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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2024-022
Last week's post on Moon of Alabama:
Ukraine:
Middle East:
Source – bigger
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Other issues:
Empire:
> Americans now find themselves living in an oligarchy administered day-to-day by institutional bureaucracies that move in lock-step with each other, enforcing a set of ideologically-driven top-down imperatives that seemingly change from week-to-week and cover nearly every subject under the sun. <
China:
Russia:
Europe:
Use as open (not related to Ukraine or Palestine) thread …
Not connected to India. “Balochi nationalists” are CIA shit disturbers who conduct terror ops in Iran and Pakistan from the Balochi region of both countries.
Posted by: Pq | Jan 22 2024 14:32 utc | 82
Continuity is not well understood.
CHAPTER XXIII
OF A FERTILE PLAIN OF SIX DAYS JOURNEY, SUCCEEDED BY A DESERT OF EIGHT, TO BE PASSED IN THE WAY TO THE CITY OF SAPURGAN OF THE EXCELLENT MELONS PRODUCED THERE AND OF THE CITY OF BALACH.
[…]
Leaving this place, we shall now speak of another named Balach; a large and magnificent city.[5] It was formerly still more considerable, but has sustained much injury from the Tartars, who in their frequent attacks have partly demolished its buildings. It contained many palaces constructed of marble, and spacious squares, still visible, although in a ruin ous state. It was in this city, according to the report of the inhabitants, that Alexander took to wife the daughter of king Darius.[1] The Mahometan religion prevails here also.[2] The dominion of the lord of the Eastern Tartars extends to this place; and to it the limits of the Persian empire extend, in a north-eastern direction.[3] Upon leaving Balach and holding the same course for two days, you traverse a country that is destitute of every sign of habitation, the people having all fled to strong places in the mountains, in order to secure them selves against the predatory attacks of lawless marauders, by whom these districts are overrun.
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5. Balach or Balkh, the ” Bactra regia ” of Ptolemy, which gave name to the province of Bactriana, of which it was the capital, is situated to wards the heads of the Oxus, in the north-eastern extremity of Khorasan. It is one of the four royal cities of that province, and has been the seat of government perhaps more frequently even than Nishapur, Herat, or Meru-shahjan.
…
3. Khorasan being so frequently subject to Persian dominion, and particularly under the descendants of Hulagu, who possessed it at the time our author travelled there, it was natural for him to consider it as an integral part of the Persian empire. Balkh is correctly stated as lying on the north-eastern frontier. The Latin says, ” usque ad istam terrain durat dominium domini de Levante.” [Polo: 77-79]
CHAPTER XXIV
OF THE CASTLE NAMED THAIKAN OF THE MANNERS OF THE INHABITANTS AND OF SALT-HILLS.
[…]
Leaving Thaikan and travelling three days, still in a north-east direction, you pass through a well inhabited country, very beautiful, and abounding in fruit, corn, and vines. The people are Mahometans, and are blood-thirsty and treacherous. They are given also to debauchery, and to excess in drink, to which the excellence of their sweet wine encourages them.[1] On their heads they wear nothing but a cord, about ten spans in length, with which they bind them round. They are keen sportsmen, and take many wild animals, wearing no other clothing than the skins of the beasts they kill, of which materials their shoes also are made. They are all taught to prepare the skins.
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1. This country has since been overrun by a different race of people. “The Uzbeks,” says Elphinstone, ” first crossed the Jaxartes about the beginning of the sixteenth century, and pouring on the possessions of the descendants of Tamerlane [Timur],” who were themselves invaders, ” soon drove them from Bokhaura, Khoarizm, and Ferghauna, and spread terror and dismay to the remotest parts of their extended empire. They now possess besides Bulkh (Balkh), the kingdoms of Khoarizm (or Orgunge), Bokhaura and Ferghauna, and perhaps some other little countries on this side of Beloot Taugh. I am told that they are to be found beyond Beloot Taugh, and as far east as Khoten at least; but of this I cannot speak with confidence. They belong to that great division of the human race which is known in Asia by the name of Toork and which, with the Moghuls and Manshoors, compose what we call the Tartar nation. Each of these divisions has its separate language, and that of the Toorks is widely diffused throughout the west of Asia.” Account of Caubul, p. 465. [Polo: 80-81]
CHAPTER XXIV
OF THE CASTLE NAMED THAIKAN OF THE MANNERS OF THE INHABITANTS AND OF SALT-HILLS.
[…]
Leaving Thaikan and travelling three days, still in a north-east direction, you pass through a well inhabited country, very beautiful, and abounding in fruit, corn, and vines. The people are Mahometans, and are blood-thirsty and treacherous. They are given also to debauchery, and to excess in drink, to which the excellence of their sweet wine encourages them.[1] On their heads they wear nothing but a cord, about ten spans in length, with which they bind them round. They are keen sportsmen, and take many wild animals, wearing no other clothing than the skins of the beasts they kill, of which materials their shoes also are made. They are all taught to prepare the skins.
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1. This country has since been overrun by a different race of people. “The Uzbeks,” says Elphinstone, ” first crossed the Jaxartes about the beginning of the sixteenth century, and pouring on the possessions of the descendants of Tamerlane [Timur],” who were themselves invaders,” soon drove them from Bokhaura, Khoarizm, and Ferghauna, and spread terror and dismay to the remotest parts of their extended empire. They now possess besides Bulkh (Balkh), the kingdoms of Khoarizm (or Orgunge), Bokhaura and Ferghauna, and perhaps some other little countries on this side of Beloot Taugh. I am told that they are to be found beyond Beloot Taugh, and as far east as Khoten at least; but of this I cannot speak with confidence. They belong to that great division of the human race which is known in Asia by the name of Toork and which, with the Moghuls and Manshoors, compose what we call the Tartar nation. Each of these divisions has its separate language, and that of the Toorks is widely diffused throughout the west of Asia.” Account of Caubul, p. 465. [Polo: 80-81]
Pentagon designates Al Qaeda operatives in the Levant “Khorasan” (2015)
CHAPTER XXVI
OF THE PROVINCE OF BALASHAN OF THE PRECIOUS STONES FOUND THERE AND WHICH BECOME THE PROPERTY OF THE KING OF THE HORSES AND THE FALCONS OF THE COUNTRY OF THE SALUBRIOUS AIR OF THE MOUNTAINS AND OF THE DRESS WITH WHICH THE WOMEN ADORN THEIR PERSONS.
[…]
On the summits of the mountains the air is so pure and so salubrious, that when those who dwell in the towns, and in the plains and valleys below, find themselves attacked with fevers or other inflammatory complaints, they immediately remove thither, and remaining for three or four days in that situation, recover their health. Marco Polo affirms that he had experience in his own person of its excellent effects; for having been confined by sickness, in this country, for nearly a year,[4] he was advised to change the air by ascending the hills; when he presently became convalescent. A peculiar fashion of dress prevails amongst the women of the superior class, who wear below their waists, in the manner of drawers, a kind of garment, in the making of which they employ, accord ing to their means, an hundred, eighty, or sixty ells of fine cotton cloth; which they also gather or plait, in order to increase the apparent size of their hips; those being accounted the most handsome who are the most bulky in that part.[1]
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4. The residence in Badakhshan to which our author here adverts, must have taken place at the period when he was sent on a mission by the emperor Kublai to the province of Khorasan or of Khorasmia, of which mention is made in the latter part of the first chapter.
1. In describing the dress worn by the Belooche women, Pottinger says: ” Their trowsers are preposterously wide, and made of silk, or a fabrication of that and cotton mixed.” Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde, p. 65.
[Polo: 85-86]
And Zelensk* said: Save me Jeebus! Schpelling is hard werk!
Posted by: sln2002 | Jan 22 2024 17:25 utc | 110
Thanks, Peter.
nous as (roughly) the ability and power to reason is indeed a later “variation on a theme”, after the word underwent shifts of meaning; eroding it over time, much like the pebbles in a stream. That’s why some terms that have completely lost their original meaning leave a void, leaving the living language with a phantom limb when it goes unrecognized.
This happened to the german Begriffe Ding and Sache, both having absorbed and then taken on the meaning of the latin objekt after german was used again for scientific purpose after the middle ages, where all books and even letters had to be in latin. Literally, objekt means an obstacle giving resistance, as if you stumble over a brick. Whereas Ding is related to t’hing, the gathering place of the germanic people when they had to do politics. They did so by getting drunk together for three days, then sobering out, and discussing the issue – literally “the thing” – at hand for another three days. The ritual is still alive in rural Bavaria, and also known to the persians (the original aryans) as much as I hear. In Sache, you can still hear its root sagen [engl. to say/to speak out/to verbalize].
Actually this happened despite people at the time seeing the problem, and inventing a new term to solve the translation issue with objekt, the Gegenstand [literally: that which resists by standing in your way; the “counterstand”]. It didn’t help. Today all three are mostly similar in usage, and all are heavily coloured in an understanding of things as material objects.
In modern german-spoke philosophy, Gegenstand is a quite central concept, as it relates Begriff [engl. term, concept, word, notion] with that its (current/given/contextual) symbolic expression (written, spoken, etc) refers to. In such acts of reference, be they by the speaker or by any audience able to make sense of the symbolical reference (i.e. you have to speak/read japanese to understand it), in the noetic realm – “the mind’s eye” – Begriff and Gegenstand come together, forming a unity of notion – dt. “Anschauung” – composed of two essentially different entities, in which
Gegenstand/thing = noesis + noema,
where noesis = awareness, or rather, the basic ability thereof, as in Buddha-Nature, and
noema = the object of current [“meant”] experience; it being at the same time (now; being-here-ness; Dasein) present in the actual “here and now” of the observer; but also transcending the realm of pure imagination by the observer who’s making the actual, ongoing, present [and again “meant”] experience. – Why meant? Because experience is by its very nature two-fold: one basic level of impression – colours, sounds, obstacles, etc – and another level, made of the same basic ability of being noetic, in which nous is aware of itself, making the current experience as it’s happening: noesis noeseos noesis, or: awareness is awareness of awareness!
It is precisely this concept that allows to overcome the metaphysics of substance, as well as its offspring riddles like the idealism/realism conundrum, the “mind/body problem”, and the nominalism quarrel that’s been keeping us philosophers busy for 1,000 years and still counting.
Posted by: persiflo | Jan 26 2024 0:47 utc | 170
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