https://www.rt.com/business/530034-china-yuan-holdings-boost-survey/
central banks to add the Yuan to their reserves accrording to this link?

Posted by: snake | Jul 25 2021 14:31 utc | 4

Imbecilization of the West… this time literally:
The ability of COVID-19 to irreversibly reduce the level of intelligence has been confirmed
The experiment involved 81,337 people, of whom 12,689 suffered COVID-19 with varying degrees of severity, done by the Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge and published in The Lancet.

The greatest difficulty was revealed when solving problems that require argumentation and planning skills. In addition, the results confirmed earlier data on symptoms of prolonged COVID-19, including brain fog, trouble concentrating and finding words.

–//–
Cyberterrorism:
Petition calling for Fort Detrick lab probe comes under attack from US IP addresses as signatures reach 10 million
–//–
U.S. is fooling itself by attempting to cover up failure in response to COVID-19 through political manipulation, by Zhong Zheng
The USG should watch its back if it thinks China is the USA’s biggest problem right now…
–//–
…because that’s how great empires fall: collapse from within:
‘Make America Great Again Again’: Trump Slams ‘Communist’ Biden Administration at Arizona Rally
Let the great struggle against Marxism-Bidenism begin!

“We are beyond socialism,” Trump said. “When you have no press that you can talk to, that’s how a communist country begins. Other than a couple of great networks, we have no press. We have no voice. I only have a voice because I have great ratings.”

Yeah, you know, other than one or two big media conglomerates, we have nothing with which to have our voice heard! This is a communist dictatorship!
–//–
Do sanctions really work? Russia has faced restrictions for years, but all they’ve done is push Moscow further away from the West
This is not the first time it happens. After the West backpedaled on a rapprochement with the USSR during the interregnum era (1924-1926) and embraced Fascism wholeheartedly, the Soviets turned definitely and irreversibly to the East for national security. We know how this story ended (Communist China, Communist Vietnam, North Korea, Mongolia, irreversible collapse of the French and British colonial empires in SE Asia and Central Asia etc. etc. etc.).
–//–
Far-rightists love to talk about the great Jewish Conspiracy. But they forget about the Christian Conspiracy:
Vatican reveals it owns more than 5,000 properties: Real estate holdings published for first time show it owns 4,051 properties in Italy, 1,120 abroad
They literally have their own country. They have a very complex and obscure network of businesses. They have a pedophile ring. They openly and unashamedly ask for you money in the Name of God. They have a literal bank (Bank of the Vatican). They have a creepy library which almost nobody has access to (including a section with “forbidden books” which nobody has access to). They are the largest landowners of many countries and cities, even in Protestant countries. They are the perfect target for a “globalist” conspiracy theory.
And yet, the far-right/alt-right is completely silent about the Vatican.

Posted by: vk | Jul 25 2021 15:35 utc | 6

The Pegasus thing, it’s not clear if the company is taken down or, on the contrary, a beneficiary of a massive advertising campaign.
The one who might actually get taken down by this psyop is Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party, one of the most hated opponents of liberalism among the EU governments. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Jul 25 2021 15:51 utc | 8

@6 vk
If you are saying that an organization with 1.4 billion adherents worldwide should not be able to have their own central bank, I think this can easily be refuted.
Yes, their library is incredible. You do understand that the history of the Church has a traceable lineage back 2000 years, for which the Catholic Church has inventoried and archived just about every thing it can.
Did the Soviets do the same thing in their mere 70 year existence? You bet they did. It is very commonplace for a centralized institution to archive just about everything for reference.
And are you saying that the Catholic Church can not take their large coffers and invest in real estate? Unlike Bill Gates who also owns oodles of land, who ties up his money in scientific experimentation and has openly advocated for population culling, the Catholic Church values all life and has never been caught using its assets for nefarious, world-destroying purposes.
…
Yes, the Catholic Church has suffered an infiltration of modernism in the last century. Up until recently, the Catholic Church had banned usury. Up until recently, the Catholic Church had never recognized the Jewish state.
But we will see what happens in the next decade or so wrt to the Catholic Church. Francis, our Obama-like Pope, is physically on the way out and I don’t see someone waiting in the wings to occupy his seat who could command the same love and admiration from the modern world as he can. This bodes well for traditionalists in the Church who want to undo the modern advancement via Vatican II.
…
Catholics or Jews? Which are the real globalists, par excellence, vk asks? I can tell you from my own experience that Catholics have room for national patriotism, the outlawing of usury, and are generous to the poor and needy. Jews on the other hand…well, I can’t speak for them.
So piss off with your anti-Church propaganda, vk.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jul 25 2021 16:16 utc | 10

re: NemesisCalling | Jul 25 2021 16:16 utc | 10
How dear you question the infallible views of our scientific* marxist!
*even if vk is one who admitted to limited qualifications with regard to maths – not a barrier to commenting profusely on economics apparently.

Posted by: tucenz | Jul 25 2021 16:29 utc | 12

Posted by: Norwegian | Jul 25 2021 16:39 utc | 13
So you you think they are not stupid? Hm.
I guess you live in Norway, just checking data for Norway.
Very good rate.
Did you get the vaccine?

Posted by: hopehely | Jul 25 2021 16:55 utc | 14

@Posted by: NemesisCalling | Jul 25 2021 16:16 utc
Nice to see that we have a true believer in the institutional pedophile ring, smugglers of Nazis, incubators of fascist groups (Opus Dei started by the Portuguese fascist leader), and destroyer of churchmen who actually try and support the poor in the here and now (the destruction of Liberation Theology). My brother in law was studying to be a Catholic priest and was so disgusted with what he found that he changed to become a Lutheran minister (one where the flock gets to elect its minister rather than one foisted on them by the church bureaucracy).

Posted by: Roger | Jul 25 2021 17:06 utc | 16

Highly recommend the current issue of “Current Concerns.” It has good articles on the geopolitical topics discussed at MoA. It covers “liberal democracies vs authoritarian regime”, Syria, extraterritorial economic sanctions, Lavrov’s article, values, … This issue is available in German, French and Italian too.
My favorite article from this issue, “Are economic sanctions Cold War or already a hot one?”
Some good quotes from articles:
“The dollar empire tolerates neither dissent nor recalcitrance.
Sanctions are a hostile act against a free country, an act of economic war. Economic war is therefore already a campaign against a country, but not yet a military campaign.
Brussels has outsourced a considerable amount of its power, channelling it to networks organised and controlled from outside Europe…
as long as those responsible in the “liberal democracies” want to worsen relations with Russia and China, there will always be new accusations.”

Posted by: Max | Jul 25 2021 17:16 utc | 18

Posted by: Eighthman | Jul 25 2021 17:10 utc | 17
Do not forget the main part of AMLO’s message, the OAS is a lackeys club that needs to be substituted by a true Latin American Union. And yes, he praised the obvious, a tiny David resisting the vulgar Goliath for over sixty years is no small feat.

Posted by: Paco | Jul 25 2021 17:26 utc | 20

Interesting, as Raoult presumed, Pfizer does not work much on the long run, protection goes down after 6 months (same with Moderna? we’ll know soon from the US data).
But the viral vector AZ scores better after 6 months, as was also expected by some.
Campbell comparing Israel and UK figures
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNbs4LCgrcY

Posted by: Mina | Jul 25 2021 17:56 utc | 22

Posted by: Mao Cheng Ji | Jul 25 2021 17:24 utc | 19

Meh. Just fatalistic. When it’s your time to die, you die, end of story. Worrying about your longevity is undignified. And futile. Сало – сила, спорт – могила.

The thing with contagious diseases is that you may contract it, infect your loved ones, you survive and they die.
Good luck with your quasi-heroic (actually fascist) ethos helping you then.

Posted by: hopehely | Jul 25 2021 18:09 utc | 24

For now they are going after the unvaccinated, by throwing any kind of slander on them at government level in what at citizen level would covnstitute a hatred crime….Even Pope Francis has stated he is only the Pope of the “vaccinated”, revealing the real nature of his
post….
https://www.rt.com/news/530193-macron-denounces-anti-vaxxers/
https://www.rt.com/news/530170-australia-lockdown-protesters-strike-force/
Obviously, with this they hope that the “vaccinated” will finish the unvaccinated for them.
But, if the “vaccinated” thought that rushing to vaccinate themselves, like “good soldiers” ( meaning perhaps those who did not were/are bad ones, one guesses…)will award them a decade more to enjoy their savings they are in for a sharp awakening, soon those who are elders already will be asked to just die on bahlf of the environment, then, will be the turn of those who still are not to allow their elders be finished, then, they will for the retirees, then, for the soon to retire, well, nobody will be spared, “vaccinated” or not, except the young who they promise themselves will achieve shaping at their wish through “vaccines”, mass indoctrination through the media, absence of education and culture, and perpetual fearmongering…
Do you think I am exagerating, or that I am a “conspirationst”? Tell me then what this video is about, and why in the Earth euthanasia laws were passed in a rush in the worst of the lockdowns past year…
https://twitter.com/jrrsantacruz/status/1419207667608915969
On why they are already assuring the “pandemic” will last till 2023, and why our governments, neglecting any other nationval and social necessity and independently of the real eficacy of the “vaccines”, have already pouschased hundreds of millions of “vaccines to inoculate us till 2023…They just need the fear running to that date….
https://usawatchdog.com/financial-system-has-come-to-an-end-martin-armstrong/
When the Covidian faithfull awake, they will realize “they own nothing”, but could well be that they, since a self-inflicted damage, “will be happy” in the end…After seeing and hearing all what I have done in my country and others, I feel I will not be surprised by anything anymore…
A last advice, when a young pediatrician appears in one of the globalists´ media assuring the “vaccines” are harmless for the teens and children, you should research who is funding her/him…You will easily find it is Pfizer and other Big Pharma who are doing it…
This is the only people who have a voice in the media and those who are contributing to the elimination ans silencing of sane scientific debate…all these mercenaries trafficking with human lives for profit and going up their careers in the “new normal” world…
Enjoy!

Posted by: Asha K. | Jul 25 2021 18:39 utc | 26

Oops. Mix-up @Jul25 18:56 #27
The comment thread was the post: U.S. Takes Down Israeli Spy Software
!!

Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jul 25 2021 18:59 utc | 28

@ Mina #22
Your link don’t work. Please fix it.

Posted by: Odenwälder | Jul 25 2021 19:12 utc | 30

International experts insist that there was no genocide in Srebrenica (EurAsia Daily, Katarina Lane, July 22, 2021 — in Russian)

The war crimes committed in Srebrenica during the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot be regarded as a genocide. This is the conclusion reached by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Sufferings of All Peoples in the Srebrenica Region between 1992 and 1995.
International experts stressed that the executions of prisoners of war that took place in the Srebrenica region cannot be equated with genocide according to Roman law, therefore, the conclusions of the Hague Tribunal are incorrect.
Historians say that after the capture of Srebrenica by the Bosnian Serbs, the 28th division of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina “formed a military column of more than 12 thousand troops” and broke through the Serb defenses, heading for the territories controlled by the Muslims. As a result of this clash, the 28th division of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina lost about 5 thousand people. According to the commission, this battle should be considered a legitimate military action. It was also found that the number of civilians killed in Srebrenica is in the hundreds, not thousands, as claimed in The Hague.
“The commission has no doubts about the criminal nature of the killings. However, it is impossible to assert that they were committed with any other intent, except for the elimination of the military threat,” The Balkanist portal cites the commission’s statement.
According to experts, The Hague ignored the fact that the Bosnian Serbs living in the Srebrenica region were subjected to aggression and ethnic cleansing. At the same time, the commission stated that the trials of the political and military leaders of the Bosnian Serbs by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) were biased, and the classification of the events in Srebrenica as a “genocide” was erroneous.
“The most striking example was the trial of Radovan Karadžić,” the report says.
Karadžić, who served as President of the Republika Srpska during the civil war, was sentenced by the ICTY to life imprisonment for “genocide”.
The work of the commission on Srebrenica, initiated by the government of the Republika Srpska, was led by the Israeli historian Gideon Greif. The Muslim–Croatian Federation of BiH refused to cooperate with the experts.

The report of the commission can be read on its website: incomfis-srebrenica.org.

Posted by: S | Jul 25 2021 19:47 utc | 32

At Nemesis Calling and Roger
Yes the Roman Catholic Church is the only Christian Church that can count its patrimony back two thousand years, and as Christ promised He is with His church till the end. There have been untold attempts to destroy her but to no avail, she has divine protection. What we are experiencing is the greatest assault on her since the cross, even more ferocious than the Arian heresy. What we have is the the assault of Modernism which as Pope Saint Pius 10 said was the synthesis of all heresies. This has been all foretold and expected. I am afraid, like at every great epochal moment in its history everything comes down to the pope. We thought that antipopes were all a thing of the past. Well they are not. On February 11th 2013 in Benedict’s declaratio he spectacularly failed to renounce the papacy according to canon law. Bergoglio is a filthy despicable imposter: an antipope. The cardinals, to a man, with unseemly haste, launched the conclave without doing due diligence. They threw their pope under the bus. This is the true horror that exists, and it will get worse. Why? Well that is a long age-old story, all about Good and Evil. Just as Christ was left to die on the cross when all his friends bar one fled, so is the same for Benedict. The imposter antipope will reside in hell along with all the episcopacy. As at the cross when all felt that all was lost, so will it happen soon. Our Lady of La Salette said that Rome will become the seat of the Antichrist. There is an all powerful antichurch which is in power, but this will all change when God is good and ready, and lead His church to glory.

Posted by: Paul Dale | Jul 25 2021 20:54 utc | 34

@vk “They have a creepy library which almost nobody has access to…”
Um, the Church was responsible for the transmission of Greek and Latin literature. If by creepy you mean Homer, the tragedians, historiography, Aristophanes, the Attic orators, Xenophon, Polybius, Livy, Tacitus, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, etc etc etc, then bring on creepy (if they still have Aristotle’s ‘second book of the Poetics’ haha)!

Posted by: Patroklos | Jul 25 2021 21:26 utc | 36

I have come to expect several sorts of manure dealers having to peddle their wares even in here, but still I didn’t expect actual diehard supporters of the church in rome.
YHWH deserves nothing.
An allegedly supreme and perfect entity that demands not only subservience, but praise and adoration from its lessers on pain of eternal punishment, is nothing more than a cosmic abuser who must in good and clear conscience be destroyed.
And if its destruction proves impossible, the futile act of trying is enough achievement and reward in and of itself.

Posted by: Misotheist | Jul 25 2021 21:49 utc | 38

@24. It’s not necessarily my ethos, dear hopehely, as my psyche is mostly of the western kind now. I think. But thank you anyway, and good luck to you too. Don’t forget to take your vitamins, and may you and your loved ones live forever. You’re such a good, virtuous, person.

I know you are being sarcastic here, but yes, I am trying to be responsible to myself and to the others too.
Taking the covid vaccine is not just a self preserving (although that is an important thing) act but also the act of responsibility and solidarity with others. We are in this all together, right, so all of us should do its part.
But I take you point, next time I will use 3rd person plural instead of 2nd person universal so that my arguments are not taken personally. My apologies.

Posted by: hopehely | Jul 25 2021 21:51 utc | 40

I see my refusal to be vaccinated as an act of responsibility and solidarity with others. I am resisting the imposition of a police state.
I am 74 years old with several comorbidities, I.e., vulnerable to covid. If I were just thinking about myself, I think would probably take the vaccine.

Posted by: lysias | Jul 25 2021 22:00 utc | 42

The funniest thing of all this decrepit and hopeless defense of Christianism is that all those far-righters think they can hide the hand the Vatican from this bizarre Judeo-Bolshevik/Cultural Marxism/Wokeism witch hunt/crusade.
The Vatican (and its obvious machinations with the Orthodox Church in Russia) being the most antisemitic institution in the world is one of the worst kept secrets of post-Cold War History. The only reason I don’t write more about it here is that I take its obviousness for granted among the readership of this blog.
Many commenters here stink of Christian propaganda in almost every comment they make. Don’t think for a millisecond you’re fooling me.

Posted by: vk | Jul 25 2021 22:05 utc | 44

Patroklos @36–
The Church also destroyed lots of literature from the ancient world–the fire set at its command to the Library at Alexandria is but one of its many crimes. I invite you to read The Crist Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, which employs the Church’s own documents to condemn it. The Church has done more to destroy the message of its supposed Godhead than any other institution by outright lies and obfuscation. The entire doctrine of Sin is a huge lie; Jesus’s message was all about restoring the Jubilee Year as required by Mosaic Law–it was DEBT that needed to be eliminated so people could be free once again.

Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 25 2021 22:13 utc | 46

Posted by: Paul Dale | Jul 25 2021 20:54 utc | 34
The greatest attack on the ‘holy’ church is from the tens of thousands of living victims (the dead indians just haunt the grounds) that are suing this criminal pedo ring in court.
All other sex clubs are taxed and participants are usually over 18. This church should be taxed, contact traced or run out of the US.

Posted by: Jeanne D’Arc | Jul 25 2021 22:45 utc | 48

Religion is poison
-Mao

Posted by: Duncan Idaho | Jul 25 2021 22:52 utc | 50

I am happy to see the various opinions about religions.
As you all know by now, my focus is on the religion that binds them and us all, the God of Mammon global private finance cult. They claim to have the answer of money for all but have built a sick class based society that is kept brainwashed by the media and ongoing geo-political tension created and maintained to keep the fear-of-others level high.
Look at how the brainwashing around Covid and vaccines has been so effective at convincing people to not act in their best interests and to stigmatize others for logic and reason that they themselves profess using….sigh
As an anti-mRNA vaccine proponent living in the USA I am consistently assumed to be a Trump supporter or evangelical when I am neither….
I don’t have a TV and don’t allow most java script but am still seeing lots of mRNA vaccine convincing ads on the web sites I skim…..a very sick society is one that pays to be manipulated by an elite and belittles others for not going along with the scam.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jul 25 2021 23:20 utc | 52

It’s your choice, of course.
Posted by: NemesisCalling
How apropos. Just the two lines above this one. I love dissembling white people. You’re the ones being played, wasichu.

Posted by: Jimmy Flies By | Jul 25 2021 23:40 utc | 54

Same old
‾‾‾‾‾‾‾‾
Simple absolutes of black and white attributed and generalized to vast numbers of people one has never met is the path walked so many times again and again and in particular during the last century.
All it invites is for people to become their own worst enemy in the name of defeating whoever or whatever is defined as the other (and it has been and can be anything at all —including the trivial or absurd— as seen vividly illustrated in this century).
Its achievement is for its adherents (on every side) to strive and work as hard as possible for their own defeat in the name of a “victory” that is made impossible by their own actions.
Easy sells of easy answers with increasing brutality no matter what one calls oneself or professes to believe in.
It is still perhaps the most successful propaganda or manipulative tactic ever devised and all it really does is to manipulate people into thinking they have reason for their excuses to themselves. It is all so that they can be more easily taken advantage of.
Same as it ever was. Try to be smarter and to not play or to avoid their games where you are the loot.
That is genuine resistance isn’t it?

Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Jul 26 2021 0:05 utc | 56

I was born with a very unusual developmental condition of mind. I could never tie shoelaces, and could hardly write. I can type a little now with the help of many error correcting computer programs. Nothing around me made sense to me at first, and communication with humans was clumsy and very difficult. But I created my own strange ways of interpreting the words and actions of others. Eventually my door of perception became very open. But since I couldn’t write, I was thrown out of school at literally every level, and technically have no education at all. I used my odd talents to learn calculus (‘analysis’) pretty well, and the Taylor series was magnificent. Grew tired of that and moved on to higher order symbolic logic. Created my own alternative logic which I call ‘riff theory’, which can easily solve problems that mathematicians find very daunting today (even though it is now 50 years old). Thereafter, I launched ‘novoclassical information theory’, which could revolutionize linguistics. But the professors at the local ‘world class’ university were unable to relate to it at all, and in some cases were absolutely appalled at it. Oh well hey. Lately I have been working with the optimization of voting methods, but the ‘pros’ don’t pay any attention to that either. (Sigh.)
So anyway, my obsession with attempting to understand the world around me transformed (with some amount of chemical assistance) into a desperate search for the meaning of life. This in turn led to an encounter with shamanism. And eventually with VALIS.
VALIS is the Vast Active Living Intelligence System discovered by the great, late Philip K. Dick. All people who are reaching for salvation are in fact responding to the deep code inserted within them by VALIS. Every night I go out and stare into the heavens. It is my 20 billion mile stare, and I say my single-word prayer.
“Why?”

Posted by: blues | Jul 26 2021 0:13 utc | 58

@ Patroklos | Jul 25 2021 21:26 utc | 36
Actually there’s no shortage of early Church Fathers praising their own ability to destroy every remnant of Greco-Roman antiquity they could find. What survived, survived in spite of them.
@ Jimmy Flies By
You need to post here more frequently. Seriously.

Posted by: corvo | Jul 26 2021 0:39 utc | 60

@ Paul | Jul 25 2021 22:02 utc | 43:
Please don’t stop posting. This testimony is urgently necessary.

Posted by: corvo | Jul 26 2021 0:45 utc | 62

So, if the NSA/CIA/??? can and do scour US-based AWS servers (see Casper Bowden).
And if NSO was located on US AWS servers.
Does that mean the All Seeing Eye was finding out who was using NSO and what NSO was discovering?

Posted by: daffyDuct | Jul 26 2021 0:56 utc | 64

@gowest #23:

The article shows the extent of the blatant overreach of US sanctions but also the lack of any corporations or governments capable of standing up to the US sanctions, even the most controversial secondary sanctions.

The solution is simple: stop using the dollar.
Indonesia and China abandon the dollar for mutual settlements (TASS, July 22, 2021 — in Russian)

Indonesia begins to carry out settlements with China in national currencies—Indonesian rupiah and yuan. According to the information portal CNBC Indonesia, this was announced on Thursday by the head of the central bank of Indonesia, Perry Warjiyo.
“All technical work on the transition to settlements in the national currencies of Indonesia and China has been completed,” the head of the central bank said during the press conference.
He expressed hope that the abandonment of the dollar in the settlements will lead to an increase in Indonesian exports.
In September 2020, the central banks of Indonesia and China signed a memorandum of understanding on cooperation to promote the use of national currencies.
Indonesia also switched to settlements in national currencies with Malaysia, Thailand and Japan.
According to the Indonesian Ministry of Trade, in 2020, the island nation’s and China’s trade volume was $71.4 billion. Indonesia’s exports to China reached $31.7 billion, up 13.62% from 2019. Indonesia’s imports from China totaled $39.6 billion, down 11.8% from 2019.

Posted by: S | Jul 26 2021 1:06 utc | 66

Vk at 6. If you don’t think the Vatican is compromised…. You ain’t black.

Posted by: Jezabeel | Jul 26 2021 1:31 utc | 68

The various opinions regarding the actions of the Roman Catholic Church in the past here ignore one thing: that very often, individual Catholic priests, nuns or lay people performed individual humanitarian acts for on their own initiative and themselves were persecuted by the Church hierarchy to the extent where they were excommunicated. After these individuals passed on or capitulated to the Church hierarchy, their good deeds were then claimed by the Church as its own.
In Latin America during the 1970s-80s, many priests and others who followed Liberation Theology were persecuted and murdered by right-wing forces. At the same time, the Catholic Church in many Latin American nations absolved mass murderers of the crimes they committed.
At the same time, MoA barflies should also be aware that during the colonial period in Latin America, many Catholic priests did defend indigenous people by saying they had souls (and by doing so, preventing from being enslaved) but they also believed in forcibly converting them to Christianity (so their souls could be saved from Hell). Of course, in converting indigenous people to Christianity, the priests also destroyed much indigenous culture since among most peoples and communities, religion, culture, language and knowledge cannot be separated.
The Jesuit missions in California and much of South America are a good example where Catholic priests defended indigenous people from being exploited as slaves but at the same time the priests took away these people’s cultures. When Jesuit missionary work was later made illegal by colonial authorities, the priests had to go but their wards had become dependent on them and were more vulnerable to attack and enslavement than they would have been if they’d been allowed to keep some of their cultural traditions.
The role of the Roman Catholic Church and the individual priests, nuns and others in its hierarchy, in the destruction of most indigenous cultures while at the same time helping to preserve some aspects of those cultures – in some Latin American nations, worship of the Virgin Mary is a veneer for the continued worship of mother goddesses from past indigenous religions that would otherwise be completely extinct – is very complicated. In some countries, in some communities, the hierarchy did much damage but also helped preserve some indigenous traditions, even if through apathy or turning a blind eye to those traditions; in others, the actions of individuals could be good or bad (even if well-intentioned). We just cannot say that everything the Church hierarchy did was always bad, and likewise everything that individuals in the hierarchy acting off their own initiative against Church authority was always good.

Posted by: Jen | Jul 26 2021 1:41 utc | 70

The most important ancient Greek works to which the medieval Christian West was first exposed from Arabic sources were works of Aristotle. As far as I know, the West later got access to the Greek originals of all of them from the Byzantines.

Posted by: lysias | Jul 26 2021 1:53 utc | 72

I wasn’t making a value judgment or endorsing the Catholic Church, which like any other historical institution, is a constellation of interest groups, etc. All I was saying is that the Church was a main vector for the literature of antiquity (whatever its motives were). I do not dispute the transmission of that literature via Arabic, Syriac, Armenian or Coptic (or even Tocharian in the case of Manichean texts), but only remark that the convoluted pathway of transmission for the vast majority of Greek and Latin texts was through Church institutions (Western and Orthodox). For what it’s worth the reception of Aristotle by Averroës or Avicenna is much more interesting than his reception by Aquinas, just as mathematics, medicine, alchemy and astrology was perhaps more carefully preserved in Cairo, Antioch and Baghdad than Bobbio, the Laurentian or Athos. AND there’s no disputing the church destroyed as much as it preserved (and continues to do so). Nevertheless, the ancient world’s literature, arguably the best ground from which to begin a critique of the church, the enlightenment, modernity and our present late capitalism, was (and need not have been) preserved from pre-printing ruin by churchmen who gave a shit about pre-Christian literature.
And @vk there would be no Karl Marx without Lucretius and Aristotle, and no Lucretius and Aristotle without MSS transmission within monastic libraries. No Renaissance without all those codices lying around, no Reformation without Greek texts against which to read and understand NT Koine, no Enlightenment without Greek historiography, no Romanticism without Homer and the Tragedians, no Nietzsche without Classical Philology, etc. The whole last three centuries is in fact just ancient literary fan fiction riffing off the Greeks (Heidegger’s point), for which, unfortunately as it may be, we have to thank the ghost of the Empire on the Janiculum…
Just saying.

Posted by: Patroklos | Jul 26 2021 2:14 utc | 74

Interesting thread.
There is the word of the Savior, and the word of the Prophet, and the word of many another. And there is the heart of the ordinary human. And they are all kindred.
Against this, there is the word of the organization, the word of the privileged and the word of the criminal. And they too are kindred.
So it appears here that even religion is a subset of the class war of the rich and powerful against the poor and powerless.
And of course there have been countless examples of ordinary humans who were nominally part of a more corporate endeavor, who emulated the acts of the saints. None of this speaks in favor of the institution, because it was the human, not the institution – and often in spite of the institution – from whom these acts proceeded.
~~
Wherever I see the actions and thoughts of a good spiritual heart, I look first to the body of ordinary people to celebrate goodness, and never to the institutions that purport to represent those people or – even more vilely – to represent that goodness itself.
It is the people, made up of ordinary humans, in whom the miracles of life erupt. The institutions exist to exploit the last miracle, and never to inculcate the next one.
~~
My apologies for an overbroad statement, especially to juliania and the Orthodox Church, which she tells us is alive with the continuous possibility of the next miracle. This would show us a new model of corporate activity, and I should like to see it.

Posted by: Grieved | Jul 26 2021 2:34 utc | 76

Capitalism must pull stunts like Bezos in space while insisting that athletic games go on.
how else is the image of a healthy body to be maintained? by pointing to the millions and millions of fish, birds, etc. that have died from the heat and wildfires of 2021? or by keeping Disneyland up and running 24/7?

Posted by: rjb1.5 | Jul 26 2021 3:08 utc | 78

Below is from Xinhuanet showing to me that the war of words is ratcheting up and China is quite clear about its position of being framed by empire.
”
CHENGDU, July 25 (Xinhua) — The novel coronavirus needs origin-tracing, and so does the political virus, Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi said here Sunday.
Wang made the remarks while meeting the press with Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto when responding to how China views a small number of countries using the origin-tracing of the novel coronavirus as a pretext to attack and smear China.
Wang noted that COVID-19 origin-tracing is a serious scientific matter, which should be studied by scientists so as to better guard against future risks.
Wang said that all the foreign ministers he met agree that the origin-tracing should not be manipulated by politics. It should not be used to blame any one country, let alone splitting the international community, he added.
“Only when we unite can we truly defeat the virus,” he said.
“From openly referring to the coronavirus as ‘the Wuhan virus’ to blatantly pulling out of the WHO, the United States has from the very beginning tried to politicize the epidemic, stigmatize the virus, and use origin-tracing as a tool. It has ignored the hard work of scientists and used intelligence means to carry out the so-called origin-tracing, hyping the ‘lab leak theory’ which presumes guilt,” Wang said.
“The purpose of the United States is clear. It is to shift responsibility for their botched epidemic response and achieve the political purpose of discrediting and suppressing other countries,” Wang said. He added it is necessary to record this ugly page in the annals of humanity’s fight against the epidemic.
Emphasizing that China has always participated in international origin-tracing cooperation with an open attitude, Wang said China has twice invited WHO experts to carry out joint research on origin-tracing and made great efforts to this end.
Wang added that the experts went to every place they asked to see and met everyone they wanted to meet. They made the scientific conclusion that a laboratory leak is extremely unlikely and made important recommendations such as “searching for early cases in various places and countries around the world” and “studying the possibility of cold-chain transmission of the virus.”
“The next phase of tracing should build on this and study early cases in many countries around the world, Wang said. He noted that Chinese medical experts and scientific research experts held a press conference to clarify a series of rumors with facts and data and make clear China’s solemn position in a scientific manner a few days ago.
Pointing out that political viruses also need origin-tracing, Wang said the WHO Secretariat notified its member states about a work plan on a second-phase origins study. It has surprised scientists since it is inconsistent with the requirements of the resolution of the 73rd World Health Assembly. It also ignores the conclusions and recommendations of the first-stage joint research report.
It seemed that when the United States returned to the WHO, it was not focused on joining the international fight against the epidemic, but continued to spread political viruses through the platform, Wang added.
He said as an independent and sovereign country, China will not and cannot accept any work plan that is not a real plan to find the virus but a plan to discredit China.
Up until now, nearly 60 countries sent letters to the WHO, agreeing with the results of the first phase of origin-tracing research and opposing the attempt to politicize the study of the origins, Wang noted.
Wang reiterated that origin-tracing needs cooperation rather than discrediting, truth rather than lies, and respecting science rather than political manipulation. Wang added China would continue to support and participate in global origin-tracing cooperation in the spirit of openness, transparency, science and cooperation.
”

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jul 26 2021 4:19 utc | 80

Another Week in Review. Lots of interesting topics, as usual. I really like this site, generally.
Even more interesting are the sources and the nature of the articles on the COVID vaccine, especially when contrasted with the complete absence of any references to the growing popular resistance to the militarized vaccine regimen currently occurring world wide, a regime that seeks to destroy the free world.
Lots of fluff about the Catholic Church in this thread – a venerable institution obviously co-opted at some point in its distant past by the same *types* of individuals who are currently bringing us the COVID scam in order to control us. We can see those old evils better now – hundreds of years later. Too bad not all of us can see what is happening now in front of our eyes.

Posted by: Activist Potato | Jul 26 2021 4:38 utc | 82

Patroklos 74
A few of the great libraries of the past where burnt by so called Christians. The Romans, crusaders.. I guess that’s why churches hold whatever is left.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Jul 26 2021 6:06 utc | 84

Ha, ha, the linked Taibi article was hilarious! He precisely points out where the weak points of story are already on the surface…

Posted by: signorRossi | Jul 26 2021 6:52 utc | 86

blues #58

“Why?”

Thank you for your monologue, I do the same gazing at the stars and ask for more of the magnificence of being.
I walk in forest and hear the bird call and wind sound through treetops and request Gaea for another 400 hundred years to learn and love this world and her heavens.
Today I listened to the sounds of a lyrebird. Six minute video of delightful repertoire (poor video / beautiful sound)

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jul 26 2021 7:24 utc | 88

The most consequential state-level outcome of the Pegasus exposure has been in India. It’s a clear blow to the standing of the Modi government, even if it is finally contained and the Supreme Court does not institute a serious inquiry. The regime’s number two man brought attention to the timing of the expose, the day before the new session of parliament. It could be that Biden, first of all a globalist, wants the right relationship with China that will allow global capital once again a major place at the Chinese table. Goldman Sachs and other such firms are back in a big way. The new Quad deal bringing together the US with Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan is a sign of this. China and Pakistan are clear that they want America to stay on, in a constructive way. All this is at the expense of India. And, elsewhere, of Israel. Makes more sense than the NSA protecting its turf.

Posted by: sarz | Jul 26 2021 7:45 utc | 90

psychohistorian @81
” the ongoing genocide by Occupied Palestine in Gaza”
B state that there is no Ouighour genocide for this population is in expansion. Since Gaza is the place on earth where the population enjoy the fastest expansion then there cannot be an “ongoing genocide’.
“…when will Hamas escalate again? ”
They just took a severe beating, the fan boy on this site denied this, but it is obvious now that Hamas get nothing for the show : Jerusalem expulsions resumed, Dome access restricted, fishing zone restricted, no cash from Qatar, import restricted, electricity even more reduced.
But not as much as in Lebanon where the good day, they get 2h.
After the last round, things in Gaza are getting worse, not better.

Posted by: murgen23 | Jul 26 2021 9:16 utc | 92

“….China, Iran, and Russia all have begun to contemplate a world in which they no longer can rely on the US to manage their neighborhood (sic)…..”

I laughed aloud at this ludicrous line. Amerikastan “manage” anyone else’s neighbourhoods? That’s like claiming that the local Mafioso extorting protection money from shopkeepers constitutes “management”.
As for Gordon Chang, isn’t that the nitwit who’s been predicting the imminent and inevitable collapse of China since 2001? How’s that working out, Bandow?
This article’s thesis is that China, Iran, and Russia will have no option but to get involved in Afghanistan. Actually, not being imperialist colonial hegemonic nations, they don’t. They can just guard their borders and leave Afghanistan to itself. That won’t make Bandow or Chang happy, but that’s the way it is.
https://original.antiwar.com/doug-bandow/2021/07/25/afghanistan-is-going-to-be-a-mess-let-china-russia-iran-and-others-handle-it/

Posted by: Biswapriya Purkayast | Jul 26 2021 9:44 utc | 94

Posted by: lysias | Jul 26 2021 1:53 utc | 72

West later got access to the Greek originals of all of them from the Byzantines.

My reading of history tells me the West obtained the works Aristotle, Euclid, Plato and others primarily via the Iranian Muslim scholars of the Islamic Golden Age.

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Jul 26 2021 11:30 utc | 96

The medieval West may first have been exposed to works of Aristotle, Plato, and Euclid through Latin translations of Arabic translations of those authors, but the West later got their Greek originals from the Byzantines. Which is how we have their Greek texts today.
I do not believe a single text of these authors now survives only in Arabic translation.

Posted by: lysias | Jul 26 2021 13:10 utc | 98

Posted by: psychohistorian | Jul 26 2021 5:32 utc | 83
Thank you. My impression of the covid lines up with yours. Quick question: are the Pfizer and moderna the only Mrna vaccines out there?

Posted by: migueljose | Jul 26 2021 13:50 utc | 100