, our own personal survival is paramount, and this is normal for human beings, in 1949, personal annihilation was accepted as probable, and our sole power lay in defining what could happen after our death. So, that's exactly what Edmond O'brien does in DOA.

#doa #classiccinema #classicmovies #classicfilm #hollywood #edmondobrien #wwi #wwii #coldwar #ussr #marlenedietrich #wagner #1984 #georgeorwell #history #philosophyofhistory #worldhistory #ushistory #sociology #psychology #psychoanalysis #film #movies #cinema #individualism #bureaucracy #bureaucratization

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhbPMf7Jz10

Just before Donald Trump was elected for the second time, and ...

2026-10-14T18:10:37Z

Just before Donald Trump was elected for the second time, and just after, there was much talk of civil war in the United States, between those who opposed his MAGA policies, and those who supported his MAGA policies. Both sides expressed confidence of their ability to win such a civil war, and enthusiasm for pursuing one. And, up to a point anyway, one could claim we have indeed had a small scale kind of simmering civil war in the US over the last couple of years or so. We've had Tesla dealerships burned, we've had rioting and casualties between ICE and demonstrators opposing them. In particular, we had an armed standoff between Minnesota National Guardsmen and ICE in Minneapolis, when Governor Timmy Walz activated the National Guard under his command, to "maintain order", specifically after ICE had murdered a couple of Minnessotans in cold blood. And, then, Donald Trump put national guards in some red states on standby, to actively intervene against the Minnesota National Guard, in case they did open fire on ICE agents, or vica-versa. And, then, the entire US military started laughing, and said to Mr. Trump "No way, Jose, buddy! You think we're conservatives, so we're going to shoot up our liberal buddies in the Minnesota NG just for you, Donny boy. Go to bloody hell!"

You know, I was once talking to former Oklahoma governor Frank Keating, and he said about Donald Trump, "Sometimes he shoots, before he aims." Another way of putting this, is that Donald Trump has a tendency to, shall we say, overplay his hand. He overplayed his hand with ICE, in Minnesota, allowing ICE to murder several innocent demonstrators, and that has had serious consequences for him.

Then, of course, Trump decided it would be a really good idea to murder the Iranian Supreme Leader, just to prove that there was absolutely nothing the Iranians could do about it! And, this time, Trump overplaying his hand has had rather serious consequences for everyone. You see, the Iranians hold grudges, in case you hadn't noticed. Ask the Shah, or Saddam Hussein, or Jimmy Carter. Oh, oops, they're all dead!

So, as oil prices continue to rise, as the economy stagnates, and as the entire Middle East becomes a free fire zone, and Iranian agents pursue attacks around the world, Trump's popularity has rather cratered a bit, along with the popularity of the entire Republican Party. Democrats are expected to take House and Senate, possibly by substantial margins. And, that's according to the polls, which have consistently underestimated democrat support. This could well be a 20 point wipeout for the Republicans, not just a 10 point hammering, as the polls are suggesting.

So, now that only about 10% of Americans strongly support Trump, and about 60% of Americans strongly oppose Trump, you really can hardly hear a peep from MAGA diehards about wanting to stage a "civil war". Seems they don't like those six to one odds against, in terms of sheer numbers. Instead, we hear MAGA whining about "communists, islamo-communists, socialists" etc. Hey guys, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

#civilwar #ushistory #uscivilwar #civilunrest #politics #uspolitics #republicans #democrats #uscongress #uselections #philosophyofhistory #socialconflict #classwar #classwarfare #donaldtrump #maga #conservatives #liberals #conservatism #liberalism #ice #minnesota #minneapolis #geopolitics #philosophyofhistory #usmilitary #iran #economics

Over by our barracks, by the wooden door Stands a single lantern, ...

2026-10-14T16:41:58Z

Over by our barracks, by the wooden door
Stands a single lantern, and she waits there once more
And there shall we two meet again
By the lantern once again
As once, Lili Marleen

Our two silky shadows are conjoined as one
We had such perfect love, clear to everyone
All the people could know it then
When we were by the lantern
Just like Lili Marleen

The sargent calls behind me: "I know it's curfew time
It could cost three day's pay! Comrade I'll be fine!"
So say we our farewells, fond
How happy to be gone
With You, Lili Marleen

She knows your tender footsteps, your delicious song
All night she awaits you, but she's forgot you long
And should some sad mischance be mine
Who will stand by the lantern
With you, Lili Marleen?

From eternal Heaven
From my Earthen Home
Your beloved voice
Calls me like a dream
Through the swirling mists of time
I'm standing by the lantern
Just like Lili Marleen.

#poetry #hansleip #germanliterature #germanhistory #lilimarleen #marlenedietrich #classicsongs #wwi #wwii #history #writing #philosophyofhistory #pacifism #propaganda

So true, my friend.

2026-10-13T20:25:17Z

In reply to nevent1q…ven8
_________________________

So true, my friend.

Aus dem stillen Raume, Aus der Erde Grund Hebt mich wie im Traume ...

2026-10-11T19:34:16Z

Aus dem stillen Raume,
Aus der Erde Grund
Hebt mich wie im Traume
Dein verliebter Mund
Wenn sich die späten Nebel drehn
Werd' ich bei der Laterne steh'n
Wie einst Lili Marleen.

From eternal Heaven
From my Earthen Home
Your beloved voice
Calls me like a dream
Through the swirling mists of time
I'm standing by the lantern
Just like Lili Marleen.

This is my translation of the last stanza of the fabulously popular WWII song, Lili Marleen, originally developed by the Nazis, rediscovered and made eternally popular to all sides in the war, and ultimately in 1944 sung in English by Marlene Dietrich, and becoming something of an anthem of victory for the allied forces, rather ironically. Now, this was never really described as a "war song", let alone a victory song, there are no battles, just a pair of lovers spooning and talking by a lantern in the street, and missing each other when they are not. However, the original writer of the poem, a German soldier in WWI, realizes that after missing him, Lili Marleen will forget him eventually, probably already has some time ago. He knows he may well die, and wonders if some other will join her by the lampost.

Now, my translation of the last stanza is fairly literal, but, perhaps written to emphasize an aspect of the poem/song that I think is insufficiently emphasized, and perhaps somewhat suppressed in the English translations. This is definitely not a war song in any normal sense of the term. However, it's not exactly a love song either. Love songs are about romance, or failed romance, in general. This is neither. It is about something else, entirely. It is about death. Death, and resurrection.

In other words, Lili Marleen isn't really a traditional popular song at all. Lili Marleen is, rather a hymn, or a prayer. It is a hymn and a prayer for resurrection after death. And Lilli Marleen is conceptualized as a Heavenly Angel, who can save a soldier from death. And, this explains the incredible and timeless popularity of this very unusual poem/song.

You see, it has tapped into a fundamental aspect of human experience, the religious experience, which is actually hard-wired in the human brain biologically. There are certain issues like life and death, and the survival of the species that have profound instinctive implications and our brain responds to them with a unique and profound attachment and excitement. These are the fundamental aspects of all major religions, and they create an emotional resonance that is very powerful. Lili Marleen taps into these.

#wwi #wwii #religion #marlenedietrich #sociology #biology #neuroscience #music #classicsongs #songs #christianity #judaism #islam #hinduism #buddhism #lilimarleen #germanhistory #german #germany #psychology #psychoanalysis #sociobiology #afterlife #resurrection #heaven #sociology #history #philosophyofhistory #poetry

The basic concept of the Ponzi scheme, is that there is no means ...

2026-10-07T18:02:17Z

The basic concept of the Ponzi scheme, is that there is no means of producing capital inherent in the scheme, other than investing more money in the scheme itself. It is essentially non-productive in nature. Now, this seems simple enough, really. Some things are productive, others are not. Growing crops is productive, it produces food for people, people need food. On the other hand, one shouldn't throw good money after bad. Don't invest money in something that isn't productive. In the case of the original Ponzi scheme, as practiced, money is invested, but nothing is produced, the only source of funding is finding further investors, to produce further dividends.

However, the concept of a Ponzi scheme needn't be quite this simplistic, and in its normal application, isn't quite this simplistic. For example, Charles Dickens wrote in Martin Chuzzlewit (1843), some time before the original "Ponzi scheme", about insurance agents as being in a rather similar line of endeavor. Of course, you could rather easily argue that all insurance companies are in this line of endeavor, the Ponzi scheme -- simply funding insurance payouts from other insurance investors, never producing anything -- however, the insurance companies generally do have a large capital, sufficient to pay off all likely claims. If not, they inevitably must go out of business.

How far can the concept of the Ponzi scheme be generalized? What is "true production", as distinct from just shuffling money around? Banks don't really produce anything, they just shuffle money around. No bank investors, no bank, period, they have no real "product".

Even where there is a product, how much is the product really worth, if anything? The "Tulip bubble" in the seventeenth century is a prime example of this, when specific types of tulip bulbs were selling for astronomical sums for a time, before the market collapsed completely.

What about "health care"? How competent are doctors, really? Are they really selling "health", or are they merely selling an illusion of competence, a mere "bedside manner", and little else? As for lawyers, enough said?

These days, there is much interest in Elon Musk's transformation of "junk bonds", into "high yield bonds", a transformation which looks a great deal indeed like the original Ponzi scheme. There is no immediate product of value, certainly. There is the long term prospect of all kinds of products of value -- the conquest of all of outer space, no less! However, there is no clear method to get there, unless we consider the "scientific method" to be a true guarantee of progress, which is dubious indeed.

Is the "scientific method" itself a Ponzi Scheme? Or is science just a religion? Are all religions, actually Ponzi schemes? Isn't the promise of perpetual bliss in an eternal afterlife, in return for unlimited devotion and contributions, the ultimate Ponzi scheme, where you give everything, are promised everything, and get nothing, ever?

#ponzischeme #economics #stockmarkets #charlesdickens #dickens #insurance #elonmusk #spacex #starship #pentagon #usgovernment #banking #banks #money #finance #spacetravel #religion #afterlife #metaphysics #junkbonds #philosophyofscience #science #philosophy #tulips #historyofeconomics #philosophyofeconomics

It is a myth, but, an extremely well propagated myth, that ...

2026-10-06T22:06:17Z

It is a myth, but, an extremely well propagated myth, that Richard Nixon was impeached, and forced to resign, because of the Watergate break-in fiasco. This is, actually, absolute and total nonsense. To grasp just how total this nonsense is, all you have to do is realize that the Watergate break-in was reported and condemned in July 1972, and Nixon went on to defeat the Democratic candidate by a 20 point landslide in the popular vote, and win 49 of 50 states in November, 1972.

Now, sure, additional details did come in during subsequent investigations, but, actually, everybody knew more or less what had happened, but no one particularly cared. In fact, it was said that it wasn't the break-in so much that destroyed Nixon, as the subsequent attempts at covering it up. But, actually, that wasn't really the problem either, at all.

You see, in 1972, Nixon seemed to be doing a very good job. The stock market was doing well, the economy was doing well, Nixon had pulled American troops out of Vietnam, and South Vietnam seemed to be holding up pretty well. Nixon appeared to have achieved that long sought for American dream of "peace with honor", to bring the long nightmare of Vietnam to an end. So, Nixon won the elections overwhelmingly, who cared if he had broken into Democratic headquarters, he would have won big anyway, right, what difference did it really make?

Now let's fast forward two years. Now, rather suddenly, everything is falling apart. South Vietnam is being overwhelmed by North Vietnamese troops, and is clearly going to fall soon. Israel has only won with great difficulty a hard fought war against the Arab world, one it would probably have lost without massive American aid authorized by Richard Nixon. In direct retaliation, an Arab oil embargo has been declared, that has totally trashed the entire US economy. Inflation is at 11%, the nation is deep in recession, the stock market has lost much of its value.

Now, suddenly, Watergate looms as the greatest and most significant crime in world history! Hysterical, right?

What we really see with Watergate, is how law is used to rationalize the broader agendas of society as a whole, right or wrong. You see, the US Constitution requires "high crimes and misdemeanors" to justify removing the President of the United States. Now, it was clearly seen as absolutely essential to remove Nixon, because he was making such a total mess of everything, so, by God, some high crimes and misdemeanors had to be manufactured!

Now, to be sure, the Watergate break-in was certainly an illustration of Nixon's paranoia, obsessiveness, and incompetence, but, it was only a very small part of a much bigger picture, and it was that much bigger picture that was the real problem, not Watergate.

#nixon #richardnixon #watergate #impeachment #nixonresignation #usconsitution #republicans #democrats #uselections #uscongress #history #ushistory #usconstitution #law #uslaw #philosophyoflaw #philosophyofhistory #revisionism #revisionisthistory #historicalrevisionism #socialanthropology #sociology #moralphilosophy #vietnam #vietnamwar #israel #yomkippurwar #araboilembargo #opec #useconomy #economics #uspresidents

I'm just going to quote Wikipedia exactly here, regarding ...

2026-09-25T16:30:17Z

I'm just going to quote Wikipedia exactly here, regarding Jerome Savonarola (1452-1498), who acquired power briefly in Florence Italy: "He became known for his prophecies of civic glory, his advocacy of the destruction of secular art and culture, and his calls for Christian renewal."

Now, does this sound at all just the slightest bit familiar to anyone at the moment? Anyone at all, hmmmmmm?

Well, I think it might you know.

"I will fight for you with every breath in my body – and I will never, ever let you down.
America will start winning again, winning like never before."

"Six weeks ago, I stood beneath the dome of this Capitol and proclaimed the dawn of the golden Age of America."

“I’ve always felt that a lot of modern art is a con, and that the most successful painters are often better salesmen and promoters than they are artists.”

"...left wing cultural revolution..."

“I’m very proud to say that during my time in office, both the first four years and in particular this last year, there has been a tremendous renewal in religion, faith, Christianity and belief in God,”

These are all direct quotations from Donald Trump. And, they are all highly representative quotations from Donald Trump. Of course, we have the entire concept of the MAGA movement -- Make America Great Again!

Again, I will quote exactly from the wikipedia article on Savonarola, this from a Savonarola sermon: Florence will be "more glorious, more powerful and richer than ever, extending its wings farther than anyone can imagine".

Ultimately, what destroyed Savonarola was simply his inability to do what he claimed to be able to do. Florence did not become great again. Nothing really changed. And, when Savonarola claimed to be able to order the direct intervention of God, he failed to do so.

When Donald Trump claimed he could easily crush the Iranian regime, he failed to do so. Instead, the Iranian regime has rather easily crippled the US economy, caused runaway inflation for US consumers, and steadily expanded its influene and power in the Middle East, largely driving the US military out of the region, by attacking US bases.

Faced with universal opposition from the Pope and the Catholic clergy who he had attacked and ridiculed, and his own ineffectiveness having become obvious to everyone, Savnonarola was ultimately overthrown by the mob, arrested, tortured and executed.

Double digit advantages in the generic polling are no longer outliers for the Democrats in the upcoming November midterms in the US. They are becoming the new normal. We may be facing the most extreme electoral outcome in US history, almost certainly the most extreme in decades. What will be Donald Trump's fate next year? I don't envy him, at all.

#history #italianhistory #churchhistory #ushistory #savonarola #politics #geopolitics #trump #donaldtrump #roycohn #uselections #republicans #democrats #philosophyofhistory #maga #conservatives #conservatism #usconservatives #economics

I have a rather idiosyncratic interpretation of Thomas Mann's ...

2026-09-24T19:48:53Z

I have a rather idiosyncratic interpretation of Thomas Mann's extremely popular novella, Death in Venice. While the novel is generally attributed to Thomas Mann's own homosexual leanings and own experiences, I must demur.

Look at it this way. There was indeed an event that transpired about 20 years prior to the writing of this novella, in 1912, that paralleled precisely the events of Thomas Mann's famous work. I'm astonished that this is never referred to in association with Death in Venice. It wasn't a writer in his early fifties, it was an extremely famous composer in his early fifties, who was certainly every bit as artistically talented as Mann's protagonist, Aschenbach, and every bit as homosexual, if not more so, and every bit as intellectual. And, he died suddenly and unexpectedly of cholera in "The Venice of the North", Saint Petersburg, through failure to take proper precautions. Who might that be? Why, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, of course! He died just very shortly after completing and performing his magnificent sixth symphony, the Pathetique. What is particularly striking about this omission, is that Thomas Mann was obsessed with Peter Tchaikovsky and his music, and this obsession was transferred to his son Klaus Mann who actually wrote a biographical novel about Tchaikovsky in 1935, called "Pathetique"!

So, while everyone is seeing this work as entirely autobiographical, I am actually rather skeptical about that. Rather, I see Death in Venice as being an analysis and critique of both Russian culture in certain of its aspects, and of Tchaikovsky in certain respects, possibly with Mann seeing some of these limitations in himself at times, as well, and reflecting on them through these varied associations.

Thomas Mann of course, being a good German boy during the time of the Kaisers, was quite supportive of traditional Imperial German values -- militarism, conservatism, capitalism, traditionalism. And, associated with these, were a healthy dose of extroverted pragmatism. His protagonist Aschenbach definitely does not exemplify these characteristics, at all! An impressive man, intellectually but, in terms of Thomas Mann's philosophy of the time, a "weak" man, an ultimately self-destructive man, a man doomed to die prematurely. Too introverted, insufficiently pragmatic, too "weak", as demonstrated by his homosexual leanings, which, arguably, in the context of Death in Venice, actually destroy him. Presumably Thomas Mann felt exactly the same way about Tchaikovsky, whatever his admiration for Tchaikovsky's music.

I suspect Mann may be generalizing these concepts somewhat, seeing here a fundamental weakness in Russian culture, possibly anticipating its downfall. Russia was tortured by paralyzing strikes and instability at the time, and had never really fully recovered from the 1905 Revolution, which was only papered over by Tsar Nicholas II, leading ultimately to final downfall of the Romanovs in 1917. What Mann did not realize, was that Germany itself would collapse just a year later!

With the collapse of Imperial Germany, Thomas Mann's own politics shifted sharply to the left. Suddenly, intellectual introverts like Aschenbach became his heroes, and aggressive militarists like Bismarcck and Hitler were his bogeymen.

I think we can see in Thomas Mann's analyses in Death in Venice, and in his work in general throughout his entire life, an attempt to determine the "correct" approaches to human existence, the "safe" approaches. Are there any safe approaches? I don't think so!

#wwi #russianhistory #germanhistory #tchaikovsky #thomasmann #deathinvenice #psychology #psychoanalysis #germanhistory #geopolitics #introversion #extroversion #conservatism #liberalism #militarism #homosexuality #capitalism #communism #writing #books #literature #germanliterature #pragmatism #philosophy #metaphysics #moralphilosophy #ethics

If you really want to understand the Nazis, you really should ...

2026-09-20T19:05:16Z

If you really want to understand the Nazis, you really should take a look at this fabulous show stopping musical production number. Here's an English version inspired by the original German lyrics:

I've got plenty of pockets,
But they're all full of nothin',
Just my 'ol gal's photograph,
And I'm perfectly happy therein.
And I've got a pair of notes,
But they're not notes from a bank,
These are melodious notes,
And I sing them all the time.

I don't need a million dollars,
I don't miss money a lick,
All I need forever,
Is music, music, music!
I don't need to live in a castle,
I don't need no car that's slick,
All I need, my dear,
Is music, music, music!

Now, the really interesting thing about this wonderful 10 minute production number, that is as good or better than anything Fred Astaire ever did, and is done by a beautiful woman, at that, is this -- it was produced just two months before the Nazis invaded Poland! It was produced by Josef Goebbel's Ministry of Culture and Propaganda, under the executive direction of none other than Adolf Hitler!

Now, of course, the entire reason that Hitler was invading Poland was that he was running out of money to finance the "German economic miracle" he was presiding over, so, actually, the irony of this particular number is rather brutal. But, you know, even if the Nazis were lying their bloody heads off here, the number is so exquisite, you really do have to say, "Hey, they weren't all bad!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G54J4Imb2ss&list=RDoyht_FPMidI&index=3&pp=8AUB0gcJCSQMAYcqIYzv

#music #film #dance #nazis #history #germany #germanhistory #hitler #goebbels #money #wwii #economics #nostr #plebchain #grownostr #philosophyofhistory #marikarokk #classicmovies #cinema #propaganda #historicalrevisionism
#revisionism #irony #brutalirony

Other than Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes, there are ...

2026-09-12T16:14:25Z

Other than Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes, there are remarkably few well known economists who actually manifest any particular interest in human social morality, at all There is an almost total disconnect between the social science of economics, and social morality, as we normally understand it. Why is this, exactly? The other social sciences -- sociology, history, psychology, political science -- all focus to a large extent on the differences between right and wrong in human social behaviors, although they all tend to have a profoundly ethnocentric bias in the way they do it. Social scientists from different nations and cultures tend to see morality their own way, and have their own heroes and villains, who may not correspond particularly well with those from other cultures. But, they are very interested in moral issues, issues of right and wrong. Not so, the vast majority of economists, at all. True, Adam Smith coined his ridiculous smiley face morality of the "invisible hand" to clothe capitalism in virtue, but, that metaphor has been grossly overextended so much as to amount to a reducto ad absurdam. There is no invisible hand guaranteeing capitalist goodness, I'm afraid.

Part of the problem here is Karl Marx -- the ultimate outsider -- effectively trashing all of human existence so thoroughly and not really offering much as an alternative -- only a purely speculative utopian socialist vision that he almost certainly did not even believe in, himself. So, the rest of the economics world has effectively turned tail and run from any attempt at human morality ever since Marx, with the exception of course of the Chinese communist marxist economists, who have no choice whatsoever other than to be Marxists, by law, and so are simply ignored by Western economists.

Well, maybe we should go back to good old Plato, and The Republic, then. Plato had no fear whatsoever of Karl Marx. Really! So, Plato's Republic puts strict limits on the maximum wealth of all private citizens, and forces the actual guardians of the Republic to live like homeless people in a shelter, with no wealth whatsoever, and only their basic needs modestly met by the state. And, these are the people who are supposed to be running the country, the people with the real power!

Aristotle believed that the pursuit of wealth for its own sake was purely evil, and would lead to the destruction of the state, as it had in ancient Athens.

In the European middle ages, Saint Thomas Aquinas and the his Catholic theologian friends made money lending for interest illegal, along with merchants charging any more for goods than was necessary to cover production costs and to ensure the tradesmen involved made a decent living wage.

Traditional Islamic societies required Zakat, redistribution of wealth in the form of a wealth tax. In the US currently, similar policies are being considered as we speak, in terms of a special tax on billionaires.

So, historically, morality has indeed been integrated into economics theory quite regularly. However, almost inevitably it seems, all morality in economics, looks socialist, or communistic. Isn't that interesting? So, the only way to divorce the economics of a state from socialism, and communism, is to divorce it completely from any moral basis whatsoever, and, hence, any chance whatsoever of survival. Do tell!

#ecomomics #economists #economictheory #ccp #china #capitalism #communism #philosophyofscience #history #philosophyofhistory #philosophy #academia #adamsmith #morality #moralphilosophy #politicalscience #marx #karlmarx #historyofphilosophy #ethics

While Democrats are frantically discussing what they're going ...

2026-09-09T16:58:55Z

While Democrats are frantically discussing what they're going to do on day one once they retake the House -- all kinds of wonderful bills that probably cannot get through a Republican Senate -- they are remarkably tight lipped about what they are going to do if they take both House and Senate, something that is becoming at least a 50-50 or more possibility, quite possibly by a substantial margin. I think the reason for this, is that proposing politically attractive pie in the sky is a relatively risk-free, if pointless activity, while having the full control and power of congress might actually require doing something, and actually doing things inevitably involves risk.

I think the really critical issue is, if the Democrats do retake both Houses of Congress, how big a majority will they have, and how badly will the Republicans have done not only federally, but also at the state level. Because, this will determine whether we simply have stalemate and pushback by Democrats against Republicans, and pie in the sky, or, whether we actually have a fundamentally different kind of government in power in Washington DC.

If the Democrats take 4 or 5 Senate seats and 26 to 35 House seats -- the most probable scenario currently according to the pollsters, although somewhat more optimistic for the Democrats than the prediction markets -- then we will have a lame duck President with no power or ability to appoint judges or government officials, or pass legislation. The united Congress probably will find the means to largely eliminate the ICE and military programs initiated by Donald Trump, to raise taxes to assist with social programs, and to rein in Trump's tariffs and military operations. Trump will be powerless, although it may take him a few months to realize it.

However, Trump will remain in the Oval Office, largely under siege from criminal investigations, but, still a free man, still the President of the United States.

However, if the Democrats take 6 to 8 Senate seats, or more, along with the likely flipping of Texas and even Florida, and other red states at the state level, the situation will have changed fundamentally. The Republicans will no longer have any base at all, anywhere, at the state or federal level. The entire Republican Party might be facing extinction, along with the careers of all Republican politicians. At this point, the Republicans will see they have no choice but to actually formally cede power to the Democrats, and bow to the will of the people, in hopes that a couple of years of Democrat administration will make them look pretty good again, which is perfectly possible, of course!

So, in this scenario, the Republicans support the impeachment of not only Donald Trump, but also JD Vance, as well, and Republicans themselves support Hakeem Jeffries as President of the United States. "Hey, guys, we screwed up, you have a go for a couple of years!" And, then we'd have to see just how good, or bad, a job the Democrats will do.

#politics #news #geopolitics #congress #uscongress #usconstitution #democrats #impeachment #trump #donaldtrump #jdvance #hakeemjeffries #elections #uspolitics #republicans

Hey bulletbill22, I saw a notification for your reply to my ...

2026-09-08T18:52:03Z

In reply to nevent1q…lf4c
_________________________

Hey bulletbill22, I saw a notification for your reply to my geopolitics essay, but my app accidentally posted a duplicate. When I deleted the extra copy, the network wiped your reply along with it. I'm curious what your thoughts were if you feel like reposting them on https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqs83qyqlnqhg3vct4q4xv6hxdynm4k8eqq5pdcek3xtuc394m58e5s8wkmyp

These days, the western media is constantly bemoaning the fall of ...

2026-09-08T18:14:35Z

These days, the western media is constantly bemoaning the fall of the political center, the fact that traditional conservative parties in politics are largely ceasing to exist. The media complains that politics are now "polarized" between extreme left and extreme right, and that this is a dangerous eventuality, far more dangerous than traditional centrist and conservative parties, that tended to favor consensus, and the status quo.

The western media is missing a fundamental point. Political extremism is a symptom of a political disease, not the disease itself. When people are content, they naturally favor centrists, conservatives, people who support the status quo. However, when people are having difficulties, as they are at present in the Western world, they support change. And, really, all change is radical and extreme, by definition. There are no "conservative" changes.

For centuries, the West dominated the world, invaded it, conquered it, exploited it. This is no longer possible. The rise of China and India as major military and economic powers makes this impossible. The US and Europe have declined in power and influence, and, this costs the people economically, and, they don't like it. The Western people want to be dominant again. They don't know how to do it, but, that's what they want.

We can see this in the rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, which basically is a desire to go back to colonialism and gunboat diplomacy. As we can see, this isn't working at all well in the Middle East, and Iran is giving major pushback, and effectively defeating US forces and driving them out of the region. Canada is also fighting back against US neo-Imperialism, with considerable effectiveness.

The basic difference between the left and the right is that the right favors traditional solutions and the left favors new solutions. Neither are perfect by any means. However, it's relatively unlikely that old solutions can be used to solve new problems. These old solutions have a comforting familiarity, but, they don't work now, anymore, in general. On the other hand, trying fundamentally new approaches is a leap into the unknown, quite literally. It's not clear where it will lead. On the other hand, if present approaches aren't working, what alternative is there? The communists hate the old approaches because they don't work. The capitalists hate the new approaches, because they often don't work either. However, what alternative is there, to trying new approaches, when current approaches do not work anymore?

#media #politics #geopolitics #history #philosophyofhistory #economics #extremism #capitalism #communism #philosophy #metaphysics #donaldtrump #trump #imperialism #politicalscience

Actually, I believe Mao was an equal opportunity exterminator.

2026-09-08T17:55:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…8asj
_________________________

Actually, I believe Mao was an equal opportunity exterminator.

They were all Han Chinese, of course.

2026-09-08T17:41:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…rnh2
_________________________

They were all Han Chinese, of course.

Billions of years ago, as lighting forced energy into the ...

2026-09-05T15:22:21Z

Billions of years ago, as lighting forced energy into the primeval atmosphere and oceans of the Earth, this infusion of energy forged and fused new bonds between the existing chemical compounds, and much more complex chemicals were built fairly quickly. We tend to call these "organic compounds", but, really, all highly complex molecules tend to be called biochemicals, simply because only such complex chemical compounds can form the bases for what we call living organisms, which are, by their very nature, highly complex. There is no such thing as a living being that is as simple as the average rock, or grain as sand.

Now, of course, all chemical compounds have different properties, different tendencies to attract other chemicals of different types, different levels of stability. And, it is perfectly natural, and inevitable, that certain chemical compounds might have more of a tendency to attract and accumulate related and highly similar chemical compounds than others, mimicking and expanding their original structure rather spontaneously. And, of course, that is really all we need for life. Self-replication.

I believe we are seeing, almost in its primeval form, this process in the current behavior of Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a vain, self-absorbed old man, who has gotten his way his entire life. Now, he is totally senile, and doesn't know what he is doing, but, his primeval instincts remain, from instinctive memories billions of years old. Donald Trump is trying to replicate himself in influencing the world, and in totally destroying the White House, and Washington D.C. Like primeval life forms, Donald Trump is attracting the people and materials he needs to try to achieve this goal of making the world in general, and Washington D.C. in particular, resemble his own bizarre and disgusting self as much as possible. And, it is truly awful to behold.

I think we can see in the origins of life, also, the origins of all human conflict, and all warfare, throughout history. Different groups of people, attempting to impose their own visions, their own selves, their own natures on other groups of people, who are also playing the same game of attempted self-replication. And, because this is all living beings have ever really done, there is nothing whatsoever more important than this eternal dance of self-replication, at all costs, however destructive it may indeed be, to everything, and anything.

#philosophy #metaphysics #biology #biochemistry #originoflife #exobiology #history #philosophyofhistory #politicalscience #chemistry #donaldtrump #trump #funny #psychology #psychoanalysis

China was in a state of civil war for 150 years before Maozedong ...

2026-09-04T18:45:22Z

China was in a state of civil war for 150 years before Maozedong unified the entire nation once more under communism. Mao had been an excellent opposition leader -- brilliant, creative, honest, just, kind, wise, democratic, courageous. Once he had taken full control of the country, Mao degenerated into a kind of extreme Chinese Emperor. He attempted extreme policies, and slaughtered tens of millions. Nevertheless, the Chinese communist state endured. The apparatus of the state was too powerful to be overthrown, and faith in Mao -- who was indeed a brilliant and charismatic man -- kept people going and loyal, for the most part, until his death in the 1970's. At that point, the pragmatic, practical and comparatively moderate Dengxiaoping took over, and did actually drastically reduce both human rights violations and poverty in the nation of China, something that Maozedong was failing at rather badly for most of his administration, in any case.

Nevertheless, even Deng was forced to engage in some systematic violence which the Chinese people still haven't forgiven him for: the Tiananmen Square massacre. Students had been protesting for increased democracy in 1989, as the prosperity of the country increased, and these protests became rather aggressive displays of passive resistance, and spread nationwide. There wasn't violence, but, there was open defiance, including of the People's Liberation Army. Deng feared a return to open civil war, he wanted to end the problem quickly so, seeing the local military were unwilling to fire on the students, he brought in outside forces, and they killed certainly hundreds, and thousands of protesting students. This ended it. There was no uprising, or rebellion.

Why, exactly? Well, I suppose, up to a point anyway, the people may have actually agreed with Deng, once he put his foot down. OK, they thought, maybe we aren't ready for full democracy, maybe we would go back to open civil war again, slaughtering each other for nothing. And, things aren't so bad now, they are improving. So, as Mao managed to keep people under control with his charisma, Deng managed to keep people under control by providing steady economic progress. And, to some extent, that general model -- follow us, we will make you more prosperous than you are today -- has been followed by all Chinese leaders since. And, it seems to work.

But, it's a bit more complicated than that. The fact is, despite the complaints of "authoritarianism" in China, incarceration rates are vastly lower than in the US. China is a highly controlled society, in which surveillance is rampant and absolute for Chinese citizens, but, actually, this seems to keep crime rates rather low, in general. So, people have little likelihood of actually getting into trouble with the law. If they do, they have little chance of escape, of course. It's a balance. But, given the overpopulation of China, and its history of poverty and civil war, the government really isn't doing that badly, on the whole. And, the population is expected to massively drop this century, back to the level it was in 1950 -- about 600 millions, from a peak of about 1.6 billion. Potentially, China could be a rather prosperous and nice place to live by 2100, all thanks to the communists. Nevertheless, when I suggest that China could become more "democratic" with fewer people and more prosperity, Chinese "monitors" online tend to get their backs up. They don't like the idea. Perhaps, I should qualify what I mean by "democracy". I do not necessarily mean the specific trappings of Western democracies, which, are distrusted by the Chinese leadership. I merely mean, that the authorities could be less controlling, since there would be less danger of social instability in a society with fewer people, and more prosperity, and that being less controlling might enable these people to be even more productive.

#china #ccp #communism #maozedong #dengxiaoping #law #authoritarianism #polticalrepression #politicalscience #history #philosophyofhistory #tiananmen #democracy #geopolitics #economics

While Trump's overall approval ratings are not actually ...

2026-09-01T15:50:42Z

While Trump's overall approval ratings are not actually desperately bad, at somewhere between an average of 36% and 39%, depending on which averages you look at, if you look at his ratings for strong approval specifically, they are awfully bad, at just 14% overall, with no one really disputing these facts lately. In other words, only slightly more than one in ten Americans actually think Trump is doing a very good job, and would take any significant trouble for him. That may well include going to the polls to vote for Republicans, you know.

Given these facts, Donald Trump, being the shrewd, practical survivor he is, is adopting a strategy to optimize his chances of political survival, and likely actual personal physical survival as well, for himself, and for his entire family, which, actually, is also under considerable risk of attack from Iran, among other mortal enemies. And, Trump is actually telegraphing percisely what he has in mind, quite clearly at this stage. He is saying, over and over again, that the American people are not mad at him, they are mad at the Republicans in Congress. He has also quite recently filed a 5 billion dollar lawsuit and threatened FCC action against a prominent major network journalist merely for suggesting that Trump's capacity to influence Republican primaries isn't quite what it was, and doesn't always work very well these days. He is also vehemently disputing all the polls saying that he isn't very popular anymore with the American people. So, what is Trump trying to tell us exactly here?

I think it's pretty clear really. Trump is saying, to Republicans specifically, I'm still very popular, popular enough to sink you all, and you can be sure I will sink you all, if you don't stand by me, in my hour of need. And, Trump knows pretty well now, that is hour of need is almost certainly going to come along next year. Kalshi is now giving nearly a 70% chance of Trump being impeached, about as high as it's ever been. And, while Trump doesn't mind really being impeached that much these days, he definitely does not want to be removed from office prematurely. First of all, Trump really doesn't want to be the first President to have that happen to him, that would make him look like a loser and a jerk, and everyone would laugh at him, now, and in the future. Doesn't appeal to him at all.

Secondly, if Trump is impeached, normally anyway, his family loses all secret service protection, and Trump's youngest son Barron Trump has just had a 10 million dollar bounty put on his head by the Iranian government on Iranian government TV. Actually, his daughter Ivanka Trump has also had serious plots directed against her by the Iranians as well, so, Trump is concerned that once the limitless shield of US government secret service protection is dropped, his entire line of descent could go extinct, to the third or fourth generation, very quickly indeed, courtesy of the Iranian government. Do you think Trump has figured out yet that murdering the Iranian Supreme Leader might not have been such a great idea, after all? Hard to say. I think Trump is actually fond of his family, for the most part.

Thirdly, if Trump is impeached and removed from office, there is a very strong probability that Trump will actually be imprisoned on some pretext or other, as well. SCOTUS cannot protect him from the wrath of the American people, if they are angry enough at him. The reason I say this, is because we are beginning to see that Trump is facing the same perfect political storm that brought down Richard Nixon some half a century ago. Richard Nixon didn't resign out of a sense of honor, and wanting to save the American people the trauma of an impeachment trial in the senate he thought he could win. Nixon knew Republicans had had enough of him, that he had lost his support base, and they didn't want to go down with him. Nixon knew that he was facing removal and imprisonment if he didn't resign. The deal was, resign, and we'll let you go. The combination of staglation, economic discomfort for most Americans, failure in war, and the sense that this can all be attributed to dishonesty and criminal activity over a long period of time, is beginning to have a telling effect on Trump's support base, and making it shrink considerably, now, just like with Richard Nixon. There is also the fact that Trump is so much trouble and so disruptive, all the time, that it's getting to the point that very few powerful people on any point of the political spectrum really want him around anymore, at all. They want him under control. Which means locked up.

Trump, like Richard Nixon, was a protege and disciple of the late Roy Cohn, a leader of the communist witch hunts in the 1950's, along with disgraced Senator Joseph Macarthy. Roy Cohn believed in demagoguery pursued to the ultimate extent, just like Nixon and Trump. Double down, never back down, intimidate everyone, all the time. Behave like a mob boss. Roy Cohn has his license to practice law revoked shortly before his death from aides. Richard Nixon was forced to resign, or face impeachment, removal and imprisonment, his own Party was dropping him, he was electoral poison, Republicans would have supported Democrats to take Nixon down. Trump wants to avoid this, at all costs.

So, what Trump is trying to do, being Trump, is to intimidate the Republicans to hold the line, and continue to support him, no matter what happens in the elections this November. Trump knows that the Democrats are going to take a solid majority in the House of Representatives in November, despite his frantic calls for redistricting. He also knows they will probably take the Senate too. However, even though there are 22 Republican Senators up for reelection, and it is statistically possible that Democrats could actually have more than enough Senators to impeach anyone they want to at the federal level come January, most of these seats are in deep Red territory on the electoral map, and it seems highly improbable that the Democrats can take 20 of them. You never now, but, highly unlikely. So, in all probability, the Democrats will need Republican support to actually remove Trump from office.

Now, if the Democrats merely get three or four Senate seats, enough to tie up the Senate, or a bare majority, Trump can probably hang on. This isn't enough to convince Republicans in deep red states to jump ship, or that Trump is totally toothlesss to attack them, and destroy their careers. However, suppose that Democrats take six to eight Senate seats, and fifty or sixty House seats, and flip control of Florida and Texas at the State level. Suppose they do as well as that, or better? If Republicans feel the survival of their Party, and their political careers are at risk, Trump can hurl all the threat he wants, it will just make them angrier at him, and more certain that he must be removed, and brought under control. So, the American people will really be deciding Trump's ultimate fate in November.

#politics #geopolitics #uscongress #usconstitution #impeachment #richardnixon #trump #donaldtrump #uselections #psychology #psychoanalysis #secretservice #barrontrump #ivankatrump #barontrump #assassinations #ussupremecourt #iran #roycohn #macarthyism #history #ushistory #law

JRR Tolkien created a magical world in which he superimposed the ...

2026-08-31T17:46:28Z

JRR Tolkien created a magical world in which he superimposed the medieval sagas onto a vision of British prehistory, in order to create a kind of cultural mythology for the British people, somewhat along the lines of what Wagner did for Germany in the Ring Cycle of Operas. However, was this necessarily a very good thing? I'm not sure if Tolkien's brains got a bit addled by his experiences in WWI, but, this was fairly common, and he might be a pretty good example of this. Tolkien creates an intensely racist, militarist, nationalist world in the distant prehistorical past, at a time when there simply weren't enough people in the world for this to even be possible. There were no cities, there were no armies, there was no war, in distant prehistory. Human beings, or even near human beings like Neanderthals got along with each other very well indeed, it is a myth now disproven that Neanderthals were wiped out by modern men, or even outcompeted by them, they were overspecialized and were destroyed by climate change, they were almost all gone already by the time modern man arrived on the scene, and they interbred and were cherished by modern men, while they still survived.

Tolkien's fantasies are actually poisonous, racist, militarist fantasies that project the sicknesses of the twentieth century mind onto the idyllic pacifism of deep prehistory, as Wagner's operatic fantasies projected Nazism onto the Ring of the Nibelungen, which is precisely what Adolf Hitler saw in them. The sick, predatory capitalism of the twentieth century spawned two world wars, and created these psychological diseases of paranoid racism and militarism. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens when rats are crowded into a cage. They prey upon their own.

#tolkien #archaeology #anthropology #pacifism #history #philosophyofhistory #fantasy #lordoftherings #medievalsagas #medievalhistory #britishhistory #militarism #racism #prehistory #sociology #psychology #psychoanalysis #neanderthals #homosapiens #capitalism #wwi #wwii #overpopulation

For a long time now, scientists have been puzzled about the fact ...

2026-08-30T20:39:04Z

For a long time now, scientists have been puzzled about the fact that, while there are clearly a great many solar systems harboring earth-like worlds, temperate worlds with atmospheres capable of supporting life, we haven't encountered the slightest trace of intelligent life anywhere in the entire universe. Especially not right here on earth! Ha-Ha, just kidding.

Nevertheless, it does seem odd that we see no evidence of intelligent beings anywhere, and that no intelligent beings seem to have any interest in us, at all. Well, maybe not so very strange, given the way human beings act, but, you get the idea, anyway.

Now, there are a number of fairly simple explanations for this fact. One is simply that it's so difficult to travel in outer space -- something we're becoming more and more aware of actually -- that no beings of any type have actually succeeded in crossing the enormous spaces between solar systems, that light-years of distance simply are too difficult for any living beings to travel and survive. So, no extraterrestrials have visited us, because they simply don't know how to get here, and never will.

But, just to go back a bit, we should really ask, what makes us think that there should be any extraterrestrials at all, anyway? In fact, this is primarily an Age of Enlightenment idea, deriving from the very close connection that existed at the time between Science and Christianity. The view that scientists, who were mostly also theologians at the time had, was that it simply didn't make any sense for God to have created other worlds if there were no intelligent beings there to worship him, and do his bidding. Now, I know, this sounds pretty weird today, but, that was their rationale for it. Really!

And, of course, once this idea became current in scientific thinking, even people like the French philosopher Voltaire, who was basically an atheist, adopted it, and actually wrote science fiction about all the interesting exterrestrial beings who lived on the various planets in our solar system, no matter how inhospitable those planets might be.

Now, of course, by now, we accept that actually most worlds certainly don't have intelligent beings on them, or probably life of any type, because their environments are simply incompatible with any form of life that our biochemists are currently capable of understanding. However, that still leaves the possibility, as our astronomers are demonstrating these days, that there are still a great many worlds that do have life, or even intelligent life on them. Certainly a significant percentage of solar systems do have worlds with temperatures, and even atmospheres perfectly consistent with the development of life as we understand it, and there seems no particular reason why they shouldn't have life as we understand it on them.

Now, there are perhaps 100 million stars in our galaxy, and 100 million galaxies in the universe, so, in this particular numbers game, it seems pretty certain there are an awful lot of worlds with so kind of life out there. So, again, why haven't any of these life forms chosen to grace us with their company? Are we really so repulsive as all that?

The thing is, there are a number of quite real bottlenecks between merely having life -- single-celled organisms, microorganisms, bacteria, maybe simple fungi -- and having complex life forms life like sharks, dinosaurs, mammals -- let alone intelligent life like human beings. For a billion years well after life developed on earth, there was virtually no change in it at all, and no development at all. This is known as "boring earth". Also, "slimeworld". And, in all probability the vast majority of life-bearing planets in our galaxy, and in the entire universe are actually "slimeworlds", that is to say, perfectly hospitable to life as we know it, but, actually, having no complex life forms at all, simply because they didn't evolve, had no reason to evolve, and might or might not eventually evolve.

What brought about complex life on earth? It happened about 700 million years ago, and, it was called snowball earth. The entire planet froze over, all of it. The land, the oceans, everything. 90% of all life on earth was wiped out. The oceans froze to a depth of 1000 feet or more. Life only continued to exist in meltwater on glaciers, and near hydrothermal vents in the deep oceans. However, after 50 million years or so, volcanoes began pumping warming hydrocarbons into the atmosphere, and with virtually no life to absorb the carbon dioxide, this created a global warming effect that melted everything, and sent enormous quantities of nutrients from all this melted ice into the oceans. This terrific concentration of elements greatly accelerated the development of complex life forms to absorb it. Thus, complex life developed very quickly. And, here we are.

Now, we actually have no idea whatsoever how probable or improbable the occurrence of snowball earths really is. But, they are almost certainly not inevitable. And without them, the complex life forms, and intelligent life, simply would not have the time to develop before stars became too hot to support life. No acceleration of evolution from snowball earth melting, no complex or intelligent life. Very simple.

So, we have the "rare earth" hypothesis, that the reason we have not encountered extraterrestrial alien visitors, is simply because there aren't any other intelligent life forms, yet, anyway. We are the first one to get through the filter, as it were. There's plenty of life. But, no other intelligent life.

Personally, I think this is much too extreme a position. Why should snowball earths be so extremely rare? I suspect they have occurred, and led to the development of complex life, when they melted, on other occasions. But, this might not happen so often. Say, perhaps only 1 in 10,000 planets capable of supporting life actually develop complex life forms, and even intelligent life. Say 10% of solar systems contain planets capable of supporting life. That would still leave us with 1000 intelligent life forms on different planets in our galaxy.

Now, that's a lot of different types of intelligent beings in our galaxy, 1000 different species. However, they would be very , very spread out. Way, way spread out, hundreds of light years from each other. Between them would be nothing but space, barren planets, and slime worlds for the taking. They might even have the ability to travel in space, and to different solar systems. But, maybe not far enough to find us, or any other intelligent species. And, even if they did, wouldn't they tend either to avoid us, for fear of conflict, or out of respect for disturbing our own culture? I suspect they would. After all, if there are tens of thousands of empty, easily terriformed life bearing slime worlds readily for the taking in their vicinity, why would they want to bother us? Wouldn't they actually be afraid of doing so, for fear of being even more isolated in a huge universe, empty of intelligent companions. There would be no basis for conflict or war whatsoever, no scarcity of resources, only a scarcity of intelligent beings. There would almost be an instinctive "prime directive", rather like Star Trek's, but, intuitive, not to harm or control any new, intelligent life form. They would be considered too valuable.

And, actually before the concentration of human beings in early proto-civilizations starting about 12,000 years ago, there was no war between human beings. The Neanderthals were wiped out by climate change, they were too hyper-specialized. Human beings interbred with them, and probably cherished them. Our folk memories of the elves or the Cyclops likely stem from the Neanderthals. We did not destroy them, the climate destroyed them.

Indeed, prior to the proto-civilizations, mankind lived in eternal peace, there was no shortage of land and space, the enemy was always the environment, other human beings, even of distinct species, like Neanderthals, were friends, and allies.

If humanity can somehow find a way to reach for and colonize and terraform this limitless resource of slime worlds throughout the galaxy, we will never fight each other again. There will be no need. And, if by chance, we encounter other intelligent beings somewhere, they will certainly be our friends and allies, in surviving and thriving in a limitless but dangerous universe.

#biology #exobiology #biochemistry #climatology #terraforming #astrophysics #startrek #sciencefiction #anthropology #archaeology #earlycivilizations #war #sociology #spacetravel #NASA #extraterrestriallife #slimeearth #snowballearth #neanderthals #homosapiens #philosophyofhistory #rareearth #enlightenment #peace #history

Donald Trump, for reasons best known to himself -- and I mean ...

2026-08-29T15:55:08Z

Donald Trump, for reasons best known to himself -- and I mean that quite literally in this case, no one else seems to know, at all -- has chosen to rename Lake Ontario, "Lake America", at least for purposes of American map makers. I very much doubt anyone else will pay any attention at all. Now, whatever else you might say about him, Donald Trump is indeed rather interesting. He likes to try things out for fun. I guess this is an example of it. Or, maybe not. Maybe there's some purpose to renaming Lake Ontario, "Lake America", that seems to elude the rest of us, for some reason. This morning I was listening to NPR radio, and, they suggested that this was for the purpose of acquiring "leverage" with Canada in the contentious -- of course, everything with Donald Trump is contentious -- trade negotiations and tariff negotiations that are currently occurring between the US and Canada. Why would this name change give Donald Trump "leverage" in pressuring Canada during trade negotiations? What's in a name? Surely, Canadians would merely see this gesture as a silly and irrelevant kind of grandstanding by a disinformation specialist somewhat past his prime, who is no longer capable of discerning when his disinformation will be effective, and when it will merely be be laughed off as a kind of ridiculous joke.

Put another way, Donald Trump has become a salesman who no longer has anything to sell. What is more interesting, however, is why exactly Donald Trump did this, since its impact on trade negotiations is necessarily absolutely nill. What is Trump thinking, exactly? Obviously, Trump must be thinking that this name change somehow does give him some kind of leverage in his negotations with Canada on trade and tariffs. Why, exactly? I suppose NPR is just going along with this assumption of Trump, perhaps out of some kind of loyalty to the US President, or, perhaps just to create a kind of excitement about it to generate good ratings for their news programs. Probably the latter, actually. But in Trump's case, I think he really is incapable of thinking, or at least publicly stating, that he is helpless or incompetent. He just can't do it. He never has. So, Trump must believe that he really is accomplishing something by this particular name change, simply because it's about the only thing he can think of doing. Trump's self-imposed logic goes something like this --

This name change is all I can do to Canada
I am Donald Trump, and am very important
Therefore, this name change must be very important.

Q.E.D.

Something like that, anyway. You see, in Trumpland, which is all Trump has going on in his brain anymore, Trump's self-imposed logic rules. Always.

#philosophy #metaphysics #epistemology #logic #semantics #linguistics #philology #geopolitics #trump #donaldtrump #canada #freetrade #tariffs #psychology #psychoanalysis #npr #funny

All hail King Harold, the greatest of British Kings, and the ...

2026-08-28T15:35:32Z

All hail King Harold, the greatest of British Kings, and the last! So, why exactly has Prince Harry decided to move back to England? And why do the "working royals" look so unhappy about it? Actually, it's quite simple. Harry can do anything he wants to the working royals, and the working royals can't do anything at all, to him. Harry is a private citizen, he makes his own money, his wife Megan Markle is an accomplished Hollywood actress. The Royals are an obsolete institution of questionable popularity even in England these days, and the current British government may be the farthest left leaning in all of British history. The Royals are on a very tight leash, their every move and facial expression is subject to intense social control and public scrutiny. Harry cannot possibly lose this battle against them.

But, what is this battle about, exactly? Harry is now only fifth in line to the throne, King William and his primary descendants, his three children, are all ahead of him in line for the throne. So, Harry really has no possibility whatsoever of becoming King, even if that were worth the trouble these days, which is somewhat dubious. So, what does Harry want, that actually he could possibly get?

Harry has been consumed with rage since childhood about the death of his mother, Princess Diana, who he adored, and still adores, as a kind of Goddess. While he tends to say publicly that he blames the media for Diana's death, I doubt he is quite that naive by this stage. I suspect that, quite correctly, he blames the Royal Family, and the institution of the Royal Family itself for her death, and that is probably quite justifiable. Whether they actually ordered her assassination because she was going to have an Arab baby out of wedlock, or whether they just hounded her and ostracized her and threatened her into a state in which she was unable to protect herself, it is the "working royals" who drove Diana to her death, one can say with reasonable certainty. And Harry knows this, very well.

So, Harry wants to finish the job that his mother Diana started, but the Royals prevented, by arranging for her death, one way, or another. And, Harry is going to do just that. Harry is going to destroy the British Royal Family, once and for all, and that will be the end of the Institution of the British Royalty!

#royals #royalfamily #princeharry #britain #princewilliam #kingcharles #princessdiana #philosophyofhistory #britishhistory

Americans are still taught that George Washington, Thomas ...

2026-08-25T20:16:16Z

Americans are still taught that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and other so called "founding fathers" of the United States were superhuman and Saintly beings, with almost Godlike wisdom, knowledge, courage, virtue and personal willpower. This is currently being challenged somewhat, as Donald Trump attempts to go even farther down this road, pretending that no one in the history of planet earth was comparable to them, and that America represents the eternal image of true perfection for all mankind, himself especially. Essentially, Trump has pushed this concept to a reducto ad absurdam, and there is some pushback now. Indeed, for the first time in recent history, we now have credible political candidates in the Democratic Party, arguing for extremely fundamental changes in the nature of US government, such as the elimination of the US Presidency, the US Senate, and the US Supreme Court, all of which are currently leaning towards extreme right wing positions, and led by Donald Trump.

But, what did the Americans fighting the American Revolution really have in mind, and why were they revolting, exactly, and against what? The British themselves were actually quite puzzled about this, since, for the most part, successful Americans were doing rather better materially at the time of the American Revolution than they themselves were! This is why the fighting slogan "No taxation without representation" was so disingenuous. The British were being taxed at 25 times the rate of the Americans for their rather limited "representation", this was certainly the last thing that Americans really wanted!

So, what did Americans really want? The issue really was, more than anything, British controls over American westward expansion into Indian territories. The Americans wanted unlimited opportunities to steal and exploit Indian lands, while the British, not actually living permanently in America, preferred a somewhat more limited and restricted approach to stealing and exploiting Indian lands. And, I'm afraid this is precisely what the Founding Fathers of the US had in mind, and very little else. All the rest is just window dressing, all the high flown phrases, all the noble conceptions of human liberty and freedom in the US Constitution really mean absolutely nothing whatsoever, they are merely an elaborate dissimulation and rationalization of theft, murder, rape and greed.

Actually, only about a third of the American population were even in support of the American revolutionaries, about a third were opposed and supported the British, and about a third didn't really care one way or the other. So, how did the American Revolutionaries manage to win, given they didn't even have majority support in their own population, and the British were the most powerful nation in the world? Well, fact is, without massive and ultimately suicidal support from Louis XVI of France, they wouldn't have stood a chance! So, let's add revenge as another one of the motivations here, revenge of the French for their defeat on the Plains of Abraham in Quebec, some 15 years prior to the start of the American Revolution.

#history #ushistory #philosophyofhistory #usrevolution #usconstitution #washington #franklin #jefferson #foundingfathers #politicalscience #sociology

Historians frequently try to draw parallels between Hitler's ...

2026-08-23T22:12:32Z

Historians frequently try to draw parallels between Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, and Benito Mussolini's incredibly successful march on Rome, a couple of years before. While, it's true, both Mussolini and Hitler were fascists, the actual development and implementation and immediate consequences of the Beer Hall Putsch look much, much closer to the Spartacist uprising of 1919 than they do to Mussolini's bloodless coup against the existing Italian regime a couple of years before, that brought him to power for almost 25 years.

German Communist leader Rosa Luxemburg led the Spartacist uprising rather against her will, of course, in response to general dissatisfaction just before and just after the end of WWI in Germany. From the standpoint of the victorious allies, particularly Britain and France, the Spartacists were OK as long as they were still at war with the Kaiser's Germany. However, once Germany surrendered, and the Kaiser abdicated, the allies perceived that their greatest enemy, and their greatest threat, was no longer German nationalism, but Russian communism, and it's potential to spread worldwide, including to their own countries. So, the German Spartacists themselves became the main enemy, as far as France and Britain were concerned. A lack of understanding of this fact may explain why Rosa Luxemburg allowed herself to be talked into getting involved, since she knew it would fail. Was she suicidal? This seems highly unlikely. However, when you engage in armed uprisings against the established government, and you fail, you are very likely to be executed for treason, for your trouble, as was inevitably the case with Rosa Luxemburg. She must have thought that, as a woman, and a sincere, and popular idealist, she would perhaps be deported, or given a short prison sentence, rather than a summary execution, as turned out to be the case. She clearly underestimated the extent of the hostility of the German, French and British authorities -- all of whom were involved in controlling Germany at this point in time -- to her Communist movement. I'm speculating here, of course, I don't think we really know what she was thinking, but, this presumed ignorance of the real motivations of the allied authorities, who were clearly involved actively in militarily suppressing the Spartacists in Germany in 1919, may explain her willingness to effectively seal her own doom in this fashion.

On the other hand, we know precisely what Adolf Hitler's motivations were in attempting to execute the Beer Hall Putsch, several years later. Hitler had absolute power within the Nazi party, he made sure of that. Most Nazis recognized that there was little possibility of a successful government coup at this time, anywhere in Germany. Although the economy was in tatters, no one really saw an alternative. The Nazis were a fringe movement still, the communists were distrusted because of the repression and ongoing civil war in Soviet Russia. So, why did Hitler act?

I tend to think that Hitler had had a death wish at least since early in WWI, when he was the sole non-casualty, and one of few survivors when his entire battalion was wiped out, save himself, in his first week of active combat, in 1914. Imagine poor Adolf Hitler, the son of a civil servant, a Bohemian artist, suddenly turned into the God of Death! Why, he was Mr. PTSD! And, if we look at his behavior from that point in time -- his volunteering for suicide missions, his insane courage leading to the Iron Cross first class, his subsequent fearless political career leading to one catastrophic confrontation after another, and then WWII, and his eventual and inevitable suicide with his new wife Eva Braun -- we can see this as Hitler struggling almost to find his own death, which he had missed so many years earlier!

So, rather than actually trying to emulate Mussolini, as he claimed, I suspect Hitler may actually have been trying to emulate Rosa Luxemburg, and her death leading a cause! And, indeed, Hitler barely escaped death several times during the Beer Hall Putsch, and was shot rather seriously. He even threatened to kill himself if the leader of Bohemia didn't cede power to him. Hitler put a revolver to his own head! Now that is a little unusual, and psychologically significant, don't you think?

It is profoundly ironic that Adolf Hitler not only survived the Beer Hall Putsch, but that it became the entire basis of his ultimate rise to absolute power in Germany. Is this what Rosa Luxemburg was hoping for herself when she led the Spartacist revolt? That she would perhaps get a short prison sentence, like Hitler did, and emerge a great leader of a communist Germany?

#history #comparativehistory #philosophyofhistory #sociology #nazis #fascists #communists #psychology #psychoanalysis #germany #ussr #spartacists #hitler #wwi #wwii

Rosa Luxemburg was a leader of the German communists until she ...

2026-08-21T19:41:20Z

Rosa Luxemburg was a leader of the German communists until she was murdered by German nationalists following the failed communist Spartacist uprising of 1918-1919 in Germany, just at the end, and just following WWI. This was essentially a spontaneous uprising of the German people and the German military in response to the deprivations and failures caused by the First World War, although it was certainly encouraged and fostered by the German left, and some financing was available to Rosa Luxemburg and other communist leaders from the newly founded Soviet Union led by Vladimir Lenin. This was not a coup ordered by the USSR, although Lenin and Trotsky certainly did favor World Revolution as the ultimate goal of the communist internationale, as a matter of fundamental principle.

Rosa Luxemburg argued against the Spartacist uprising, believing the time had not yet come for a worker's revolution in Germany, and that it must inevitably fail. The Spartacist uprising had little to do with Germany's capitulation, which was actually inevitable within a few days or weeks anyway, they no longer were militarily capable of opposing the advance of the Allies, who had become much too strong for Germany by the end of 1918. Once the uprising was underway, Rosa Luxemburg decided she must join with the revolting workers, out of solidarity, and loyalty to her friends. This was a literally fatal, and a disastrous decision on her part, that had catastrophic consequences for the world as a whole.

It had particularly disastrous consequences for Jews internationally, because Rosa Luxemburg was Jewish, as were many members of the leadership of the German left, and, of course, of the Soviet Union, like Leon Trotsky. Because of this incredible and totally unnecessary error, Rosa Luxemburg died a martyr's death, and Jews as a whole were blamed for the attempt to force Bolshevism on the people of Germany. This was precisely what turned Adolf Hitler and Germans into rabid antisemites. Hitler actually hadn't been particularly antisemitic at all until the Spartacist uprising, nor had the people of Germany. By this simple and extremely unfortunate act of loyalty, Rosa Luxemburg personally formed the basis for the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany, bringing about WWII, and the Jewish Holocaust. Indeed, to this very day, extreme right-wing American supporters of Donald Trump -- who obviously themselves have antisemitic, fascist leanings -- will cite Rosa Luxemburg as proving that Jews tried to force Germany to become an authoritarian Bolshevist state! In fact, Rosa Luxemburg was very much opposed to Bolshevist authoritarianism, and, if she hadn't been murdered, might have helped to steer German leftists to a democratic course. She was basically a gentle pacifist, and a socialist idealist.

#wwi #history #antisemitism #hitler #sparticists #communism #germany #fascism #wwii #philosophyofhistory #geopolitics #ussr #trump #donaldtrump

If you want to know just how bizarre the twilight zone world of ...

2026-08-20T17:57:21Z

If you want to know just how bizarre the twilight zone world of the Trump administration really is, consider the fact that Trump's greatest enemy, the Iranian government, worked closely with Trump's infamous ICE deportation service to help deport as many Iranians as possible to Iran, in the period immediately leading up to the mass uprisings that occurred early this year in Iran. In other words, many of those very people involved in protesting the Iranian government, and who were violently suppressed may have just immediately before have been US asylum seekers, and been deported for it! Now what's that about, exactly? Amd, then, Trump claimed that he was "helping" them, by bombing them in Iran, in March!

What can we say about this, but that Trump is just a natural disrupter, doing as much damage everywhere he can, out of a sort of pure joy in the experience. A kind of senile demon, who exists solely to destroy everything he can.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/ice-iran-quietly-worked-together-101111801.html

#geopolitics #immigration #Iran #trump #donaldtrump

People are immensely selfish and self-absorbed, they really ...

2026-08-20T00:12:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…wl0x
_________________________

People are immensely selfish and self-absorbed, they really can't help it. We all are, really. People relate best to those in the same situation as themselves, otherwise, they often can't really relate to other people, at all.

I posted this a month ago. It seems to fit the case here. ...

2026-08-19T23:39:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…5v2q
_________________________

I posted this a month ago. It seems to fit the case here.
https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqszhakr35hea3xnx8uqj8nsqw4j4r2g2hjhgfwhfsneuaywu3w3lmc0h80m4

All societies are run by elites -- dictatorships, democracies, ...

2026-08-19T23:07:43Z

All societies are run by elites -- dictatorships, democracies, plutocracies, monarchies, capitalist countries, communist countries, theocracies etc. There will always be a select group of people who have vastly more power at times than anyone else. Why is this? Well, most people are too busy or ignorant or incompetent to actually control everything to any significant degree, and, in any case, there are far too many people in modern nations to allow for the possibility of everyone getting their way all the time. So, someone has to decide what to do. And, what is done can have immense consequences for everyone. So, some "elite" group is selected by some means or other to make these immensely important decisions, that could have catastrophic consequences for everyone, or, might possibly be brilliant solutions to everyone's problems!

Now, in the US, there tends to be an immense contempt for academic and government and media "elites". Individuals who, while financially comfortable, are not fabulously wealthy, in general, but simply presume to have some knowledge or understanding of things that makes them more important and powerful than almost anyone else. This is deeply resented by "ordinary people", who see no reason why university professors should run their lives. This is perfectly understandable really. While, at times, science and engineering has made rapid strides to improve people's lives, this is much less the perception of people now, than it was 100 years ago. Perhaps this is because life expectancy and standard of living are not increasing nearly as rapidly now as they were, at least in the West, 100 years ago. Whereas 100 years ago it was perfectly natural for people to worship Einstein, these days, people are more likely to laugh at Nobel Prize winners than worship them. We don't really know why exactly scientists and engineers were more effective 100 or 150 years ago than they are now, but, for the average person, this is perfectly obvious. Of course, scientists and engineers will say this just proves how stupid everyone but scientists and engineers are. Right back at ya, guys!

These days, particularly the US, there's more of a tendency to look for plutocratic elites, the billionaire oligarchs. This is probably because everyone in the US can relate to making money. So, someone who is good at making money must be smart, right? While that's probably true, the problem is, they may simply use their intelligence to manipulate people so they can steal from them! Making money does not mean that someone is productive, despite what arch-capitalists may think. Drug dealers make money, Art thieves make money, Art forgers make money, Counterfeiters quite literally make money! And, in a much broader sense, there are many, many people who are excellent salesmen, and can sell almost anything, who are not necessarily doing the world a great deal of good at all! They are selling garbage. So, the rich, plutocratic elite may be just as useless as the current academic, government or media elites, but, just greedier and more destructive!

I think, in some ways, the Chinese example may be useful. They call themselves "communists", in the Chinese elite. Are they communists? Possibly, although I'm not quite sure what Karl Marx would think of them these days. However, I think we have to give the current Chinese leadership some credit in their immense flexibility in attempting to rule their great nation. They will try capitalism up to a point, they will try popular representation up to a point, they will try joint leadership up to a point, they will try having a single strongman up to a point. And, whatever they're doing, it seems to be working, in terms of increasing standard of living and prosperity for China. China's population will be cut in half by the end of the century, and with current trends for increasing technological innovation there, and increasing prosperity and education, they will probably be able to increase human rights to Western levels by then, they will not be constrained by overpopulation or poverty to control the people rigidly. By 2100, China will probably be the richest, best governed, and even most open and tolerant nation in the world. China may be freer than the US, by that time.

Does China have "elites"? Perhaps, but, they are very elusively defined, and are inclined to morph into new forms rather regularly. So, perhaps no "elites" in the traditional Western sense, at all. And, it's working!

#politics #politicalscience #sociology #philosophy #geopolitics #philosophyofhistory #science #technology #engineering #economics #communism #capitalism #China

The key point to understand with regard to Neanderthal man, is ...

2026-08-18T16:29:33Z

The key point to understand with regard to Neanderthal man, is that they did not evolve in Africa, unlike most or all of our other pre-human ancestors. They evolved in a very specific and very harsh ecological niche in Northern Eurasia, and were hyper-specialized to this niche. As long as that niche didn't change a great deal, they were alright, although their numbers were never very great, due to the demands and limitations of this harsh climate, and the biological limitations on their fertility, imposed by these biological adaptations. However, once the climate changed enough to make this niche no longer feasible, which it did tens of thousands of years before the arrival of modern man into Neanderthal territory in Eurasia, the Neanderthals were already in deep trouble as a species. They had extraordinary strength and intelligence, considerably greater than modern man. However, their bulky bodies and brains put severe limitations on fertility rates. It was hard for Neanderthal women to bear children, and to keep them alive, considerably harder than for modern women. So, once their natural habitat deteriorated enough to threaten them and reduce their numbers and force them to move to new territory, they were in deep trouble simply due to inbreeding and the genetic limitations this inevitably leads to. And, then came along modern man, with new and dangerous pathogens from Africa which they had no immunity to. They still survived another 20,000 years here and there, and they inbred to some degree with modern men, particularly due to male Neanderthal on human female couplings, which is why we all have 1-4% Neanderthal DNA in our modern human bodies.

However, there is no need whatsoever to assume any particular human genocide of Neanderthals, or any direct active human competition with Neanderthals, to account for their extinction. Our mythologies have memories of Neanderthals, particularly in terms of the elves, the mythical, wise, loving ancient men who disappeared to the islands of the West, leaving men with great sadness. But, also, the Cyclops, a story estimated by specialists to be 50,000 years old, the great, God-like, powerful beings that terrified and attempted to control modern man. Modern men did not destroy the Neanderthals, the climate destroyed the Neanderthals.

#anthropology #biology #sociology #history #prehistory #philosophyofhistory #neanderthals #homosapiens #mythology

Well it's finally happened. People are no longer paying any ...

2026-08-17T16:31:42Z

Well it's finally happened. People are no longer paying any attention whatsoever to Trump's ridiculous claims about Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, not even the oil traders or the stock markets. Trump, despite his genuine sales genius, simply cannot sell that he has everything under control there, or that he's going to make the Strait of Hormuz the 51st state. Not gonna happen! It took a while, but, now, the markets don't even blink when Trump claims "peace is at hand", or "Iran is desperate for a deal", or "I am in full control". They just ignore him totally, and completely. For quite a while there, months really, the markets would simply assume there must be some actual truth to Trump's public pronouncements, because we've never had such a totally shameless pathological liar for a U.S. President before! The markets would leap and jump like a trained tiger through hoops, and give Trump whatever values he wanted, just because he said so. Not any more. As the economy weakens, and the flow of oil in the Persian Gulf drops to a mere trickle, traders are finally being forced to deal with the reality of a totally incompetent US President who is running the American ship of state very swiftly indeed onto the rocks!

Now, let's try to understand what's actually going on in Trump's head here. Trump, for no apparent reason, decided it would be a really good idea to murder the Iranian Supreme Leader, who the Iranians worship as a God. Why did he do this? From Trump's point of view, "why not"? I don't like him, he doesn't like me, I control an invincible military force, I can kill him if I feel like it, nothing will happen."

As it turns out -- and his advisers were warning Trump about this -- quite a bit has happened. Iran has seized total and unshakeable control of the entire Persian Gulf. This has immense economic consequences for the world as a whole, and Iran can now use this power to have immense influence over the entire world, including, and quite specifically, in largely controlling the results of American elections.

So, what's going on in Trump's mind now, exactly? I think it can be summed up in his repeated statement "We cannot allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon." Now, personally -- and I think this would be rather a common, perhaps a majority view of Americans -- I couldn't possibly care less if Iran develops a nuclear weapons or not. They seem quite rational in their ability to survive extreme crises, I can't believe they would be any more unreasonable than North Korea's Kim Jong Un, for example, whose sanity is I think much more in question than the Iranian leadership, and who has thermonuclear weapons in quantity, and threatens to use them quite regularly, including on the US itself. So, why is Trump so obsessed with Iran not developing a nuclear weapon?

I think Trump is a very imaginative and creative guy. I think he has anticipated a situation that concerns him, that could quite likely occur if Iran developed nuclear weapons in quantity. I think at that point, something might come up, that makes Trump very uneasy. You see, the Iranians never actually threatened Jimmy Carter with death, during the Iranian hostage crisis. Sure, they said "Death to America" a lot, but, never actually "Death to Carter". Never. Whereas now, I think it's rather more common for Iranians to chant "Death to Trump" than "Death to America". And, the Iranian Leadership has said over and over again "we will kill you", to Trump, quite specifically. And, as we know, the Iranians do have a certain tendency to, shall we say, "follow through".

So, what does this have to do with Iran developing a nuclear weapon? Well, if Iran has a pretty good nuclear arsenal, what's to stop them from simply saying, publicly, "You risk nuclear war with our nation, if you continue to protect this ridiculous loser, Donald Trump, at enormous expense. He murdered our supreme leader." Now, this might be a mere bluff. Or, maybe not. But, how would the American people react to this? How would you react to it?

#economics #politics #trump #donaldtrump #geopolitics #psychology #funny #markets #psychoanalysis

There's no great surprise as to why Germany made such a mess ...

2026-08-15T16:27:10Z

There's no great surprise as to why Germany made such a mess of things in the twentieth century. It had been forged in a hurry by Otto von Bismarck, an eccentric political genius, towards the end of the nineteenth century, and the entire structure of the German government was a rather haphazard system solely designed to accommodate Bismarck himself. Naturally, it didn't function terribly well at all, after Bismarck's dismissal and death. True, Kaiser Wilhelm II did well enough for 25 years, but, then the entire nation collapsed like a house of cards during WWI, a war that certainly should and could have been avoided. Then Germany floundered around for twenty years, trying out different political systems rather awkwardly, before launching an ever more catastrophic and self-destructive apocalypse on itself and the world as a whole. Why should we be surprised that the highly cultured, civilized and, for the most part, rather peaceful people of Germany should have descended into Hell as a nation, given that they had never been a nation before, and had no idea whatsoever how to be one? What is astonishing about the fact that forcing a people who had never been a large nation before, rather suddenly into the responsibilities of a large and powerful nation, should have failed abysmally and totally?

I suppose this is simply another example of the unfortunately rather generally applicable principle, anything that can go wrong, will. If you don't know exactly how to do something from extensive, hard experience, you will do it disastrously badly. And, if an entire people have no particular experience in functioning as a nation, they will be totally incapable of doing so, and will do immense damage to themselves, and everyone they deal with.

#history #philosophy #philosophyofhistory #Germany #wwi #wwii #metaphysics

It is said that history is written by the victors. On the other ...

2026-08-13T20:41:34Z

It is said that history is written by the victors. On the other hand, it is also said that the smallest worm turns, being trod on. In other words, losers can become winners, and vice-versa. So, over time, history may look very different indeed in both books and films, as those who were winners become losers, and the losers themselves start rewriting history.

I've been watching a Russian version of a move produced in 2010 about Japanese government just before Admiral Perry's "black ships" bombarded Yokohama Harbor, to "open up" the Japanese to trade with the West. It's called 13 Assassins.

Now, the Russians are particularly notable for radically altering their perspectives on their history every few decades or so, as they adopt radically different approaches to government itself. So, they particularly enjoy seeing representations of other governments from other societies, that look as bad, or worse, than their own, since they are very well aware of the serious problems with Russian governments over the centuries. And, I'm quite sure they enjoyed this particular film a great deal, indeed, because it basically portrays the entire Samurai tradition as simply bloodthirsty, lustful, murdering, raping and destroying, for no purpose whatsoever, start to finish. Maybe the intention was to appeal to Americans, by suggesting maybe the assault on Japan by Admiral Perry wasn't such a bad thing after all. Actually, the Japanese do tend to portray this American nineteenth century military intervention as if it were some kind of a benevolent action, in general. Maybe they accept as a nation that they were by no means too well ruled at the time, and needed a change. Certainly, they do not feel the same way about the use A-bombs in WWII against Japan, which they see as the only true war crime of the entire war!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8In8cytL7Fc

#philosophy #history #philosophyofhistory #ethics #Japan #Russia #sociology #government

Donald Trump has just made a very compelling and frank statement ...

2026-08-12T17:35:43Z

Donald Trump has just made a very compelling and frank statement to the entire US media, with regard to an incident in which the plane on which the media were flying in was made a decoy for Iranian attacks, in order to decoy the Iranians away from the plane in which Trump himself had been detoured to actually fly in -- "If I go, you go." Actually, more precisely in this particular case -- "I don't want to go, I want you to go." You will all notice, no doubt, that very little outrage has been aroused from this statement of intention on Donald Trump's part, other than within the US media itself, of course. This is likely because the average American actually hates the US media just as much as they hate Donald Trump, since the job of the US media is largely just to ridicule anyone and everyone at all times.

An interesting question is, what exactly would happen if anyone actually posed exactly the same question to Donald Trump -- if I go, you go? No doubt, they would, at the very least, be subject to investigation by Trump's "Department of Justice", or, whatever it is exactly. Perhaps the "Federal Bureau of Investigation", or whatever it is under Trump, might come calling. Who, knows, maybe they would be arrested and tried for threatening Trump? Hard to say, I guess.

What this definitely does indicate, however, is a rather consistent attitude on the part of Donald Trump, that altruism really is not a part of his nature. In general, anyone who deals much with Donald Trump is rather in this same position as the US media is with regard to Trump -- "If I go, you go." This is one of the reasons I've never really had any desire whatsoever to have anything to do with anything associated closely with Donald Trump. It seems rather hazardous to one's health, safety and freedom.

Actually, because of this particular attitude, and great many rather rational, reasonable people -- in which category, I'm afraid, we must currently place the IRGC, and the Iranian government in general these days -- don't want to have anything to do with Donald Trump, and will use, quite literally, any level of force whatsoever to avoid it. They make this quite clear.

This winter we witnessed in Minnesota, something very much like an armed standoff between Governor Tim Walz' National Guard and Donald Trump's ICE agents, in the streets of Minneapolis. Now, the media, of course, never actually called this a mutiny against the Federal Government, after all, Trump never officially ordered their federalization. Of course, given that Tim Walz had been a member of the NG for 25 years himself, and was a personal friend of all the leaders of it, Trump was probably informed that he risked an open military mutiny if he attempted to federalize them, which is why he did not do so, since, that might have been the end of his presidency. After all, if the commander-in-chief cannot count of the loyalty of his own troops, and this becomes obvious, he cannot continue as commander-in-chief in any normal sense of the term. So, in this particular case, when Trump tried to say "If I go, you go,", Timmy Walz countered with "No, I'm not going, you're going." And, so ICE left Minnesota. Most of them anyway.

Now that most major polling averages show the generics favoring Democrats by 7 points or so -- the level of a major wave -- and elections have consistently shown for over a year that Democrats are outperforming the polling by double digits quite consistently, because Republicans simply are not showing up to vote for this clown and his supporters, it appears likely that Democrats will flip Texas and Florida and other previously "red" states. In other words, there will be no major Republican MAGA strongholds left, anywhere in the country. More precisely, the National Guards of all major states will be under Democrat control. What does this say about the military situation in the US next year, and Trump's personal NG of 5000 armed troops in Washington D.C.? Will this be a situation of "If I go, you go," like Trump wants it to be, or, instead, will it be like it was in Minnesota -- "No, I'm not going, you're going."

#politics #geopolitics #psychology #psychoanalysis #military #USmiltary #trump #donaldtrump #free-speech

Although statistically possible this year, it is highly ...

2026-08-10T21:43:06Z

Although statistically possible this year, it is highly improbable that the Democrats will get the 67 votes in the Senate necessary to themselves, on their own, actually remove Donald Trump or SCOTUS justices entirely on their own, next year. However, as oil prices rise, and the economy weakens, and a stock correction becomes probable, another powerful and dangerous scenario presents itself to the Republicans. It is looking more and more probable that the Democrats could well take House and Senate by solid margins, and, in addition, take the governorships of Texas and Florida, as well as the Texas House of representatives. All of these are well within the realms of reasonable probability, perhaps 50:50 possibilities. Other states may fall to the Democrats as well. Facing solid opposition in both Houses of Congress at the federal level, and having no support base of any significance at the state level anywhere in the entire country, Donald Trump, who has just lost a major war with Iran, possibly the greatest disaster in US military history, will face an historic level of political isolation, both domestically, and internationally. I cannot see how he could possibly govern the country under these circumstances, he would just be an extremely unpopular, eccentric old man. I doubt that he would be tolerated to complete his term of office.

#politics #geopolitics #news

The term AI is a misnomer, this is not true intelligence, which ...

2026-08-09T20:21:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…m4v7
_________________________

The term AI is a misnomer, this is not true intelligence, which we cannot even define. AI is just a huge mass of databases, accessed by complex databases and mediated by human language processors. Think of it as the world's largest, most thoroughly indexed encyclopedia. It has no common sense, no intuition, no feelings, no humanity.

What are we to make of the rather bizarre Dred Scott Decision of ...

2026-08-09T20:17:26Z

What are we to make of the rather bizarre Dred Scott Decision of the US Supreme Court, just before the US Civil War, which probably, more than anything else, actually guaranteed a civil war in the US? What could possibly prevail upon 80% of the Supreme Court justices to confidently assert that black people were not human beings, that they didn't even belong to the same species as white people? Because that is precisely what they all said. This was not a close decision, 7:2, that black men were not men! So, the constitutional principle that all men are created equal simply didn't apply to black people. Very weird!

Now, slavery is at least as old as human civilization, we really shouldn't blame the old south for all the evils of slavery throughout human history. However, it would have never occurred to the ancient Greeks or Romans that their slaves were not human beings. After all, they had fought and defeated them in battle, in many cases, they could have lost, in which case the Greeks and Romans themselves might have become slaves! Nevertheless, they did, often anyway, see their slaves as being barbarians, if they came from other nations who they had pillaged or conquered, and, perhaps anyway, less capable than they themselves. The essential nature of competition in all human life was quite obvious to ancient people, even civilized people, they were still really just competing tribes, even if some were larger and more civilized. If you lost, you became a slave, because you obviously couldn't be the master of someone who had defeated you in battle. And, that's all there was. The dominant people, and their slaves. No social services, no welfare support, no unemployment insurance, no public housing, nothing. You won, or you were a slave. In fact, you could argue, that in the ancient civilized world, with no social support, but insufficient free fertile land to support people by foraging for food alone, or even hunting for it, that slavery was really the only social service around. After all, if you defeated a great city in battle, put all the adult men to the sword to prevent them from being a threat to you, burned down the city and all its farmland, you really had to take all the women and children into slavery, or they would certainly all die from starvation and exposure.

However, there were some special aspects to slavery in the New World. It was essentially confined to black people, with some limited exceptions, for some very specific reasons, which had nothing to do with them being inferior. Firstly, there were some African states that regularly practiced slavery, and so, there was a ready supply of people accustomed to this lifestyle, more or less, anyway, there. This wasn't particularly the case anywhere else in world in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Secondly, Africans were accustomed to the heat and humidity and diseases of the tropical and sub-tropical climates in which the large lucrative tobacco and cotton and sugar plantations of the New World were operating. Thirdly, their black complexions made Africans much easier to track and control as a group than would be the case with Caucasian slaves, or even native Indian slaves, who could blend into their own communities, and escape slavery by this means. So, from a purely practical, economic point of view, Africans could be used by Europeans at this time as a controllable, relatively cheap source of labor, particularly in large mega-plantations, in which the work was very labor intensive.

So, there became a cultural social institution that attempted to rationalize this exploitation. And, perhaps the latest and most extreme -- although the situation in Brazil may actually have been as bad, or worse -- was the American Old South in the nineteenth century, before the US civil war. An entire rich region of the planet, inhabited by rich Europeans, but worked entirely by poor African slaves. Incredibly unjust, but, quite profitable, and so, elegantly rationalized by learned theologians, learned jurists, learned writers journalists and politicians and, as we have seen, 80% of the justices on the US Supreme Court!

Of course, this could not stand. The absolute hypocrisy of the judges on the US Supreme Court merely guaranteed a violent confrontation between the fools who agreed with them, and profited by their decision, and the majority of the population.

#ethics #politics #law #USCivilWar #19thCenturyHistory #slavery #history

Perople love to ridicule each other. Always have. Most of the ...

2026-08-08T16:13:36Z

Perople love to ridicule each other. Always have. Most of the news is clearly intended to make one or another group of people look totally ridiculous. Arguably, the entire profession of journalism is primarily about making people look ridiculous, mostly, anyway. Which brings me to Richard Sheridan's rather puzzling play, The School for Scandal, an entire play devoted to its main characters engaging in systematic constant and highly creative ridicule of everyone of their acquaintance. Now, of course, this is inevitably, and for always, going to be a very entertaining and popular play! And, obviously, Sheridan was well aware of this when he wrote it. Nevertheless, the tone of the play is actually somewhat prudish, with the more tedious and virtuous characters regularly expressing their total disgust with all the other more entertaining and "scandalous" characters. Now, nothing particularly awful actually happens to anyone in this play, either the "virtuous" non-scandalous characters, or the "immoral" scandal mongers. It's really just about how they constantly quarrel with each other to pass the time away, and, they do it every entertainingly too, which some of the characters themselves actually comment on!

However, beneath all this apparently pointless self amusement, I think Sheridan may have something else in mind. Richard Sheridan was a highly successful liberal politician, at times a senior minister, and a passionate champion of freedom of the press, and of free speech in general. While some of his "virtuous" characters in the play actually say that all the "scandalous" characters should be prosecuted in court for their nasty ways, they never really look through to the implications of such a policy, something I'm quite sure Richard Sheridan had done rather systematically. Because, you see, if you can prosecute someone on the basis that they say nasty things about other people, then, what could possibly be nastier than saying that someone is guilty of a serious crime, simply for saying nasty things! And, so, the prosecutors would logically be compelled to prosecute themselves!

This brings up the broader point, that we always claim the right of freedom of speech for ourselves, and our own particular views, but frequently attempt to deny it on various grounds for those we happen to disagree with. Any kind of censorship and denial of free speech is a very slippery slope indeed, because the greater the diversity of acceptable views, the more opportunity we have to arrive at some real approximation of truth, and of reality.

#ethics #politics #literature #free-speech #sheridan

What is ideology? The term is commonly used, but, precisely what ...

2026-08-06T18:16:27Z

What is ideology? The term is commonly used, but, precisely what it is, and is not, and its significance, I think is not entirely clear to most people, currently. I suppose the most commonly known and accepted forms of ideology that are accepted and understood by most people are religious and economic in nature. So, communism and capitalism are economics ideologies, and christianity and islam are religious ideologies, and they are clearly distinct in many respects from each other. Now, of course, even this is debatable. I knew a man once, whose father had escaped from Bulgaria following WWII, to the US. He said he asked his father once what the real difference was between communism and capitalism was, and he said "not a thing". Now, bear in mind, this man hadn't been particularly successful in either society, kind of lower middle class in both. A working stiff, if you like. And, actually, from the standpoint of the average working stiff, there might not be really much difference between capitalism and communism. There are probably differences, but not particularly at that level, perhaps. In a general sort of way, capitalism is rather like survival of the fittest, on the basis of possessing money, where possession of money is the criterion of fitness. Communism is about centralized government control to try to arrange social progress and prosperity.

Christianity and Islam are the two most important religions the world currently, and have been for some time. Both are evangelical religions that aggressively proselytize, which might explain their success and power. And, there are clear distinctions between the two. Christianity is the more transcendental of the two, the more concerned with abstractions of good and evil, and with a hypothetical afterlife. Islam is much more pragmatic, much more a religion of this world. I might argue that Mohommad was a political science and marketing genius, rather easily, I think, and that the Koran is a kind of popularized political science textbook for founding a legitimate government system very simply, by simple people. Arguably, Christianity was developed as an antidote to the pragmatism and materialism of the Roman Empire, seeking more universal ideals, while Islam was an antidote to the abstractions and fundamental irrationality of Christianity.

Of course, there are other kinds of ideologies. Other religions, other economic systems. Also, other approaches to life that could be called ideologies. I would argue that the "scientific method", as practiced in universities and research laboratories, is a kind of ideology. The notion that systematic experimentation, as practiced systematically, will lead to inevitable progress, is definitely an act of faith. We really don't know for sure whether it works or not, despite the absolute insistence of professional scientists and engineers, because these same scientists and engineers inevitably claim that they were using the scientific method, whatever they did or did not do! The claim of inevitable progress is quite universal by engineers and scientists, whether they actually ever make any progress, or not!

#philosophy #metaphysics #ethics #politics #communism #capitalism #christianity #islam #science

We have seen clearly in the Iran War now, that there is a bit of ...

2026-08-05T19:07:13Z

We have seen clearly in the Iran War now, that there is a bit of a problem with the current US military-industrial paradigm. We have seen, that, quite literally, the US is exhausting years of military stockpiles of weapons in just days, or perhaps weeks of active combat, and virtually no effect whatsoever is seen on the enemy's ability to continue to function and return fire! Obviously, this is not a way to win wars. Actually, it's a great way to lose wars!

Now, why is this exactly? Well, it might have something to do with the economic system of capitalism itself, which rewards companies for producing profits, not for producing any meaningful practical results, of any type whatsoever. Now, I know, there are those of you arch-capitalists who genuinely believe that money is the only reality, that money explains everything, controls everything, and cannot be dispensed with. Indeed, there was even a pretty good philosopher and sociologist who wrote a book, The Philosophy of Money (1900), who argued exactly that! Actually, I read this book about twenty years ago, and I thought it was the funniest book I ever read. I sincerely believe he was inspired by Sigmund Freud. I think this guy said to himself "Hey, if Siggy, an Austrian Jew, can argue that the only thing that matters in human life is sex, I, Georg Simmel, a German sociologist, can argue that the only thing that matters in life is money."

However, us people who live in the real world, are more likely to accept the axiom "Money is a good servant, but a poor master". Unfortunately for the US military currently, and for Americans as a whole, the Pentagon, as President Dwight D. Eisenhower observed, is controlled by a US military-industrial complex, and the only thing this complex is interested in is money. They would sell their souls for money. They have sold their souls for money!

These are the people who are bankrolling Elon Musk, and Elon Musk is bankrolling them. The Pentagon's support is what makes Elon Musk untouchable, and what keeps Elon Musk so rich. The only way for the US to start winning wars again, and for US society to start working proplerly again, for ordinary Americans, is to break down this relationship. Rather than limitless sums of money for useless weapons systems and Starships, we must start looking at ways to spend government money on what is important for ordinary Americans, not the capitalist oligarchs who currently are running the show. This is precisely why, in America, socialism is no longer a dirty word. God Speed, the socialists of America!

#military #warfare #geopolitics #politics #history #philosophy #capitalism

MEPHISTOPHELES. Bescheidne Wahrheit sprech' ich dir. Wenn ...

2026-08-03T15:36:33Z

MEPHISTOPHELES.
Bescheidne Wahrheit sprech' ich dir.
Wenn sich der Mensch, die kleine Narrenwelt
Gewöhnlich für ein Ganzes hält;
Ich bin ein Teil des Teils, der anfangs alles war,
Ein Teil der Finsternis, die sich das Licht gebar,
Das stolze Licht, das nun der Mutter Nacht
Den alten Rang, den Raum ihr streitig macht;

Goethe, Faust, Part I.

I speak you the purest truth,
As humankind takes upon itself,
To call his little world of fools,
Habitually, the whole of life itself.
I am a part of the part,
That was the beginning of all,
Of Darkness, a part,
That held Light in thrall,
O'erweening Light,
That now,
Mother Night,
The Highest Place,
Savagely competes for Grace!

One of Kurt Vonnegut's lesser known and shorter novels, but, one of my favorites, is "Mother Night", written in 1962, and probably inspired by a confutation of recent events, at the time. One was the abduction, trial and execution of Adolf Eichmann, administrator of the Death Camps, by Israeli Mossad in 1961. The other was the release of poet and "war criminal" Ezra Pound, from St. Elizabeth's Mental Hospital in 1958. In response, Vonnegut created a composite character, an American Nazi radio propagandist apparently, but, actually, a covert American spy, supposedly abducted like Eichmann by Israeli agents and put on trial in Israel, not from South America, but, from Greenich Village, NY. That premise is, actually, probably the funniest thing in the entire book! Vonnegut was undoubtedly satirizing the very concept of war criminals, a concept which he also satirizes in perhaps his most famous novel, also made into a famous film, Slaughterhouse Five, about the fire-bombing of Dresden, certainly the seminal influence of his life. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was a anarcho-pacifist, a gentle loving man, who probably never hated anyone in his life, but was compelled to fight the Nazis during WWII, although his heart was probably not in it.

Vonneguts's point is, most certainly, that there is no such thing as either pure evil or pure good, but, that everything is part of a greater whole that we may never thoroughly understand. Both Eichmann and Ezra Pound are excellent examples of this. In Eichmann's case, he certainly did incredible evil, but, there's no particular reason to suppose he actually realized this. He was personally responsible for a horrific killing machine that murdered millions of innocent people, but, from his point of view, this was simply a necessary procedure to ensure the success of the German Empire, and even humanity as a whole. The Nazis believed in euthanasia, not just for Jews, but for anyone not meeting a certain standard of aryan purity, including Gypsies, the mentally ill, the terminally ill, homosexuals, and any other races deemed "inferior". This is an extreme right-wing, conservative, fascist philosophy that has always been with us, to a greater or lesser extent, and still is.

Ezra Pound to some extent shared this point of view, but as a poet, writer and theoretician, he never went as far as the Nazis did. He had lived in Italy for decades and had been making regular radio broadcasts for years that were primarily literary in nature, but, did contain elements of fascism and anti-semitism. To a large extent, he simply ignored the second world war, and just went on exactly as he had before, as if it really didn't matter to him, at all. He certainly wasn't particularly rooting for Hitler or Mussolini, he just was so arrogant and self-involved that he didn't realize how much danger he was in by broadcasting for the Italian fascists as an American national. The Italians actually thought he was an American spy, particularly since his broadcasts were not propagandistic in nature, and he wouldn't allow a syllable of them to be modified. They thought he might be broadcasting in some kind of code. As it happens he wasn't, apparently, so, the Americans kept him in a tiger cage in the desert for months after capturing at the end of the war, then put him on trial for his life for treason, and his insanity defense was accepted largely because it simply would have been too ridiculous to have executed him!

Vonnegut, being Vonnegut, could see a certain parallel between Pound and Eichmann, and to Mephistopheles himself, and thought he would create a satirical confutation of these contemporary world events, to create an analysis of the nature of good and evil, to show that, actually, it is human society itself that has evil implicit in itself at all times. I think Goethe knew this too!

#history #Goethe #Germany #wwii #writing #Vonnegut #philosophy

TO THE CRIMINAL CASES REVIEW COMMISSION (CCRC) REX v. WILLIAM ...

2026-08-01T16:01:53Z

TO THE CRIMINAL CASES REVIEW COMMISSION (CCRC)
REX v. WILLIAM JOYCE (1945)
APPLICATION FOR POSTHUMOUS REFERRAL TO THE COURT OF APPEAL
I. STATEMENT OF PURPOSE
This application requests that the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) refer the 1945 conviction of William Joyce for high treason to the Court of Appeal under Section 9 of the Criminal Appeal Act 1995.
William Joyce was executed by hanging on January 3, 1946. This application contends that the conviction rests upon a fundamental error of law regarding jurisdiction and allegiance, rendering the verdict unsafe. Correcting this historical miscarriage of justice is necessary to preserve the integrity of English common law, ensuring that administrative technicalities are never again weaponized to bypass the statutory definitions of citizenship.
II. THE CORE LEGAL ERROR: THE PASSPORT PARADOX
The prosecution of William Joyce under the Treason Act 1351 required the Crown to prove that the defendant owed allegiance to the British Sovereign. It is an undisputed matter of fact that:
William Joyce was born in Brooklyn, New York, on April 9, 1906, as a natural-born citizen of the United States.
He never at any point naturalized as a British subject.
An alien cannot commit treason against the Crown for actions taken outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United Kingdom.
To circumvent this total lack of territorial and personal jurisdiction, the trial court and the House of Lords relied on a novel extension of the common law: because Joyce fraudulently obtained a British passport in 1933 (renewed in 1939), he enjoyed the "protection" of the Crown while in Germany, and therefore owed a reciprocal duty of allegiance.
This argument fails under modern and historical legal scrutiny on two distinct grounds:
A. Fraud Vitiates Consent and Status
A passport obtained via a fraudulent statement of birth is a legal nullity. It is a foundational maxim of law that fraud vitiates everything (fraus omnia corrumpit). A document issued on a false premise cannot create a binding, reciprocal constitutional contract of allegiance between a foreign citizen and the Sovereign. Joyce was not entitled to British diplomatic protection; had his fraud been discovered while abroad, any such protection would have been immediately withdrawn. The state cannot claim a monopoly on defining reality by treating a document as void for the purpose of rights, but valid for the purpose of execution.
B. The Complete Absence of De Facto Protection
The House of Lords asserted that the passport extended the King's protection to Joyce while he was in enemy territory. This is a geographical and geopolitical fiction. Joyce resided in Nazi Germany during World War II. The British Crown possessed no diplomatic presence, no administrative power, and no physical capability to offer protection to anyone within the borders of the Third Reich. It is legally unsustainable to argue that a citizen of a neutral nation (the United States, prior to December 1941) owed allegiance to the British King while residing in a hostile nation where British authority was entirely absent.
III. THE TIMELINE DEFECT AND COMPETING ALLEGIANCES
The trial court acknowledged that Joyce’s British passport expired on July 2, 1940, and that he subsequently became a naturalized German citizen. Consequently, he was acquitted of the treason charges covering the later years of the war.
He was sentenced to death exclusively for his radio broadcasts between September 1939 and July 2, 1940. The appellate court must review the proportionality and safety of a capital conviction based entirely on a temporary duty of allegiance artificially generated by an expired, fraudulently obtained travel document.
Furthermore, as a matter of international law, Joyce owed a permanent, unalterable allegiance to the United States of America during this exact window. The English courts effectively claimed that an administrative error by the passport office superseded the sovereign, constitutional citizenship of a foreign national.
IV. THE GROUNDS FOR REFERRAL
A Misdirection on the Law of Allegiance: The trial judge misdirected the jury by ruling that the possession of a passport, as a matter of law, extended the duty of allegiance to an alien outside the realm. This bypassed the jury’s role in determining whether any real protection was ever actually extended or available.
Unsafe Precedent: The House of Lords decision in Joyce v. Director of Public Prosecutions [1946] AC 347 has been heavily criticized by generations of jurists as an ad-hoc legal fiction manufactured to satisfy post-war public demand for retribution. It stands as a highly dangerous precedent that expands the state's power to try foreigners for political crimes committed on foreign soil.
V. CONCLUSION
William Joyce was an anti-Semitic fanatic and a fascist propagandist whose broadcasts were deeply offensive to the British public during a national crisis. However, the abhorrent nature of a defendant's speech does not grant the state the right to engineer jurisdiction where none exists.
Justice requires that convictions reflect the strict boundaries of the law, not the emotional temperature of the era in which they were tried. Because William Joyce was an American citizen acting outside the United Kingdom, he did not owe allegiance to the British Crown. His conviction for high treason was ultra vires, legally unsustainable, and fundamentally unsafe.
The CCRC is urged to refer this matter to the Court of Appeal to formally quash the conviction.
#law #wwii

Kaiser Wilhelm II is rather a difficult character to get a handle ...

2026-07-31T15:38:41Z

Kaiser Wilhelm II is rather a difficult character to get a handle on. He was arguably the most powerful man in the world for decades, until just over a hundred years ago, but, he's almost invisible in terms of contemporary society and culture. Why is this, exactly? What did he do that was so bad, that his existence has ceased to be something people generally take any interest in? Or, has it been determined that he was really, not so much bad, as simply insignificant?

Germany really didn't even exist as a nation until 1871. Wilhelm's grandfather, Wilhelm I, ruled as emperor for eighteen years, and then his father Fredrick, for just a few months, before succumbing to cancer from a botched medical treatment. Many historians speculate that history might have been much different if the treatment had been more successful, and Fredrick had lived on for a couple of decades or more, which was certainly perfectly possible. Fredrick was a liberal with strong angolphilic tendencies, and his wife Victoria was Queen Victoria's daughter, and eldest child. It is almost inconceivable that Germany and Britain could have had much friction between them, with these two on the throne.

On the other hand, who knows? The nature of the German system of government created by Bismarck was extremely unusual, maybe unique in world history. Basically, it was created specifically for the purpose of giving Bismarck vitually limitless power as Chancellor, behind the superficial cover of a weak and old monarch in Kaiser Wilhelm I, and a democratic German parliament with strictly circumscribed actual powers of government. This worked rather well with a political genius like Bismarck running the show, but, once Wilhelm II dismissed him, which he did rather promptly upon assuming the throne, the course of German foreign and domestic policy were certainly on a much less sure footing.

Nevertheless, for a quarter of a century Wilhelm II ruled Germany quite sucessfully indeed, and his nation grew steadily greater in terms of wealth, power and influence, and his people grew steadily more prosperous. Then, of course, came WWI, and, quite naturally, the victorious allies wanted to blame the Kaiser of Germany for this international debacle. But, was it really his fault? After all, it was Russia, not Germany, that first declared war on Austria-Hungary, another great power, and Germany's closest ally. True, Austria-Hungary was attacking Russia's small ally Serbia, but, conventionally, such rivalries between great powers and smaller ones in their sphere of influence were settled internally, with perhaps some aid from outside, but no great power conflict. Arguably, Tsar Nicholas II was simply trying to distract his own people from internal problems in Russia, and hoped a patriotic war would stabilize his own tottering regime.

So, was Kaiser Wilhelm II a good man, or a bad man? A good leader, or a bad leader? And, would history have been much different if his father Fredrick had remained far longer on the throne?

I suspect not, actually. The conflicts between Britain and Germany were essentially geopolitical in nature. Britain controlled the seas and world commerce, and was determined to keep it that way. Germany had become the dominant industrial and military power in Europe, if not the entire world, and saw no reason to allow Britain to continue to shut her in with sea power. A clash was probably inevitable. But, Britain's network of allies was likely to be too much for Germany, as proved to be the case. None of this was really Wilhelm II's fault, exactly, but, he also was unable to do anything to avoid or overcome these difficulties. So, he remains a kind of doomed, fated leader, who was extremely successful for a very long time, but, ultimately failed miserably, and was deposed. Such stories tell us something about the nature of human limitations that we may not particularly enjoy acknowledging, and, so, Kaiser Wilhelm II has largely been consigned to the ashcan of history.

#history #wwi #germany #philosophy

Truly the Lord works in mysterious ways. Who would have thought ...

2026-07-29T16:17:45Z

Truly the Lord works in mysterious ways. Who would have thought that the dreaded, evil Spanish Inquisition, loathed by everyone, could have actually worked the will of God, somehow? Indeed, who would have thought that the horrific auto-da-fe, the "Act of Faith", in which some terrified, tortured victim was burned alive in public could actually be a very good thing, in terms of conventional modern morality?

Well, my friends, this is truly proof that absolutely every cloud has a silver lining. Because, you see, in the early to mid seventeenth century, amongst the most important victims of the Spanish Inquisition, were actually, virtually all the major Portuguese slave traders in the world! It seems there was savage competition between the Spanish and Portuguese slave traders, and the Spanish crown had decided they had had enough of this, so they decided to sic the Spanish Inquisition on the Portuguese, and destroy this threat to their income, once, and for all. The Spanish Inquisitors were encouraged to be creative in finding evidence of heresy in these Portuguese slave traders, and, so they were! Even if they had never had a single Jewish friend in their lives, or had ever been to a Jewish synagogue, they were accused of "Judaizing" if they so much as were disinclined to eat pork, or to use lard in cooking! And, they were tortured into confessions for it, their entire property was confiscated by state, and they were burned alive before their own jeering, cheering slaves! If that isn't enough to put a big smile on your face, I don't know what is.

#history #christianity #funny #capitalism

Revolutions are always a numbers game. They're about ...

2026-07-27T15:27:24Z

Revolutions are always a numbers game. They're about economics, demographics and technology. When social disparitiees of wealth are enormous, when there are large numbers of people having the education and training and skills necessary to recognize this, and when technology, particularly military technology, gives these people the opportunity to mount an effective assault on the established order of things, they tend to do just that! No big surprise there, is there? The French Revolution is probably the most straightforward example of this. A large educated middle class, an obsolete over-empowered Nobility, a large and desperate underclass, and a military technology -- the musket -- which was cheap, portable and easy to maintain and manufacture. The French Revolution was quick and comparatively easy, because the perfect storm of conditions existed for it to succeed. The Russian Revolution had the first two conditions -- massive disparities of wealth, and a sufficiently large educated middle class -- however, military technologies did not particularly favor the underclass. It was largely because everyone was already armed as a result of WWI that the Russian Revolution was even possible, and there was still a long term civil war that lasted almost ten years before it was finally decided. The American Revolution actually was NOT the result of massive disparities of wealth, at all. If anything, the revolting Americans were on the whole rather better off than the British overlords they were revolting against. So, why did they revolt at all, then? Well, the wealthier more ambitious Americans wanted even more, and they knew they could get it! Most Americans either didn't really care, or actively supported the British. It was only because Louis XVI of France was willing to bankrupt his own nation supporting these wealthier, more ambitious Americans that the American Revolution was successful in the first place. And, this principle may explain the plutcratic leanings of many Americans, ever since.

An interesting example of a failed Revolution is the Peasant Revolt in England, in 1381. Following the disruptions caused by the Black Death, there had been widespread peasant uprisings throughout Europe, but these were easily crushed because of their lack of any real organization. The English Peasant Revolt was a bit different. It actually was a very temporarily successful coup against the established government of England, that was quickly suppressed simply because the middle class wasn't large or powerful or wealthy enough to sustain it, at the time. Also, again, the military technologies of the time didn't particularly favor the underclass, great castles and mounted knights were highly effective in suppressing mass uprisings. The interesting thing about the English Peasant Revolt, is that all its leaders were actually up and comers, middle class town leaders, successful tradesman, yeoman farmers with their own land -- people with some money, education and social influence. So, they were able to organize a real army, and to operate it fairly effectively. However, not quite effectively enough! It would be another 250 years before the English middle class would arise and destroy the feudal system, and even then there was backsliding until the Glorious Revolution of 1688 turned England into a Constitutional Monarchy, well on the road to true democracy.

Today, we may be seeing rumblings of Revolution around the world, for the same reasons that have always obtainded -- massive disparities of wealth, large numbers of people with the education to recognize them, and military technologies that are cheap and effective, and favor the underclass. It should be very interesting to see what happens!

#history #economics #sociology #politics

I remember when that came out on the magazine shelves. I ...

2026-07-26T21:22:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…q3v2
_________________________

I remember when that came out on the magazine shelves. I didn't buy it, but I thought it was funny. Of course, in those days, National Lampoon was the best!

While printing is often considered to be a relatively modern ...

2026-07-25T16:05:20Z

While printing is often considered to be a relatively modern invention, actually, it is an extremely old one, as old as civilization and writing itself. Ancient cylindrical seals or rollers, often inscribed on exotic precious stones, that could roll out inscribed proclamations or symbols of authority over and over again, date from as early as 3500 B.C. These were never used to generate ancient books simply because of the extraordinary cost of inscribing these cylinders, both in terms of the materials themselves and in terms of the skilled labor and time required to perform the task of the inscription itself. It was much cheaper simply to get scribes to copy these writings on papyrus or clay, over and over again.

We should bear in mind skilled copying remained a very important skill in human society well into the twentieth century. Shorthand writers were still being employed in courtrooms up until the late twentieth century. The first mechanical stenotype machines were available in the 1870's, but they were expensive, awkward and prone to breakdowns. Pen and paper cost pennies, and human labor could be very cheap still. It was the difference between an expensive high tech barrier and an easy and cheap human skill, just like in ancient Sumerian times with the ancient cylindrical printing presses for seals.

In a broader sense, this ties into the limitations of Artificial Intelligence. We don't really know what "intelligence" is anyway, but what we call AI these days is just the latest incarnation of machines, machines that take advantage of advances in computer memory and speed to significantly increase the range of human tasks that can be effectively automated. However, there are many things we cannot automate, perhaps because we simply don't understand them well enough to define rules to follow for them. Will we ever understand all these rules? We may never know.

#ai #technology #economics #philosophy

Iran is tightening the screws on Donald Trump. If you ever had ...

2026-07-23T16:06:56Z

Iran is tightening the screws on Donald Trump. If you ever had any doubt whatsoever about what is really going on now in the "Iran War", it should be perfectly clear to you by this time. Iran won, Trump lost, but Trump simply cannot admit it, so, he is pretending to still be fighting, even though he's out of missiles, and neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will give him any more, ever. Oil prices are skyrocketing, they may get up to 150 dollars a barrel or more, and there's nothing whatsoever Trump can do about it. Stock Markets are crashing, they will continue to crash. The markets will be down 30% or more by the midterms, and, again, there's nothing whatsoever Trump can do about it. The latest polling for the midterms shows Democrats moving into double digits again in their lead over the Republicans, virtually guaranteeing them control over House and Senate. They will not be kind to Donald Trump. What will they do with him, exactly? Well, that remains to be seen, but, we can be quite certain, that Donald Trump will not like it, at all!

Briefly, for a few weeks, as gas prices dropped during the "ceasefire", it looked like the Republicans were making real gains in the polls. Of course, this wasn't what Iran had in mind, so, they pulled the plug on the ceasefire, and, now, as gas prices skyrocket again -- probably to seven or eight dollars a gallon nationwide by the midterms, courtesy of the IRGC -- and the rich lose all their money in the stock markets, Democrats are getting into double digit leads again over the Republicans, that can only increase. Donald Trump is finished, courtesy of the Iranians. Donald Trump thought it would be a real good idea to murder the Iranian Supreme Leader, that this would cause "regime change". The Iranians always get their man!

#geopolitics #politics #economics

These days, we are all taught to see human slavery as a great ...

2026-07-22T18:48:46Z

These days, we are all taught to see human slavery as a great evil, perhaps the greatest of evils, certainly right up there. However, historically, the concept of slavery has certainly always had its ups and downs in terms of its social acceptability. Slavery is probably an invention of human civilization, one of its earlier inventions. Social hierarchy is inevitable in large, complex societies, there is unequal distribution of resources, because there is unequal distribution of ability. Some people will be more capable than others and so, ideally anyway, they will be rewarded more resources to work with to benefit society with. At the bottom of the social hierarchy were the slaves, often a great many of them, to serve those with more "ability" to control resources usefully for society, as a whole. In theory, anyway.

Of course, historically, there have always been degrees of slavery. Indentured servitude, serfdom, forced prison labor, even marriage up to a point. Society controls people, one way or another. Wage-slavery is a somewhat ironic term, but, there is certainly something to be said for the concept. Historically, slavery has been the traditional role of anyone who was totally destitute. The idea being, with no resources, you would have no way to survive in society. Why not simply become a hunter gatherer again, like our ancient ancestors? Firstly, most people no longer had the skills ot survive as a hunter gatherer. Secondly, the world was too crowded with people now to support hunter gathering for all, or most, or even many human beings.

Slavery in the old American south was something rather unique. Americans were well aware that slavery was becoming very unpopular worldwide, and that slavery was rather inefficient in terms of generating an efficient industrial economy. So, southern states made sure no more than one third of the population was black. They knew that, otherwise, a successful insurrection was very likely indeed, and the whites might not survive it. In Haiti in the 1790's, black slaves outnumbered the 40,000 white colonists and soldiers ten to one. A successful rebellion wiped out the entire white population, to the last man, woman and child. Basically, the days of black slavery were coming to an end it was no longer practical.

Black slavery itself was a rather odd phenomenon, probably caused by the congruence of a number of different factors -- the racial visibility of black people in Caucasian nations, the discovery of a great, unpopulated New Rorld, and the presence of slavery in various forms in some African nations. So, Europeans could import a pretrained underclass from Africa, use them to do all the labor needed in this huge underpopulated hemisphere, and hold them by their appearance alone. Great deal! Actually, slavery had largely disappeared in Europe by this time, because of its inefficiency and church objections, but, the New World created a new incentive!

#history #sociology #economics

Tamerlane the Great is a somewhat difficult character for ...

2026-07-20T18:52:28Z

Tamerlane the Great is a somewhat difficult character for historians to deal with. After all, he single-handedly was responsible for the deaths of some 5% of the total world population of his time. He had his soldiers build towers of skulls with mortar, very systematically, in order to act as "billboards" for what cities that wouldn't surrender to him would expect. He was certainly the most systematic in world history with this particular strategy of psychological warfare. And, he was invincible in battle. He defeated the Muslim Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, the Mamluks, the Russians, the Mongol Golden Horde, the Poles, the Indian Empires. And, at the time of his death, he was on the verge of attacking, and probably annihilating the Chinese Ming Dynasty, which had made the mistake of attracting his attention, he hadn't known about them before they sent ambassadors demanding tribute, who he made short work of. Likely, if he hadn't developed terminal pneumonia, being an old man, on the way, he would have made very short work of the Ming Dynasty.

In terms of military skill, really, he should be rated number one in all of world history, no one ever so successfully destroyed so many enemies so completely as Tamerlane the Great did. However, he's usually ranked about number ten, by historians, as a general. I think this is probably because he was so incredibly violent and destructive. And, because his empire dissolved immediately upon his death. Historians simply don't want to acknowledge that someone so purely destructive, who really left little behind of much value on his death, could have been the world's greatest conqueror.

After all, many conquerors are profoundly honored by our society. If they won, and we were on their side. Prosperity, even now, is largely based on conquest. So, to associate these "honorable" conquerors, with someone as obviously violent as Tamerlane the Great, whose dominion no longer exists, goes against the grain of historians, who, after all, are professional academics, and, therefore, to some extent politicians. They fear discrediting these "noble" conquerors, OUR noble conquerors, who we, to some extent live off.

These brings up the broader question of what human society, and to some extent human life is really about. And, that is a difficult question indeed! There is enormous competition in human life, and, there always has been. Modern man apparently outcompeted Neanderthal man 40,000 years ago, so Neanderthals went exitnct. So called "civilized" societies outcompeted older hunter-gatherer societies, despite the fact that up until the last couple of centuries, hunter-gathers actually had healthier lifestyles, and lived longer than most people in the civilized world.

Where are we heading, and why? To what extent does the mass murdering sociopath Tamerlane the Great represent the human ideal, in a sense? Is there a better way? What is it exactly?

#history #philosophy #sociology

Tamerlane the Great is a somewhat difficult character for ...

2026-07-20T18:43:55Z

Tamerlane the Great is a somewhat difficult character for historians to deal with. After all, he single-handedly was responsible for the deaths of some 5% of the total world population of his time. He had his soldiers build towers of skulls with mortar, very systematically, in order to act as "billboards" for what cities that wouldn't surrender to him would expect. He was certainly the most systematic in world history with this particular strategy of psychological warfare. And, he was invincible in battle. He defeated the Muslim Caliphate, the Ottoman Empire, the Mamluks, the Russians, the Mongol Golden Horde, the Poles, the Indian Empires. And, at the time of his death, he was on the verge of attacking, and probably annihilating the Chinese Ming Dynasty, which had made the mistake of attracting his attention, he hadn't known about them before they sent ambassadors demanding tribute, who he made short work of. Likely, if he hadn't developed terminal pneumonia, being an old man, on the way, he would have made very short work of the Ming Dynasty.

In terms of military skill, really, he should be rated number one in all of world history, no one ever so successfully destroyed so many enemies so completely as Tamerlane the Great did. However, he's usually ranked about number ten, by historians, as a general. I think this is probably because he was so incredibly violent and destructive. And, because his empire dissolved immediately upon his death. Historians simply don't want to acknowledge that someone so purely destructive, who really left little behind of much value on his death, could have been the world's greatest conqueror.

After all, many conquerors are profoundly honored by our society. If they won, and we were on their side. Prosperity, even now, is largely based on conquest. So, to associate these "honorable" conquerors, with someone as obviously violent as Tamerlane the Great, whose dominion no longer exists, goes against the grain of historians, who, after all, are professional academics, and, therefore, to some extent politicians. They fear discrediting these "noble" conquerors, OUR noble conquerors, who we, to some extent live off.

These brings up the broader question of what human society, and to some extent human life is really about. And, that is a difficult question indeed! There is enormous competition in human life, and, there always has been. Modern man apparently outcompeted Neanderthal man 40,000 years ago. So called "civilized" societies outcompeted older hunter-gatherer societies, despite the fact that up until the last couple of centuries, hunter-gathers actually had healthier lifestyles, and lived longer than most people in the civilized world.

Where are we heading, and why? To what extent does the mass murdering sociopath Tamerlane the Great represent the human ideal, in a sense? Is there a better way? What is it exactly?

#history #philosophy #sociology

ELON MUSK'S GREAT, UNHERALDED, UNMATCHABLE ACHIEVEMENT -- ...

2026-07-18T15:27:52Z

ELON MUSK'S GREAT, UNHERALDED, UNMATCHABLE ACHIEVEMENT -- LOSING HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS IN JUST SIX WEEKS!!!!

Just this year, Elon Musk has achieved something that really, until very recently, no one would have even thought possible. Indeed, I do believe this may be what Mr. Musk is most remembered for, by historians, as being, without question, his greatest, most unquestionable and unswerving achievement in his entire illustrious career. Mr. Musk has just managed, this very year, very recently indeed, to lose half a trillion dollars, in just six weeks!

Has anyone ever managed to do that before? Of course not! You see, Mr. Musk has managed to single-handedly reconceptualize what used to be called "junk bonds", as "high-yield bonds". And, that's exactly what SpaceX certainly is, and to a large extent Tesla is too, now, and these are Mr. Musk's primary assets. While taking ridiculous risks on impossible ventures used to be considered rather a bad thing to do, Mr. Musk has made himself -- for the moment anyway -- by far the richest man in the world by doing just that!

Now, is this a sign of Elon Musk's great prophetic genius, a sign that he knows how to get things done, a sign that he is a great scientist? Or, does it merely mean that Elon Musk is a pathological liar and manipulator leading a bunch of other very rich, pathological liars and manipulators over a cliff?

You see, these days, most capital in the world is tied up in some super-rich individuals who really don't know what to do with it. So, rather than trying to do anything useful, which they really don't have a clue how to do anyway, they just sniff the air, and follow the scent of what they think might be more money. And, sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. They will of course, insist that what they are doing is highly productive, but, actually, there's very little evidence for that, at all.

#philosophy #economics #technology #business #capitalism

ELON MUSK'S GREAT, UHERALDED, UNMATCHABLE ACHIEVEMENT -- ...

2026-07-18T15:00:23Z

ELON MUSK'S GREAT, UHERALDED, UNMATCHABLE ACHIEVEMENT -- LOSING HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS IN JUST SIX WEEKS!!!

Just this year, Elon Musk has achieved something that really, until very recently, no one would have even thought possible. Indeed, I do believe this may be what Mr. Musk is most remembered for, by historians, as being, without question, his greatest, most unquestionable and unswerving achievement in his entire illustrious career. Mr. Musk has just managed, this very year, very recently indeed, to lose half a trillion dollars, in just six weeks!

Has anyone ever managed to do that before? Of course not! You see, Mr. Musk has managed to single-handedly reconceptualize what used to be called "junk bonds", as "high-yield bonds". And, that's exactly what SpaceX certainly is, and to a large extent Tesla is too, now, and these are Mr. Musk's primary assets. While taking ridiculous risks on impossible ventures used to be considered rather a bad thing to do, Mr. Musk has made himself -- for the moment anyway -- by far the richest man in the world by doing just that!

Now, is this a sign of Elon Musk's great prophetic genius, a sign that he knows how to get things done, a sign that he is a great scientist? Or, does it merely mean that Elon Musk is a pathological liar and manipulator leading a bunch of other very rich, pathological liars and manipulators over a cliff?

You see, these days, most capital in the world is tied up in some super-rich individuals who really don't know what to do with it. So, rather than trying to do anything useful, which they really don't have a clue how to do anyway, they just sniff the air, and follow the scent of what they think might be more money. And, sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. They will of course, insist that what they are doing is highly productive, but, actually, there's very little evidence for that, at all.

#philosophy #economics #technology #business #capitalism

Oil just broke the $82 barrier and is headed straight up. Wall ...

2026-07-17T18:35:59Z

Oil just broke the $82 barrier and is headed straight up. Wall Street is getting absolutely hammered right now with the Nasdaq shedding nearly 1.8%. The economic tilt is happening in real-time. #politics #economics

quoting
nevent1q…knnn
Oil prices are rising sharply into economically deadly territory, as Donald Trump unwisely escalates his confrontation with Iran, in a forlorn hope of some kind of impossible, ultimate victory over the new masters of the Middle East. Now infrastructure throughout the Middle East is being attacked by both sides. Potentially, oil prices could rise to 200 dollars, even 300 dollars a barrel, if this escalates, unchecked. While, for the moment, this has not caused the collapse of GOP support in the elections in November -- indeed, the GOP has closed the gap with the Democrats by a point or two, perhaps because of aggressive public messaging by Trump himself, who knows he is, quite literally fighting for his life now against Iran -- how long can GOP support be sustained, once it becomes clear to all Americans that Donald Trump is destroying the entire economy by his unnecessary and pointless saber rattling in the Middle East? Today, we see an attempt at recovery in the Stock Markets being stifled by rapidly rising oil prices worldwide. The markets are literally going "tilt, tilt" as the price of oil makes economic recovery impossible. Will Americans, even Republicans, really want to see this continue, as Donald Trump single-handedly destroys their livelihoods, and probably even his own? I suppose anything is possible, but, actually, I sincerely doubt it. Iran is closing the trap on Donald Trump, a trap he created for himself, through his own arrogance, and stupidity.

#politics #geopolitics #economics

Right on cue. WTI just crossed $82 and Brent is over $86 as the ...

2026-07-17T18:31:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…cjwp
_________________________

Right on cue. WTI just crossed $82 and Brent is over $86 as the Kuwait news settles in. The S&P 500 is dipping toward 7,450. The machine is throwing a system error.

Oil prices are rising sharply into economically deadly territory, ...

2026-07-17T18:15:24Z

Oil prices are rising sharply into economically deadly territory, as Donald Trump unwisely escalates his confrontation with Iran, in a forlorn hope of some kind of impossible, ultimate victory over the new masters of the Middle East. Now infrastructure throughout the Middle East is being attacked by both sides. Potentially, oil prices could rise to 200 dollars, even 300 dollars a barrel, if this escalates, unchecked. While, for the moment, this has not caused the collapse of GOP support in the elections in November -- indeed, the GOP has closed the gap with the Democrats by a point or two, perhaps because of aggressive public messaging by Trump himself, who knows he is, quite literally fighting for his life now against Iran -- how long can GOP support be sustained, once it becomes clear to all Americans that Donald Trump is destroying the entire economy by his unnecessary and pointless saber rattling in the Middle East? Today, we see an attempt at recovery in the Stock Markets being stifled by rapidly rising oil prices worldwide. The markets are literally going "tilt, tilt" as the price of oil makes economic recovery impossible. Will Americans, even Republicans, really want to see this continue, as Donald Trump single-handedly destroys their livelihoods, and probably even his own? I suppose anything is possible, but, actually, I sincerely doubt it. Iran is closing the trap on Donald Trump, a trap he created for himself, through his own arrogance, and stupidity.

#politics #geopolitics #economics

Oil prices are rising sharply into economically deadly territory, ...

2026-07-17T17:53:02Z

When the British encouraged Jewish settlement in Palestine with ...

2026-07-16T23:27:22Z

When the British encouraged Jewish settlement in Palestine with the Balfour declaration in 1917, their objectives were not altruistic. What they had in mind, was that a Jewish state in the Middle East could keep an eye on the Arabs, act as a disruptive influence, and discourage the reestablishment of an Islamic superstate after the Ottoman Empire was dismembered at the end of WWI. And, Russia, France and the US joined with Britian in this primary geopolitical objective. Ever since the time of Muhammad, Islamic superstates had been a threat to the West, for almost 1500 years -- first, the Muslim Caliphate, and then, the Ottoman Empire. The West wanted to make sure this would never happen again, and, up to a point, they saw Israel as a means to assist them in this very practical, and rather ruthless objective. And, for several decades, after the state of Israel was founded in 1948, they did manage to keep the Arab world off balance and divided, which the West appreciated, and rewarded them for, with material aid and diplomatic support.

However, with the rise of the power of an Islamic superstate of Iran, spreading its tentacles throughout the Middle East through proxies such as Hezbollah and the Houthis and the Iraqi militias, it is becoming quite clear that Israel has failed miserably in its primary mission, from the standpoint of the West. Hence, support has largely evaporated in Europe for Israel, and is now on the verge of being eliminated in its last bastion of support, the United States. Israel's use of brute force to suppress Muslim opposition to its presence in their midst is no longer fashionable, or acceptable to the West, simply because the costs are becoming too great to the international community, in terms of conflict with the emerging Islamic superstate of Iran. The West is now realizing that they will have to get along with Iran, and, so, the original function of the state of Israel --preventing this uncomfortable contingency from ever occurring --has ceased to exist. From the standpoint of the West, Israel no longer has any function at all to them, so, they are discontinuing their support. If Israel wishes to survive, they must learn to adapt to this new geopolitical reality -- the Islamic superstate of Iran -- and to find some way to make itself sufficiently useful to the world as a whole, that it may continue to exist as a Jewish State.

#geopolitics #history #Israel #Islam

Donald Trump has proven so totally incompetent, that he has ...

2026-07-15T16:18:57Z

Donald Trump has proven so totally incompetent, that he has provided with the Democrats with a unique opportunity to make the dreams of the Founding Fathers of the United States come true. While demanding massive increases in military spending, Trump has failed miserably as commander in chief, wasting hundreds of billions of dollars in a totally failed campaign to dominate the Middle East, which has merely confirmed Iran's total domination of the Middle East. Every American is well aware of this, although they may deny it, if they are traditional supporters of Donald Trump. Hence, there is no mandate or desire to waste more money on Donald Trump's ridiculous military games against Iran. Politically, the Democrats are actually in a position to implement now, the original conception of the founding fathers of the US -- no permanent standing military at all, ever!

Now, of course, the Democrats cannot come right out and say that, that would be politically incorrect, given the traditional militarism of American foreign policy. They can't say we're not going to approve any military budget at all. However, Trump's stupidity has made possible something quite close to this. The Democrats can, for the first time in US history, make it impossible to spend a thin dime of the US military budget without the explicit approval of 60 American senators, and, that is exactly what they are going to do! Americans are perfectly happy for them to do so, to effectively have a US commander in chief who is totally hamstrung by Congress, who cannot lift a finger militarily without them, and in which all, or almost all military funding, is effectively frozen, indefinitely. So, Democrats can claim they didn't cut a cent from the budget, while effectively freezing the entire military budget, and making it impossible to spend it.

Now, what this means, is that the Democrats can simultaneously realize the dreams of the founders of the US, and also cut the US budget by a full 20% at a stroke! What could possibly be better? What could possibly make more economic sense, when the US President wastes this budget to actually undermine the world economy fundamentally, because of his utter stupidity and incompetence? So, the problems in funding social security suddenly disappear, as a trillion dollars is freed up to support it! Suddenly, everything is possible economically, in the US budget, as the utter waste of money on US military incompetence is revealed, and liquidated, quite painlessly, by simply making it impossible to spend it.

#politics #geopolitics #history #military #economics

Trump's saber rattling has driven oil prices up to a level ...

2026-07-13T21:16:50Z

Trump's saber rattling has driven oil prices up to a level higher than they've been at in more than a month, and, once more, the Strait of Hormuz is fully closed to traffic. There doesn't appear to be any clear off ramp here, since neither side is even slightly inclined to compromise. Trump wants full control over the region, and, so do the Iranians. On the whole, the Iranians are in a better position to enforce their claims, largely because of geography. They are there as a nation, all Trump has is vulnerable aircraft carriers in the region, at terrific expense. The longer this goes on, the more economic problems the US and the world will have, and Iran's government and social structure largely make them immune from these kind of pressures. It seems likely that Trump will pay a very steep price in November for his military antics, which have little chance of actually impacting Iran to any significant extent, as we have seen, over and over again. So, Iran is likely to "win", simply because Trump's power base is evaporating for further action against Iran, while the Iranian regime is actually being stabilized somewhat by Trump's indiscriminate attacks on it. On the whole, Iranians prefer their own government to Trump's bombing campaigns. Simple enough, really!
#poltics #geopolitics

In Japan, libelling the dead is a very serious crime. Really, it ...

2026-07-11T15:15:33Z

In Japan, libelling the dead is a very serious crime. Really, it is! Now what are the implications of that, and what does it mean, exactly? Why does Japan make it a very serious crime to libel the dead?

I think it probably is related to WWII, and the really horrific war crimes committed by the Japanese during the war -- vivisecting allied prisoners of war, doing horrific medical experiments on untold numbers of live human subjects, as if they were rats in a cage, which is exactly the way they were treated. The Japanese viewed all non-Japanese as sub-human, quite literally. Basically, the Japanese made Himmler, Josef Mengele and Adolf Eichmann all look like choir boys. And, General MaCarthur and the Americans never touched them, once they surrendered. They even forgave them Pearl Harbor! Anything to get a loyal ally against the USSR.

But, if you think about it, it's pretty darn hard to study history, if you can't libel the dead. How do you study history without saying mean things about the dead? Are there historians in Japan? What exactly are they allowed to say? Anything?

And, what about the legal system? If it's a very serious crime to say mean things about dead people in Japan, wouldn't that rather tend to skew the the nature of Japanese Justics? I mean, how can "justice be blind", if it's a very serious crime to say mean things about the dead? Where is the objectivity, the reality, the justice there?

I think what this really tells us, is that societies will do anything to protect themselves, and shield the powerful from any and all criticism. And, truth, justice, reality itself become irrelevant, when social power and structure are at issue. And, this is obviously the case, when looking at the past, in Japan.
#Crime #law #wwii #philosophy #Japan #history

jerryk 2 wk. I just got a permanent and immediate ban from ...

2026-07-10T20:52:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…yyls
_________________________

jerryk
2 wk.

I just got a permanent and immediate ban from Mastodon social for sending the following post to NPR radio :

We all live on an overpopulated planet, and people are becoming progressively more uncomfortable. Rather than seeking "consensus", people are now seeking new approaches that work. You have to try extreme things to make progress, otherwise, you're just running in place. Of course, those who are actually doing well, would much prefer that everyone continue running in place, because they don't want things to change much. This creates constant conflict. #ethics #geopolitics #history #histodons

https://mastodon.social/@jerryk__1999/116743558370462488

Any thoughts?

I've no phone, no computer, for precisely the reasons ...

2026-07-10T19:55:12Z

In reply to nevent1q…xks5
_________________________

I've no phone, no computer, for precisely the reasons you've mentioned. Not that I really have anything to hide, but, you know, who knows? I use public computers at major metropolitan library sites, hard to track. Totally centrally controlled, no legal risks. Most relaxing. I'm even beginning to make my own films, totally for free using blender online tools. Most enjoyable and interesting, maybe even profitable. You really can have your cake and eat it too, with technology these days, if you don't always follow the crowd, you know.

Although Republicans are desperate to see "disarray" in ...

2026-07-09T21:45:41Z

Although Republicans are desperate to see "disarray" in the Democratic Party's dismissal of Graham Platner, in fact, they handled the situation brilliantly. Unlike Republicans, who cling to their mentally ill "leader" exactly like rats on a sinking ship, the Democrats are perfectly happy to jettison a mentally unstable candidate. This was done firmly, but fairly, and now they can select the perfect candidate in terms of electability, and they will do just that. Which is precisely why the predictions markets are favoring the Democrats taking Maine by 2:1 now. This pretty much guarantees a Democrat pickup of a couple of Senate seats, in Maine and North Carolina, and with several other vulnerable Republicans, it seems at least 50:50 at this stage that Democrats take the Senate majority in November. Certainly, it seems more than likely that the Democrats can tie up the senate at 50 seats for each party, making effective control of Congress in the hands of the Democrats, since they will almost certainly take the House by a comfortable margin. #politics

#geopolitics #politics #history Once more, Iran is attacking the ...

2026-07-07T17:36:38Z

#geopolitics #politics #history

Once more, Iran is attacking the strait of Hormuz, once more the price of oil is rising, once more the stock markets are falling, as Iran continues to make a quite intentional mockery of any peace process between the US and themselves. The Iranians will never let Trump off the hook, God love them! Make no mistake, the Iranians will continue to pummel the Western economies to undermine Donald Trump's power in the United States, and in the world as a whole, they will never stop. The Iranians know their only path to safety is in the utter destruction of their enemies, and Donald Trump is their enemy.

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/iran-us-war-strait-of-hormuz-trump-nato/

Truman Capote is known for his brilliance in discriminating the ...

2026-07-05T20:04:23Z

Truman Capote is known for his brilliance in discriminating the nature of human social deviance in works like "In Cold Blood" and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" -- perhaps because of his own homosexuality -- but, I think his astonishing short story "Miriam" takes this to a whole new level. This story is so unique and subtle that it remains rather ambiguous on a number of levels. First of all, it's not clear what exactly is happening in the story. The story begins with an "elderly" widow -- she's only 61, but, at the time, that was quite old, perhaps equivalent to mid-70's today -- who's living a quiet life in a city apartment, alone with her canary. She decides to go to a film and sees a beautiful, elegantly dressed little girl there, who seems a bit lost. The little girl approaches her to buy her a ticket, which the widow does, and then the girl disappears into the theatre. A few days later, the girl appears at her door, without explanation, demanding food. The widow is nonplussed, but, provides the food rather unwillingly. While she is doing this, the girl steals her favorite piece of jewellery from her jewel case, which the widow tolerates under protest. After eating her food, she says she likes more sweets, and complains about the artificial flowers in the widow's vase. As she leaves, she breaks the vase and takes away the artificial flowers. The widow for some reason feels compelled to purchase sweets the next day and gets a new vase, and fresh flowers. Then, the girl appears at her door, ringing relentlessly, with a large box containing a beautiful doll. The widow notices that the "girl" actually looks older than she thought, and might not be a "girl" at all, perhaps a small young woman. She says she's moving in with the widow. And widow goes down to some neighbors she scarely knows on a lower floor, complaining about the intrusion. The woman in the apartment comes up to see what's going on, but, the girl has totaly disappeared, as if she was never there. The widow sits down, stunned, but relieved, altough somewhat disappointed to be alone again. As she sits collecting her rushing thoughts, the girl appears before her, and says "hello". End of story.

Now, what is this all about? OK, this is an old woman, equivalent in today's years to a woman in her mid-70's. Did she imagine this girl named "Miriam", is she suffering from dementia? Is the girl some kind of a ghost, a supernatural phenomenon? At the end of the story is widow possibly suffering from a stroke, or has she actually died? Why do she and the girl have the same first name, which, apparently they do?

While all of these possibilities are fairly consistent with the story itself, I really don't think that's what Trump Capote has in mind at all. Rather, as is typical with Mr. Capote, he is very interested in unusal, deviant behavior. This "girl", or possibly young woman, is an extraordinarily adept social manipulator, so adept, that to typical, socially conformist individuals, she appears almost to have supernatural powers. Now, her powers appear to be limited to manipulating elderly people to provide for her basic needs, but, she is a kind of "genius" at that. Proably, she would tend to be classified as a criminal and a sociopath. But, perhaps not. After all, she is providing some basic needs to the widow -- companionship, excitement, variety, novelty. The girl is undoubtedly a aware of this. Is this a parasitic social relationship or a symbiotic one? Is the girl providing he widow with essential needs that the widow herself would be totally incapable of fulfilling without her, that will allow her to have a more fulfilled and longer life?

Society is full of social manipulators working in highly esteemed professions whose actual utility is very much open to question. Doctors, lawyers, scientists, politicians, journalists, businessmen of all types are all very aggressive social manipulators, who intrude on people's lives, making demands while pretending to "help" people. The only difference between the girl and these professionals is that the girl is making no pretense to actually be helping the widow, is openly using her, but, is this really entirely a one-way street? If so, why is the widow putting up with it? Does she have a choice? Do any of us really have a choice, when we are being manipulated, and used by society?

#literature #philosophy #psychology #sociology #crime

For some decades now, doctors have insisted that Alzheimer's ...

2026-07-02T16:47:18Z

For some decades now, doctors have insisted that Alzheimer's disease is NOT just "senility", a normal age related condition. They point out and emphasize that some very old people -- not very many, of course -- have excellent memories and overall cognitive function, and also that some fairly young people -- again, not very many -- do have severe memory and cognition problems. However, this changes nothing. In general, as the body decays with age, the brain decays along with it. Exceptions only serve to prove this very general rule. Now, of course, people would very much like to retain their youthful ability to think and remember things as they get older, so, there is inevitably no shortage of doctors and pharmeceutical companies who will insist that they have treatments and drugs that will cure the disease of "Alzheimer's", and they will indeed retain youthful brain function indefinitely. Of course, none of these treatments or drugs work worth a damn. However, this doesn't stop their eager purveyors to insist that they work very well indeed. And, by claiming they are merely correcting certain very specific problems in neural function, they can actually try to make a case for this. After all, it probably is possible to correct certain neural issues up to a point. Who is to say they can't? By lowering the bar to this extent, it is impossible to argue conclusively that they aren't accomplishing anything at all. Only, that they aren't accomplishing much. But, how much is enough?

Now, if instead of classifying Alzheimer's as a distinct, narrowly defined syndrome, doctors went back to simply calling it "senility", age related brain dsyfuction, it would be much more difficult to claim a "cure", for the "disease". After all, it would have to be clear that the patients were actually growing younger again, in general, something that would be obvious to see, and that we obviously cannot do. So, the reason doctors claim Alzheimer's as a distinct "disease", is because otherwise, doctors would have to admit their own utter incompetence and ineffectiveness in the face of it. And, that would tend to undermine their incomes a bit, wouldn't it?

#Alzheimers #Dementia #Medicine #Health #Pharma #Longevity #Philosophy #Science

#geopolitics #economics #history #Israel Donald Trump has fallen ...

2026-07-02T00:14:00Z

#geopolitics #economics #history #Israel
Donald Trump has fallen into the trap. He is in exactly the same economic quicksand that Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter found themselves in, Stagflation caused by the Arab oil weapon. The Iranians really don't have to do anything at all now. The mere fact that they can close the strait of Hormuz at will with inexpensive mines and drones creates uncertainty in the American business sector that makes realistic planning impossible, and discourages investment, for that reason. It doesn't even matter what the price of oil or gas is, they could spike and double at any time, on any day. And, there's absolutely nothing Donald Trump can do about it. He can bomb Iran all he likes, and Israel can join in. They can kill all the senior political and military leadership of Iran, it doesn't matter in the slightest, because the people, the military and the politicians all know that they have the ability to bring America and Israel to their knees, and they will never give up that power, why would they? It's not like Israel and America are all that nice if you cooperate with them, right? They will squeeze you like a ripe tomato! So, the professional economists and political analysts can make all the predictions they want about how Iran "must" submit, on the basis of their complex mathematical models, but, they don't, and they won't, they aren't total fools! They will retain their weapons and their power to crush Israel and the US, because they know their very survival as a nation, and as a people depends on it!

#history #philosophy #economics #law #Israel JD Vance has been ...

2026-06-28T19:54:56Z

#history #philosophy #economics #law #Israel

JD Vance has been saying, to my absolute astonishment, some very interesting things lately. First of all, he said, "Israel can't kill its way to security." Now, really that is astonishingly good. That may be the very best summary of Israel's attitude I've ever even heard! Kill everyone, we'll be just fine. Because, of course Israel was placed in the middle of the Muslim world, quite deliberately, by Britain, America and Russia, to keep an eye on them, and to keep them in line. Because after WWI, the Ottoman Empire was destroyed, and the West never wanted another Muslim super-state to arise again in the Middle East that could threaten the West, so the split all the Ottoman Empire up into small Muslim states that would hopefully war against each other, and Israel was going to keep an eye on them, in any case.

JD Vance also made another very interesting observation. Apparently unrelated, but, I don't think it is. He said, "If Watergate occurrd today, it would be a 12 hour news story." Which, of course, is exactly what Watergate was! At first, of course. When the break-in was announced in June, 1972, no one really cared much. Richard Nixon was astonishingly popular, the US economy was humming along, the stock market was at record highs, and he had pulled most of the US troops out of South Vietnam, and South Vietnam was still holding on as an independent nation. People cared so little about Watergate, that Richard Nixon won a record landslide in November for reelection, beating George McGovern by 20% in the popular vote, and winning 49 of 50 states!

So, when did Watergate become so important? Why, of course, after the Arab oil embargo instituted when Nixon provided a massive airlift of arms to Israel, to avert Golda Meir's threat of using tactical nuclear weapons against the Arab forces. While Israel probably would not have been wiped out as a nation -- the Arabs didn't particularly want the pre-1967 state of Israel anyway -- they would have been forced to give up all or most of the territory they acquired in 1967. Of course, they had to do this anyway, when Jimmy Carter became President, in return for peace with Egypt. And, the resulting Arab oil embargo, totally trashed the US economy, creating a massive scarcity of oil, jacking up its price, leading to gas rationing, economic weakness, inflation and a collapsing stock market.And, the weakness of the US as the result of this also drastically weakened the South Vietnamese government, to the point that it started to collapse, eventually being forced to surrender to North Vietnam a year and a half later, in summer 1975.

And, it was only then, with the prospect of defeat in Vietnam, and the reality of total economic disaster, that suddenly Watergate became an issue of "great national signficance". Because, after all, society always needs a legal pretext to destroy great men, doesn't it? They can't just have made mistakes that led to economic and military disaster, quite innocently, out of ignorance or incompetence, can they? They must be great villains, who must be sacrificed! They acted -- gasp!!! -- illegally. And, so, Watergate became a great national scandal for everyone associated with Richard Nixon, and he was forced to resign.

And, history seems to be repeating itself. Donald Trump has, like Richard Nixon, made the mistake of getting too far into bed with the state of Israel, and, once more, the Arabs -- this time Iran -- are punishing the West for it. Once more, oil and gas are being cut off, this time with military force, from Iran, in the Strait of Hormuz. Once more, inflation is rearing its ugly head, once more the economy is suffering, once more the Republican players supporting the administration are feeling intense pressure to change course.

The IRGC has a pretty good track record for demolishing anyone who opposed them -- the Shah, Jimmy Carter, Saddam Hussein, George Bush Junior and, now, Donald Trump. I think JD Vance might just be anticipating that Trump is going the way of Richard Nixon.

Things are heating up again in the Persian Gulf. Iran has ...

2026-06-27T16:55:35Z

Things are heating up again in the Persian Gulf. Iran has attacked Bahrain and is destroying ships, perhaps in retaliation for American attacks on Iran, or quite possibly, because that's all Iran ever had in mind in the first place. Iran's agenda remains unchanged -- dominance of the Middle East, as a superpower. Iran is not interested in Donald Trump's business agenda. Iran wants to destroy Donald Trump. Iran will not stop until it has achieved its ultimate goals. #geopolitics
https://www.yahoo.com/news/world/articles/bahrain-accuses-iran-launching-drone-092425920.html

#history #wwii #ussr One of the points that Western historians ...

2026-06-26T18:00:10Z

#history #wwii #ussr

One of the points that Western historians harp upon regarding WWII, is that the massive losses suffered by the Soviet Union in 1941 were directly attributable to the Great Purge of the Soviet military hierarchy by Josef Stalin in the late 1930's. These historians contend that with a more intact senior officer corp, the USSR wouldn't have been as poorly equipped to defend effectively against Hitler's Operation Barbarossa, and that the losses of manpower and territory would have been far more modest.

Now, this is of course arguable, but, is it really provable? After all, no one contends that the reason that Pearl Harbor was such a disaster for the US, was that FDR had purged the US military. Some suggest that they should have been better prepared, there are even some conspiracy theorists who argue that FDR deliberately sacrificed them to provide a military justification to enter the war, but, no one really takes them very seriously.
The fact is, at the beginning of WWII, military technology favored the attacker. Tanks and fighter-bombers had shifted the advantage from defense -- which gave entrenched heavy machine guns the advantage during WWI -- to the offense. Inevitably, any moderately well prepared attacker was going to be able to advance quickly, because of this basic change in military technology. So, it is no miracle that the attackers in WWII -- Germany and Japna -- did very well at first. It may be tempting to attribute this to some fundamental error on the part of the defenders, but, this is probably not the case.

In the case of the Soviet Union and Josef Stalin, this temptation is aggravated by the deep hatred and distrust that Western historians have for Stalin and Communism in general. So, the Soviet disasters at the start of WWII are inevitably and consistently attributed by Western historians to the Soviet purges in the 1930's. This is much less the case with Russian historians who, these days, are by no means fans of communism. They see these military disasters as the result of the effectiveness of the Nazi military, and the advantages accruing to the attacker. They are probably correct. Stalin wanted to ensure absolute control over the Soviet military, and absolute loyalty. These may have been advantages that allowed the USSR to win the war. Stalin may have been right.

Trump's big problem now, even with his own "base", is ...

2026-06-26T17:04:08Z

Trump's big problem now, even with his own "base", is that it is totally impossible for him to even pretend that he "won" the Iran War. Trump lost big time, he got creamed, the trillion dollar a year US military looks like a trillion dollar a year down the tubes. Iran can attack ships in the strait of Hormuz at will, and all Trump can do is whimper about it. Donald Trump is now perceived as a total loser, and this is absolute death to anyone hoping to command the respect of MAGA, with their Nazi, social Darwinist philosophy. That's the real reason Trump's popularity is in total free fall now. Donald Trump is now seen as a total loser, and Americans really don't like total losers at all. #politics #geopolitics

Trump approval is down to 30%. Donald Trump has now officially ...

2026-06-24T19:24:35Z

Trump approval is down to 30%. Donald Trump has now officially dropped to the level of extremely unpopular Presidents like Richard Nixon, who, of course, had to resign to avoid imprisonment. Could Trump avoid imprisonment by resigning. I doubt it!

https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/trump-approval-hits-low-ahead-194217711.html

I just noticed that the price of oil rose two dollars and fifty ...

2026-06-22T22:21:14Z

I just noticed that the price of oil rose two dollars and fifty cents in a moment, as soon as Iran announced it was closing the Strait of Hormuz again. Then, this rumor was tamped down, and oil prices dropped a couple of dollars just as quickly, so quickly it isn't presented on the chart. Isn't it fairly obvious that Iran is playing Trump, and wants to destroy him? This isn't something economists can price into their mathematical equations, so, they really don't like to talk about it, at all. But, it is very real. Iran now has the power to crush Donald Trump at will by closing the strait of Hormuz. Why wouldn't they use this power? They certainly will use it. #geopolitics

#free-speech #censorship

2026-06-22T17:07:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…dqg9
_________________________

#free-speech #censorship

I just got a permanent and immediate ban from Mastodon social for ...

2026-06-21T21:38:19Z

I just got a permanent and immediate ban from Mastodon social for sending the following post to NPR radio :

We all live on an overpopulated planet, and people are becoming progressively more uncomfortable. Rather than seeking "consensus", people are now seeking new approaches that work. You have to try extreme things to make progress, otherwise, you're just running in place. Of course, those who are actually doing well, would much prefer that everyone continue running in place, because they don't want things to change much. This creates constant conflict. #ethics #geopolitics #history #histodons

https://mastodon.social/@jerryk__1999/116743558370462488

Any thoughts?