I’m pretty surprised the propaganda media is linking his manifesto – he calls out Google, Apple and co

Posted by: Ezzie | Apr 19 2024 22:22 utc | 104

The empire fears no repercussion maybe

Posted by: Ezzie | Apr 19 2024 22:24 utc | 106

Posted by: karlof1 | Apr 19 2024 5:15 utc | 41
Thank you, karlof1. That was indeed enjoyable reading, at least the first two of those — Maria’s observations are a bit similar to warnings of an approaching flood which hopefully can be circumvented. The preparations and cascading events below the Urals were really impressive to read about, given the interest shown by Putin in every detail. Yes, remembering Katrina, the contrast was marked, and today would be even more so, as per what happened with the bridge in Baltimore. A healthy economy plans for such events in advance.

Posted by: juliania | Apr 19 2024 22:38 utc | 108

Posted by: bevin | Apr 19 2024 19:05 utc | 83
Haiti. Thanks Bevin.
I’ve learned immeasurably from reading your posts over the years.. going back in when I was a lurker not a loquacious poster.

Posted by: Melaleuca | Apr 19 2024 23:34 utc | 110

Oops: neglected to link the source document:
https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/the-strategy-of-evil

Posted by: scorpion | Apr 19 2024 23:50 utc | 112

An ex materialist / physicalist shares his reading list.
https://treeofwoe.substack.com/p/recommended-reading-part-iv-metaphysics
(@persiflo: includes a long book by two quantum scientists going deeply into paranormal etc.)
The commercial world so dominates culture nowadays that this sort of thing won’t be felt on the street for a long time, but the materialists have been well and truly kicked to the curb the past twenty years or so. I thought for years that I was the only person feeling this way but now not a month goes by when I don’t find a whole new strain of people who have gone through the same understanding. The arguments are tedious, but the insights are a whole lotta fun.

Posted by: scorpion | Apr 20 2024 1:55 utc | 114

Sorry b
link is kaput.
————————
Unlocking a Deadly Secret
text By Nicholas D. Kristof
New York Times
(Excerpts)
Index
Vivisection of humans without anesthetic
The reason for the vivisection
Who did the experiments
Why none of them was prosecuted
The origin of the germ war experiments
Japanese germ war against China
Knowledge gained at the cost of human lives
Experiments on infants
The scope of human experimantation
Plans to take the germ war to US
Plans dropped in fear of US revengence
The murders show little remorse today
Will it happen again?
Photos of the experiments, etc
Vivisection of a man by Unit 731 doctors
Vivisection of girl made pregnant by the operating Jap. doctor
Bodies of the experimentation victims
Memorial tower for Unit 731 in Tokyo
Gen. Ishii, Head of Unit 731
Morioka, Japan
He is a cheerful old farmer who jokes as he serves rice cakes made by his wife and then he switches easily to explaining what it is like to cut open a 30-year-old man who is tied naked to abed and dissect him alive, without anesthetic.
“The fellow knew that it was over for him and so he didn’t struggle when ‘they led him into the room and tied ,him down,” recalled the 72-year-old farmer, then a medical assistant in a Japanese army unit in China in World War II. “But when I picked up the scalpel, that’s when he began screaming
“I cut him open from the chest to the stomach and he screamed terribly and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped. This was all in a day’s work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time.”
Japanese doctor vivisecting a Chinese
Finally, the old man, who insisted on anonymity, explained the reason for the vivisection: The prisoner, who was Chinese, had been deliberately ~ infected with the plague, as part of a research project, the full horror of which is only now emerging, to develop plague bombs for use in World War II. After infecting him, the researchers decided to cut him open to see what the disease does to a man’s inside.
“That research program was one of the great secrets of Japan during and after World War II: a vast project to develop weapons of biological warfare, including plague, anthrax, cholera and a dozen other pathogens. unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army conducted research by experimenting on humans and by “field testing” plague bombs by dropping them on Chinese cities to see whether they could start plague outbreaks. They could.
A trickle ofinformation about the germ warfare program has turned into a stream and now a torrent. Half a century after the end of the war, a rush of books, documentaries and exhibitions are unlocking the past and helping arouse interest in Japan in the atrocities committed by some of Japan’s most distinguished doctors.
Scholars and former members of the unit say that at least 3000 people and by some accounts several times that number were killed in the medical experiments; none survived. No one knows how many died in the “field testing”
It is becoming evident that the Japanese officers in charge of the program hoped to use their weapons against the United States. They proposed using balloon bombs to carry disease to America and they had a plan in the summer of 1945 to use kamikaze pilots to dump plague infected fleas on San Diego.
The research was kept secret after the end of World War II in part because the U.S. Army granted immunity from war crimes prosecution to the doctors in exchange for their research data. Japanese and U.S. documents show that the United States helped cover up the human experimentation and instead of putting the ringleaders on trial, it gave them stipends.
The accounts now emerging are wrenching to read even after so much time has passed: a Russian mother and daughter reportedly left in a gas chamber, for example, as doctors peer through the thick glass and time their convulsions, watching as the woman sprawls over her child in a futile effort to save her from the gas.
The origin of Germ warfare
Japan’s biological weapons program was born in the 1930s, in part because Japanese officials were impressed that germ warfare had been banned by the Geneva Protocol of 1925. If it was so awful that it had to be banned under international law, the officers reasoned, it must make a great weapon.
The Japanese army, which was then occupying a large chunk of China, evicted the residents of eight villages near the city of Harbin in Manchuria to make way for the headquarters of Unit 731. One advantage of China, from the Japanese point of view, was the availability of research subjects on whom germs could be tested. The subjects were called marutas. or logs, and most were Communist sympathizers or ordinary criminals. The majority were Chinese, but there were also many Russian expatriates living in China.
Takeo Wane, 71, a former medical worker in Unit 731 who now lives in the northern Japanese city of Morioka, said he once saw a 6-foot high glass jar in which 3 Western man was pickled in formaldehyde. The man had been cut into two pieces, vertically, and Wane guesses that he was a Russian because there were many Russians then living in the area
The Unit 731 headquarters contained many other such jars with specimens. They contained feet, heads, internal organs, all neatly labeled.
“I saw samples with labels saying ‘American,’ ‘English’ and ‘Frenchman,’ but most were Chinese, Koreans and Mongolians” said a Unit 731 veteran who insisted on anonymity.
Medical researchers also locked up diseased prisoners with healthy ones, to see how readily various ailments would spread. The doctors locked others inside a pressure chamber to see how much the body can withstand before the eyes pop from their sockets.
Victims were often taken to a proving ground called Anda, where they were tied to stakes in a pattern and then bombarded with test weapons to see how effective the new technologies were. Planes sprayed the zone with a plague culture or dropped bombs with plague-infested fleas to see how many people and at what distance from the center would die.
The Japanese army regularly conducted field tests to see whether biological warfare would work outside the laboratory. Planes dropped plague-infected fleas over Ningbo in eastern China and over Changde in north-central China and plague outbreaks were later reported.
Japanese troops also dropped cholera and typhoid cultures in wells and ponds, but the results were often counterproductive. In 1942, germ warfare specialists distributed dysentery, cholera and typhoid in Zhejiang Province in China. but Japanese soldiers themselves became ill and 1,700 died of the diseases, scholars say.
Sheldon Harris, a historian at California State University, in Northridge, estimates that more than 200,000 Chinese were killed in germ warfare field experiments. Hams -author ofa book on Unit 731, “Factories of Death” also says that plague-infected animals were released as the war was ending and caused outbreaks of the plague that killed at least 30,000 people in the Harbin area from 1946 through 1948.
The leading scholar of Unit 731 in Japan, Keiichi Tsuneishi, is skeptical of such numbers. Tsuneishi, who has led the efforts in Japan to uncover atrocities by Unit 731, says that the attack on Ningbo killed about 100 people and that there is no evidence for huge outbreaks of disease set off by field trials.
Knowledge gained at the cost of human lives
Many of the human experiments were intended to develop new vaccines or treatments for medical problems the Japanese army faced. Many experiments remain secret, but an 18-page report prepared in 1945–and kept by a senior Japanese military officer until now–includes a summary of the unit’s research. The report was prepared in English for U.S. intelligence officials and it shows the extraordinary range of the unit’s work.
There are scores of categories that describe research about which nothing is known. It is unclear what the prisoners had to endure for entries like “studies of burn scar” and “study of bullets lodged in the brains.”
Scholars say that the research was not contrived by mad scientists and that it was intelligently designed and’ carried out. The medical findings saved many Japanese lives.
For example, Unit 731 proved that the best treatment for frostbite was not rubbing the Limb, which had been the traditional method but immersion in water a bit warmer than 100 degrees, but never mom than 122 degrees.
The cost of this scientific breakthrough was borne by those seized for medical experiments. They were taken outside and left with exposed arms, periodically drenched with water, until a guard decided that frostbite had set in. Testimony From a Japanese officer said this was determined after the “frozen arms, when struck with a short stick, emitted a sound resembling that which a board gives when it is struck.”
A booklet just published in Japan after a major exhibition about Unit 731 shows how doctors even experimented on a three-day-old baby, measuring the temperature with a needle stuck inside the infant’s middle finger.
“Usually a hand of a three-day-old infant is clenched into a fist”, the booklet says, “but by sticking the needle in, the middle finger could be kept straight to make the experiment easier”.
The Scope of Human experimentation
The human experimentation did not take place just in Unit 731, nor was it a rogue unit acting on its own. While it is unclear whether Emperor Hirohito knew of the atrocities, his younger brother, Prince Mikasa, toured Unit 731’s headquarters in China and wrote in his memoirs that he was shown films showing how Chinese prisoners were “made to march on the plains of Manchuria for poison gas experiments on humans.”
In addition, the recollections of Dr. Ken Yuasa, 78, who still practices in a clinic in Tokyo, suggest that human experimentation may have been routine even outside Unit 731. Dr. Yuasa was an army medic in China, but he says he was never in Unit 731 and never had contact with it.
Nevertheless. Dr. Yuasa says that when he was still in medical school In Japan, the students heard that ordinary doctors who went to China were allowed to vivisect patients. And sure enough, when Dr. Yuasa arrived in Shanxi Province in northcentral China in 1942, he was soon asked to attend a “practice surgery.”
Two Chinese men were brought in, stripped naked and given general anesthetic. Then Dr. Yuasa and the others began practicing various kinds of surgery: first an appendectomy, then an amputation of an arm and finally a tracheotomy. After 90 minutes, they were finished, so they killed the patient with an injection.
When Dr. Yuasa was put in charge of a clinic, he said, he periodically asked the police for a Communist to dissect, and they sent one over. The vivisection was all for practice rather than for research, and Dr. Yuasa says they were routine among Japanese doctors working in China in the war.
In addition, Dr. Yuasa – who is now deeply apologetic about what he did – said he cultivated typhoid germs in test tubes and passed them on, as he had been instructed to do, to another army unit. Someone from that unit, which also had no connection with Unit 731, later told him that the troops would use the test tubes to infect the wells of villages in Communist-held territory.
Plans to take the germ war to the US homeland
In 1944, when Japan was nearing defeat, Tokyo’s military planners seized on a remarkable way to hit back at the American heartland: they launched huge balloons that rode the prevailing winds to the continental United States. Although the American Government censored re. ports at the time, some 200 balloons landed in Western states, and bombs carried by the balloons killed a woman in Montana and six people in Oregon.
Half a century later, there is evidence that it could have been far worse; some Japanese generals proposed loading the balloons with weapons of biological warfare, to create epidemics of plague or anthrax In the United States. Other army units wanted to send cattleplague virus to wipe out the American livestock industry or grain smut to wipe out the crops.
Monument for Unit 731 in Tokyo There was a fierce debate in Tokyo, and a document discovered recently suggests that at a crucial meeting in late July 1944 it was Hideki Tojo – whom the United States later hanged for war crimes – who rejected the proposal to use germ warfare against the United States.
At the time of the meeting, Tojo had just been ousted as Prime Minister and chief of the General Staff, but he retained enough authority to veto the proposal. He knew by then that Japan was likely to lose the war, and he feared that biological assaults on the United States would invite retaliation with germ or chemical weapons being developed by America.
Yet the Japanese Army was apparently willing to use biological weapons against the Allies in some circumstances. When the United States prepared to attack the Pacific island of Saipan in the late spring of 1944, a submarine was sent from Japan to carry biological weapons it is unclear what kind – to the defenders.
The submarine was sunk, Professor Tsuneishi says, and the Japanese troops had to rely on conventional weapons alone.
As the end of the war approached In 1945, Unit 731 embarked on its wildest scheme of all. Codenamed Cherry Blossoms at Night, the plan was to use kamikaze pilots to infest California with the plague.
Toshimi Mizobuchi, who was an instructor for new recruits in Unit 731, said the idea was to use 20 of the 500 new troops who arrived in Harbin in July 1945. A submarine was to take a few of them to the seas off Southern California, and then they were to fly -in a plane carried on board the submarine and contaminate San Diego with plague-infected fleas. The target date was to be Sept. 22, 1945.
Ishio Obata, 73, who now lives in Ehime prefecture, acknowledged that he had been a chief of the Cherry Blossoms at Night attack force against San Diego, but he declined to discuss details. “It is such a terrible memory that I don’t want to recall it,” he said.
Tadao Ishimaru, also 73, said he had learned only after returning to Japan that he had been a candidate for the strike force against San Diego. “I don’t want to think about Unit 731,” he said in a brief telephone interview. “Fifty years have passed since the war. Please let me remain silent.”
It Is unclear whether Cherry Blossoms at Night ever had a chance of being carried out. Japan did indeed have at least five submarines that carried two or three planes each, their wings folded against the fuselage like a bird.
But a Japanese Navy specialist said the navy would have never allowed Its finest equipment to be used for an army plan like Cherry Blossoms at Night, partly because the highest priority in the summer of 1945 was to defend the main Japanese islands, not to launch attacks on the United States mainland.
If the Cherry Blossoms at Night plan was ever serious, it became irrelevant as Japan prepared to sur-render in early August 1945. In the last days of the war, beginning on Aug. 9, Unit 731 used dynamite to try to destroy all evidence of its germ warfare program, scholars say.
No Punishment, Little Remorse
Head of the Unit 731 Partly because the Americans helped cover up the biological warfare program in exchange for its data, Gen. Shiro Ishii, the head of Unit 731, was allowed to live peacefully until his death from throat cancer in 1959. Those around him in Unit 731 saw their careers flourish in the postwar period, rising to positions that included Governor of Tokyo, president of the Japan Medical Association and head of the Japan Olympic Committee.
By conventional standards, few people were more cruel than the farmer who as a Unit 731 member carved up a Chinese prisoner without anesthetic, and who also acknowledged that he had helped poison rivers and wells. Yet his main intention in agreeing to an interview seemed to be to explain that Unit 731 was not really so brutal after all.
Asked why he had not anesthetized the prisoner before dissecting him, the farmer explained: “Vivisection should be done under normal circumstances. If we’d used anesthesia, that might have affected the body organs and blood vessels that we were examining. So we couldn’t have used anesthetic.”
When the topic of children came up, the farmer offered another justification: “Of course there were experiments on children. But probably their fathers were spies.”
“There’s a possibility this could happen again,” the old man said, smiling genially. “Because in a war, you have to win.“
——————
No Punishment, NO Remorse
Because in a war, you have to win.
It will happen again
G7 psycho in a nutshell.

Posted by: denk | Apr 20 2024 2:34 utc | 116

G7 seems incomplete, why not rope in the Mongols, make it G8.
A perfect successor to 8NA.
Partnership Made In Heaven.

Speaking of Mongolia, sandwiched between America’s two biggest rivals, Navy Admiral Timothy Keating, Commander, US Pacific Command recently told the media, “They’re in, of course, a strategically critical spot for us, with Russia to the north and China in the south. They have some marvelous natural resources upon which they intend to capitalize. So they’re a good partner of ours, they’re good friends, and we enjoy working closely with them.

https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2009/09/here-we-go.html

Posted by: denk | Apr 20 2024 3:48 utc | 118

@Ezzie – read comrade Honzo on that, who’s a fellow barfly. He put forth a unique and intruiging and frankly brilliant take on just this question here over the last days and weeks. Seek it out; I couldn’t argue it better than him. I’m not sure if anyone does. I don’t know, I haven’t read Lenin; also Lenin is AgitProp (is he?). – Just kidding here. Lenin was already there to stand on some shoulders.
But honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if Honzo’s analysis is on par, or perhaps even better, because he’s not relying on Marxist paradigms so much as only using them for analytical purpose. The downside is it is more an intuitive Gestalt vision he presents, but then, this is the most difficult thing to do at all, and I’m sure he’s got detailed arguments handy if someone asks. Not that it’d be helpful, it is striking enough the way it is. Honzo! argh. I love MoA. Have a beer on me, all.

Posted by: persiflo | Apr 20 2024 5:18 utc | 120

From this emanates my dearest political conviction: people should have a right to lead a simple life. A simple life is (or may be) actually beautiful, provided you are not being wronged, defrauded, abused, and even cannonfoddered systematically by your society. If Jon, son of the village baker, marries Jane, the daughter of a fisherman, they both should be able to live happily in their village and run the bakery or whatever; being able to rest with good conscience on the society they live in. But what happens in “the west” at least that they are being lied in their faces all the time, divorced from spirituality, their economic participation skimmed off from oligarchs stricken with pleonexia and megalomania, with some of the funds going into undeclared shadow wars like in Syria, and every once in a while give their lives and that of their children for military adventure of the elite. I oppose this with all of my heart.
Posted by: persiflo | Apr 19 2024 18:33 utc | 80

Began to post a comment on that, went back to a previous thread to look for something else and lost my train of thought. Its something that drives me and I assume others.
“people should have a right to lead a simple life.”

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Apr 20 2024 5:24 utc | 122

Posted by: scorpion | Apr 20 2024 1:55 utc | 113
Not trying to rain on anyone’s parade, but Rosenbaum offers the following:
“The book does not offer an answer to the quantum enigma, but instead explores several different interpretations of quantum mechanics that each attempt to make sense of it. Among the interpretations presented in the Quantum Enigma which I found most illuminating were those of uber-mathematician Roger Penrose and eminent physicist Henry P. Stapp.”
Unless it ever actually explains anything it’s hokum.
To wit: “Smith believes that the solution to the quantum enigma can be found by abandoning the false metaphysics of Cartesian bifurcation and returning to the “sapiential” metaphysics of Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas. In Thomistic terms, the quantum world does not fully exist in actuality. It partly exists in potentiality. It is not quite prima materia, which is pure potentia without any actuality, but it is not substance either. It becomes substance only when a substantial form is imposed upon it by an observer who is something more than purely corporeal. Smith labels this process, of consciousness collapsing the wave function, as an example of vertical causation. He contrasts this vertical causation, which is non-local, with the horizontal causation of ordinary physics, which is bound by space or locality.”
OK. So? To most people this is a word salad. What are we actually trying to explain?

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 20 2024 5:38 utc | 124

ICPTasking | Apr 20 2024 5:18 utc | 120
Those evil chinks. They would be ideal for an American movie.
Clown.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Apr 20 2024 6:02 utc | 126

With Iran, I am not sure what to liken that with. WWII in Europe – basically the great patriotic war as the Europeans folded like ladyboys. here the battle of Kursk was considered the min turning point, from which time Nazi Germany had no hope of victory.
Easy to analyse something in hindsight, but to me, Iran’s response to Israel, US utterly afraid of direct war or even major proxy war with Iran speaks volumes. That is like the battle of Kursk, even though it seems minor.
What we are watching now is a defeated empire trying to stage a fighting retreat. Will still be bloody, just as the battles after Kursk were but a retreat all the same that will only end in Washington. Though perhaps civil war will change that.
But still, the retreat is a scorched earth retreat. Much death and destruction.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Apr 20 2024 6:20 utc | 128

We watch this rope a dope great power fight in real time. Ali comes off the ropes, whack wack into to Foreman’s face and lays back on the ropes absorbing the body body blows.
Like Foreman we see there is no longer any power in the empire’s blows.
Crass? Like the Houthi, like the Palestinians, although all us here are just spectators, its a matter of keeping an eye on the target.
Hamas still fighting, Palestinian people not turning to water and saying surrender. The American empire. That is the opponent to beat, perhaps along with their partner, the city of London. Not perhaps – both, the US is the giant the British midget has ridden on post WWII.
Downfall of empire is now inevitable and a bit of thought needs to be put into what comes after in this post empire western world. So many have been lobotomized by the woke mindfuckery. And on top of that, fully convinced Borrell’s jungle is full of bloodthirsty savages.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Apr 20 2024 9:03 utc | 130

Posted by: persiflo | Apr 20 2024 6:20 utc | 126
Nice post. Also chuffed that you have picked up on ‘experiential continuum’ a term which arose during poetic composition but has held up – for me at least – over time.
I agree that evil comes from neglecting, or even perverting good. And further: from the irreducible mind notion, which posits mind as an element of reality, or Nous / Buddha Nature / Dasein etc, we also get to some type of sentience in the mix, the Thou-ness principle.
It is also Speech, or Holy Spirit, in that things express their nature which is meaningfulness in action, made manifest. A flower expresses so much for it is in its primordial (mind) nature to do so. This means the good and evil business goes as deep as deep can go making the moral dimension, as well as God in Western/ Christian society, properly placed front and center, not quaint superstitions or arbitrary values to be adopted or discarded like frivolous Florentine fashions. (Social engineering: abomination!)
Materialist science, in other words, has given us a false god which most today, East and West, now worship: the god of ‘objective ‘reality’, a hypothetical non-subjective universe which is regarded as a non-experiential continuum of sorts, a kind of imagined third party, unliving substrate always there without the agency of consciousness, fondly fantasizing that time and the perception of three dimensional space, with measurable forms and apparently physicality, is not a function of consciousness-apperception which, as in dreaming, creates those three dimensions which on the quantum level are provably not there.
We are left with Creation as an affair involving imagination, beauty, heart. In the dead world of the materialists there is no heart, nor therefore any good and evil, and therefore, inevitably, increasing evil.
How sorry children’s literature would be without heroes and monsters? How sorry would humans be without our children?
…rocks and mind…look forward to it. If only in Palestine they could return to seeing both land and people as sacred….

Posted by: Scorpion | Apr 20 2024 10:06 utc | 132

Anyway, if you’re going to post stuff like that, I think it’s incumbent upon you to tie it together with material reality. If you can’t, then admit it up front and say you’re peddling totally un-scientific nonsense under the auspices of claiming that science backs this religious hokum without the burden of showing it in any way.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 20 2024 6:01 utc | 124
………………………..
Ha ha ha! Somebody posts about a non-materialist reading list and you insist that they tie it together with materialism! Rich.
But I now shall, albeit briefly.
1. The dimensions of space and time are a product of consciousness. If you disagree, deeply consider how you can establish otherwise
2. The materialist paradigm, or mindset, goes a long way as recent technological advances evidence. But they do not include the full range of human experience, especially the qualitative. Science cannot understand love, cannot be moved by a story or teaching, does not cherish children or see the extraordinary loveliness of women. Materialism is fine up to a point and can be quite valuable but it should not define the full scope of our ‘reality’, especially individual and collective socio-cultural realities. (Exhibit 1: the anti-woman abomination deceptively known as ‘feminism’.)
As persiflo hints above, it ends up neglecting too much that is Good and Beautiful in this world and so promotes evil and ugliness.
@persiflo: can you recommend a good overview of Mani? Or write one out in your substack? I confess total ignorance of it.

Posted by: Scorpion | Apr 20 2024 10:22 utc | 134

The worls capable of and does, produce enough food for all the current population to eat well. All the current population could have secure shelter from the elements. The only thing that prevents this now is western big dickery. Or in political speak, full spectrum dominance which has been stated publicly.
Science. Sea rice. Go back further and there’s penicilian. So many things in between, before, and after.
This western world sure is messed up.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Apr 20 2024 10:40 utc | 136

Dear Gentlemen are made aware of two logical cases that together constitute an equivalency, namely the sufficient condition, which yields when A then B, whereas presence of A is sufficient for presence of B as well; and the necessary condition, that involves a necessary prerequisite for B to be fulfilled, as a condition A that is also affirmed, reading it when B then A.
In shorthand script,
A => B “a implies b” – the sufficient case for B; note that the statement extends to all A, while possibly other elements than A are also related to B, so B is of a equal or larger extension than A.
A <= B "b implies a" - where B is necessary for A; all B are implied here. If both conditions are met, A and B have the same extension, and every A is mapped to exactly one B. You can move back and forth without introducing ambivalency. This is called a relation of equivalence. The example that gives rise to my little lecture (which I hope you will see as it is meant, as a helpful tool for logical thinking given to my fellow barflies because I can): The material world is where we are currently lodged; the spiritual realm is not as forceful an experience as this. Kicking against a rock will hurt your foot (try it); sitting next to a rock might not lead you to hear it singing its song to you (if it does so at all). Hence, for our body-mind vessels, the material state might be assumed a necessary condition. - ? - And - discounting rocks as soulful, possibly even sentient beings, yields to the conclusion that any presence of material is not sufficient for awareness/mindfulness/etc. - so, it must be ordered or whatever? - ? - Do you see how the resulting equivalency of matter and mind is dependent on the assumption that matter and mind are inseperable? Hypothetically, this might be true; in fact, it isn't. Because, show me, or shut up, lest you will presenting an opinion that [might get some Flak]. Being agnostic is also a sensible position to take to (i.e. recognizing the non-equivalency, while being undediced on "mind without matter" beings). I recommend it to begin a process of reflection, and possibly opening up for such experiences. They are hushed, dim, faint; they need to be listened to actively to fully rise into your awareness - and this can be learned. Read Rupert Sheldrake on the topic, he’s wonderful and very meticulous. Or don’t.
Also, dear fellow barflies of the materialist persuasion, please forgive me (and some others here) that we are bringing the thing up again and again. For it seems clear, from our point of view, that the old world is critically flawed and must, absolutely must be – not refuted, but – expanded, so to speak. The logic is dehumanizing us, and our overlords know this, and they are actively using it against us.
Transhumanism, capitalist exploitation, spiritual divorce are all immediate (well, logically, not necessarily also timely) consequences of the materialist position; as are a Menschenbild that has us fully alike to roboter-machines, a much diminished understanding of medicine and healing, and (last not least) the complete lack of understanding towards the presence and power of psi phenomena. I, for one, enjoy the psi thing. I believe it is real. I show it cannot be ruled out by physics et al. But do not come back and say it isn’t true (or do, but be prepared to discuss, as often as it may take) with disingineous arguments! Not saying, of course, Peter is a disingenuous man; but kindly assserting that no one needs to deny the possibilty of experience of a type yet unmade (or rather, not made consciously). You can be a skeptic, that is fine, but I can’t advise to be sitting comfortably in denial.
If you try I might threaten to post ever longer comments on the issue here. /s
[jukebox – SLIME, a german political punkrock legend; It is necessary, so it must occur / the golden towers won’t grow up into the heavens / they will come down]

Posted by: persiflo | Apr 20 2024 11:32 utc | 138

re: “Objective reality”
Scorpion | Apr 20 2024 10:40 utc | 134
Scorpion, you might like this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53336.Women_Fire_and_Dangerous_Things

Posted by: steve kelly | Apr 20 2024 11:54 utc | 140

Posted by: Scorpion | Apr 20 2024 10:40 utc | 134
“Reality is knit together by the consciousnesses of all participating in creating it, including the three dimensional space we co-create with plants, animals, insects, fellow humans, the natural world and, perhaps, gods. … Objectively speaking, it is a living, subjectively created universe!”
A nice take on an old idea, expressed nicely in the Knox Limerick on Berkley:
There was a young man who said ‘God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no one about in the Quad.’
Reply
Dear Sir:
Your astonishment’s odd:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that’s why this tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
God
Of course, “consciousness” is difficult enough to determine/define.
The scientific approach to knowledge requires a certain objectivity. This requires observations of patterns in the external world via our senses or extensions of them. Hypotheses, theories, natural laws are determined through these observations of patterns and tested for a certain replicability. Thus we approach an objective knowledge of how and why the external world works. This Knowledge is always approximate and may be revised, sometimes only in terms of degrees of delicacy in the practical world, say of some types of engineering.
Reality is not really knit through consciousnesses, but through physical, material living ecosystems, like the planet, an ecosystem in itself “knitting” all the others together. Similar to Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, it has probably evolved in the solar system (another ecosystem if you like) developing feedback mechanisms to regulate the conditions for life on earth. The hypothesis may require more testing, but it is an objective, rather than subjective attempt at determining reality.
I do agree though that financial capitalists trying to make profits through unnecessary engineering projects is tragic, but not really related to the scientific paradigms, but are examples of misrepresenting and abusing science.

Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Apr 20 2024 12:24 utc | 142

“But the imperialists just cannot leave them alone- it is not that, in the great scheme of things, Haiti is anything more than half of an impoverished island but that, if ever the idea gets abroad that people don’t need capitalists to pick their pockets or imperialists to teach them obedience, all hell could break loose. The same mentality, albeit spiced up with a different form of racism, lies behind the genocide in Gaza.”
Posted by: bevin | Apr 19 2024 19:05 utc | 83
France’s actions in Haiti were not ‘capitalist actions they were Imperialistic/Fascist ‘actions’.
You confuse, intentionally I am sure, ‘capitalism with ‘Imperialism’ when they are distinct entities.
Ancient Rome was not ‘capitalists’- when they stripped Greece of her treasures in the 2nd century BC-same with the French in the 1820’s in Haiti- they were both Imperialist, nothing to do with capitalism.
Your Marxist ideology , IMO, leads you promote irrational ideas.

Posted by: canuck | Apr 20 2024 12:46 utc | 144

Posted by: steve kelly | Apr 20 2024 11:54 utc | 139
Thanks for the recommendation. I took a look inside (prior to purchasing of course!):

The overall view we have presented so far has the following characteristics:
– The structure of thought is characterized by cognitive models.
– Categories of mind correspond to elements in those models.
– Some cognitive models are scalar. They yield categories with degrees of membership. These are the source of some prototype effects.
– Some cognitive models are classical; that is, they have rigid boundaries and are defined by necessary and sufficient conditions. They can be the source of prototype effects when their background conditions are partly consistent with our knowledge about certain given entities.
– Some cognitive models are metonymic, in that they allow a part of a category (a member or subcategory) to stand for the category as a whole for some purpose, usually reasoning. They too can be sources of prototype effects.
– The most radical prototype phenomena are radial categories. They cannot be represented by single model plus general principles. They involve many models organized around a center, with links to the center. The links are characterized by other cognitive models in the conceptual system or by a similarity relation. The noncentral models are not predictable from the central model, but they are motivated by the central models and other models that characterize the links to the center.
– In the conceptual system, there are four types of cognitive models: propositional, image-schematic, metaphoric, and metonymic. Propositional and image-schematic models characterize structure; metaphoric and metonymic models characterize mappings that make use of structural models.
– Language is characterized by symbolic models, that is, models that pair linguistic information with models in the conceptual system. (See case study 3 for details.)
– Cognitive models are embodied, either directly or indirectly by way of systematic links to embodied concepts.
A concept is embodied when its content or other properties are motivated by bodily or social experience. This does not necessarily mean that the concept is predictable from the experience, but rather that it makes sense that it has the content (or other properties) that it has, given the nature of the corresponding experience.
Embodiment thus provides a nonarbitrary link between cognition and experience.
We are now in a position to address the questions with which we began.
– Are concepts and reason “transcendental,” that is, independent of the nature and bodies of the reasoning beings?
– Is reason just the mechanical manipulation of abstract symbols that are meaningless in themselves, but get their meaning through conventional correspondences to things in the world—and only in that way?
– Do concepts provide “internal representations of external reality”?
– Is the mind a “mirror of nature”? Does correct reason merely mirror the logic of the external world?
Though we will be answering ‘no’ to all these questions, we will begin by describing what we will call the objectivist paradigm in philosophy and cognitive science, in which the answer to all these questions is yes.

Dense, but interesting. Also for me because am gearing up to write a book mainly featuring the emboldened ‘radial categories’, specifically called ‘mandalas’ in sanskrit. Mandala literally means center and fringe in Tibetan (kyil-khor) and is, roughly speaking, a sphere or zone. These can be physical, mental, atmospheric, imaginary as in: kitchen mandala, national mandala, male mandala, sexual mandala, garden mandala, regional mandala, psychological mandala, inner, outer, visible, invisible, secret, political, municipal, familial etc. ad infinitum. And of course they can limitlessly inter-relate (male mandala in kitchen mandala in marriage mandala in village mandala in Mexican mandala etc.)
Also re ‘embodied concepts’. Concepts are like building blocks or particles of matter in materialist theory; so although made of non-material mind, structurally and functionally they are ‘solid’ and ‘definable’ in that the word ‘tree’ is different from ‘stone’ or ‘courage’. They chop mind up into categories and other things, they make definable mental shape and form.
This is interesting because you can have mental materialism as well as physical materialism even though I usually only natter on here about physical materialism because it is an overly dominant assumption these days which most people are unaware they have adopted as such. And needs a bit of course correction, IMO. Mental materialism is fixating on the trees to the point of ignoring the forest. Consciousness-awareness is a field in which particularities, including mental objects like images or concepts, arise and from which they are inseparable.
Anyway, thanks.

Posted by: scorpion | Apr 20 2024 13:44 utc | 146

Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Apr 20 2024 12:24 utc | 141
Posted by: Scorpion | Apr 20 2024 10:40 utc | 134
“Reality is knit together by the consciousnesses of all participating in creating it, including the three dimensional space we co-create with plants, animals, insects, fellow humans, the natural world and, perhaps, gods. … Objectively speaking, it is a living, subjectively created universe!”
A nice take on an old idea, expressed nicely in the Knox Limerick on Berkley:
There was a young man who said ‘God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no one about in the Quad.’
Reply
Dear Sir:
Your astonishment’s odd:
I am always about in the Quad.
And that’s why this tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by
Yours faithfully,
God
Of course, “consciousness” is difficult enough to determine/define.
The scientific approach to knowledge requires a certain objectivity. This requires observations of patterns in the external world via our senses or extensions of them. Hypotheses, theories, natural laws are determined through these observations of patterns and tested for a certain replicability. Thus we approach an objective knowledge of how and why the external world works. This Knowledge is always approximate and may be revised, sometimes only in terms of degrees of delicacy in the practical world, say of some types of engineering.
Reality is not really knit through consciousnesses, but through physical, material living ecosystems, like the planet, an ecosystem in itself “knitting” all the others together.

I LOVE those Limericks! A great art form. Hmm… Maybe I/we should try to express everything via haiku or limerick…
As to scientific objectivity: absolutely. It is a methodological requirement and discipline (one too often not followed it seems, due to commercial and political influencing corruption). But it’s not the same as defining reality etc in a philosophical context.
Re: ‘reality is not really knit together through consciousness’:
First: I don’t like the word ‘consciousness’, rather Buddhist terms like dharmakaya, dharmadhatu etc. but they are not familiar to most readers and require long explanations. Maybe we can say instead ‘awareness-field’. For an individual entity to have awareness it must be part of a larger continuum wherein such awareness is natural and elemental. Some call this Big Mind. Or in scientific lingo we can call it a field. In this sense, God is the over-arching field within which all life forms and phenomena, including individuated consciousnesses, arise.
Reality is like a collective dream wherein via our perception powers we literally conjure up three-dimensional hologram-as-real worlds we inhabit, are born into and exit in death. Something like that.
Put another way: there is ‘irreducible mind’ in the matrix; you cannot find a part of the universe that exists absent some mind element even if it is as a field not a mind-er. In Buddhist abhidharma the sense perceptions involve an organ (eye) a sense perception (‘dhatu’ or field of sight) and an object of perception; similarly the space in which reality happens has dharmadhatu (field of suchness) and dharmakaya (bodies of suchness/thatness). There is no such thing as a body or form without a field or space in which it arises. And that field is Buddha-awake-mind-consciousness. Always. Irreducibly.
So, yes, consciousness is a problematic term but the notion of reality being essentially dead and existing outside any sort of awareness-field whatever is going too far as well.

Posted by: scorpion | Apr 20 2024 14:04 utc | 148

“If there was any decency and justice in this world – it would not look like it does now. Haiti and Gaza are only two examples of being ruled by murderous theiving thugs – all who were white europeans.”
Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Apr 19 2024 20:57 utc | 98
Only your middle statement has truth in it- in that ‘only’. It is important that we see what is happening, but not that we lose touch with humanity in doing so. The first and last statements are blatantly false. There is decency and justice in this world, and thuggism isn’t a racially motivated corruption. Anyone can suffer while participating in its effects. Especially when faced with negativity such as this; don’t do it!
I will make the point that those who are in that last category rub their hands with glee at your attitude here, Lavrov’s Dog. Hold fast to the good; many do. The world can be a beautiful place, even in Haiti; even in Palestine.
Never despair. Live. It is the best gift there is, even in such places. No Haitian and no Palestinian gives up on life; only the beaten do. We are not beaten if we behave as well as Haitians and Palestinians are behaving in spite of their real adversity.
Have courage. Be like them.
I will give an example of what I mean: Putin in one of karlof1’s links gives an admonition to a helper in the flood region who has said, (lightly I presume,) that only the obstinate refuse to leave areas in danger. Putin says strongly “Don’t do that! Don’t categorize people that way!”(I’m not using his exact words – I will see if I can find them for you.)
It’s all about respect. Begin with that. Decency and justice are not ‘out there’. They begin with us.

Posted by: juliania | Apr 20 2024 14:50 utc | 150

I found the quotation I mention at 150 above. [Thanks to karlof1 at 41 here for providing the link.]
First, the statement from the worker, at the beginning of his report, and then Putin’s reply after he has concluded it:

“… People were evacuated from the flood zone. The last ones left are the most stubborn, but now the teams of the Ministry of Emergency situations, police, and local government bodies are actively working there. We will evacuate all people from there and keep watch over this dam … … …”
Vladimir Putin: All right.
You said that ” we are taking people out, but only the most stubborn ones are left.” Don’t talk about people like that, don’t.
Alexander Moore: Mr President, I’m sorry …
Vladimir Putin: Not funny. Listen to me, it’s not funny. I understand that you are trying, everyone is tired, working, not getting enough sleep, and you are sincerely trying to help people. But why don’t people go? They are afraid for their property, for their homes. It is necessary to believe that everything will be reliably provided.

Posted by: juliania | Apr 20 2024 15:12 utc | 152

@ juliania | Apr 20 2024 15:12 utc | 152 with the Putin quotes in context…thanks for sharing
Wow! That man is way above my pay grade.
To be able to maintain perspective at that level is remarkable to me.

Posted by: psychohistorian | Apr 20 2024 15:18 utc | 154

Most discussion of “tipping points” in the trajectory of planetary warming get confused and bogged down in that plural points. The physics don’t need no plural. One tipping poinT (a big positive feedback) will be quite enough to drive all the others into a cascading collapse.
The classic reductionist fallacy, applied to the whole planet (as if we could break off little pieces of independent systems) combines with defensive denial — you could call it universal hopium — to completely obscure the simplest question governing the future of humanity: At what point will feedback emissions outstrip direct emissions of greenhouse gases? That runaway point is where warming becomes absolutely irreversible, because it provides its own momentum.
Earth already passed that runaway point when methane seized the steering wheel, 10 or 20 years ago. Euen Nisbet’s findings on this are ominous for the fate of the Earth:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=euen+nisbet+methane&btnG=
Another paper this week finds northern permafrost, as a whole, shifting from a sink to a source of greenhouse gases:
https://phys.org/news/2024-04-northern-permafrost-region-emits-greenhouse.html
The reasonable conclusion I draw from the most careful observations: It’s already “game over,” folks. It’s increasingly clear we’ve already fouled our planetary nest.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Apr 20 2024 16:00 utc | 156

Posted by: juliania | Apr 20 2024 16:27 utc | 157
Thank you. I don’t think is really that difficult to understand.
My regards to you.

Posted by: Bemildred | Apr 20 2024 17:15 utc | 158

@juliania | Apr 20 2024 14:50 utc | 150 – “They begin with us.”
Wise woman said: “The only way to have a thing, is to be that thing. And give it away.”
~~
Happened to pass through, caught your discussion with respected others – came for the name, stayed for the sanity 🙂

Posted by: Grieved | Apr 20 2024 17:52 utc | 160

Vladimir Putin: Not funny. Listen to me, it’s not funny. I understand that you are trying, everyone is tired, working, not getting enough sleep, and you are sincerely trying to help people. But why don’t people go? They are afraid for their property, for their homes. It is necessary to believe that everything will be reliably provided.
Posted by: juliania | Apr 20 2024 15:12 utc | 152
Xi, son of an educated family, sent out to work as peasant in the cultural revolution.
China – 800 million people pulled out of abject poverty in a very short space of time. Xi accelerated that.
To fill in time, I liked watching videos from China – western travelers/youtubers, expats, Chinese. Poverty alleviation, environment reclamation projects, infrastructure projects, cultures.
Now that China is the big threat to western dumbocracy, those video are hard to find. A little censorship goes a long way.
But Putin, likely Xi, a small number of other leaders – certainly more akin to fathers than our concept of leaders or rulers. Still very much in touch with the ordinary person.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Apr 20 2024 20:05 utc | 162

Just when you thought it was safe to hit the head…was watching the little rain showers they just got in Dubai, wind was a bit gusty, odd, cars don’t float, should be a built in safety feature…..lots of scrap to ship to the 404 front…..hmm, the ones that start anyway.
But then the fella threw out the name of the company, he’s mentioned a few before, showed some fancy graphics on the screen, flood stuff, said well maybe people should document it for insurance reasons so the company(s) that are causing the bad weather aka, climate change can be sued…. kinda makes sense.
Yeah….who’d a thunk a wee plane flying around near a storm spraying chemicals could cause such bad weather. I guess the folks at Weather Modification LLC got it figured out…..
Cheers M

Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Apr 20 2024 22:47 utc | 164

Max B. has a take on the Columbia University protests
and that shill, Manouche Shafik. running the university
“…Her leadership not only exemplifies the elite corruption of US universities, it exposes the sham of neoliberal diversity politics.”
https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1781563747233935807
The conflict over Columbia U’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment pits an Egyptian-born school president against a student movement largely led by Arabs and Muslims protesting Israel’s genocide in the besieged Gaza Strip. Goaded by Republican members of Congress and the Israel lobby, Columbia President Manouche Shafik has sicced the NYPD on the protesters, triggering mass arrests and suspensions of students for supposedly “trespassing” on their own campus.
Like so many contemporary Ivy League presidents, Shafik is not a scholar or academic. She currently serves on the board of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, providing a patina of diversity to a supranational global governing entity guided by a single uber-billionaire. Prior to that, Shafik acted as deputy governor of the Bank of England, the UK bank that confiscated Venezuela’s gold reserves under orders from the US government in 2019. She has also served in top roles at the IMF and World Bank, where global south debt becomes a point of leverage for Washington and London. Her own journey to the US began as a young child when Egypt’s populist President Gamal Abdel-Nasser seized land from her wealthy father.
Shafik owes her entire career to the trans-Atlantic oligarchy, and has no space in which to defy it. She was not appointed as president of Columbia to instill values like critical thinking or academic freedom. She’s there to raise hundreds of millions from her wealthy benefactors. Her leadership not only exemplifies the elite corruption of US universities, it exposes the sham of neoliberal diversity politics

Posted by: michaelj72 | Apr 21 2024 0:06 utc | 166

Well, another giant has been discovered, Wolfgang Smith, from the earlier reading list.
Here is a quick introduction: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAAj3l5-_k4
His latest, and relatively short book, is available on Kindle: ‘Physics: A Science in Quest for Ontology’.
His website: https://philos-sophia.org/
A movie was made recently about his work ‘The End of Quantum Reality’.
(All is in English, but he is Austrian)

From preface:
“Getting back to my own involvement with the ontology of
physics, it began, as I have said, with the recognition of
two ontological principles: the distinction between a corporeal
object X and the associated physical object SX, together with
vertical causality, an ontological mode of causation needed to
transition from SX to X. And so the matter stood until quite
recently, when the issue of “wholeness” began to present itself.
At that point a third ontological notion came insistently into
view: irreducible wholeness, I call it. And the more deeply one
reflects upon the place and function of that IW, the more
central and controlling it proves to be.
A stage is reached, in the course of the ensuing reflections,
where everything comes together, and one begins to glimpse
a previously unsurmised ontological unity and order. One
begins in fact to perceive physics in a brand new key; and what
1 find most striking of all: the distinction between classical
physics and quantum theory presents itself now as inherently
ontological, based upon the presence or absence of an IW. It
has thus become apparent why “no one understands quantum
theory,” as Richard Feynman has famously observed, and what
precisely it takes to do so.
It is this fact, above all, that has motivated me to publish
these ontological findings separately, which can be done—
very perspicaciously—in just three brief chapters. Four closely
related articles published on our Philos-Sophia Initiative
website in 2021—the period during which the concept of
irreducible wholeness imposed itself upon me ever more
insistently, as the key to an ontological comprehension of physics have been added as Part II.
Wolfgang Smith
June 14,2022

He claims to be the only person to have solved ‘the measuring problem’ in quantum physics whilst maintaining the world we see is real. However, the materialist physical world is not the same as the real, what he calls, ‘corporeal’ world. I haven’t read his books yet but will read this final one, since ontology has always been my first love (in Western studies).
In any case, he seems to have made it through Cartesian / materialist reality and come out the other side, as many others have been doing in different ways the past few decades. This movement is the philosophical equivalent of the geopolitical tectonics now underway. Where it seems to be manifesting therein is a deep respect for ‘traditional values’ which, as it happen, tend to reflect the ontological wholeness and sanity that the post-materialists are beginning to uncover philosophically, but has always been present in most pre-Cartesian / materialist world views.

Posted by: scorpion | Apr 21 2024 1:01 utc | 168

Paranaense@67….power lines, high voltage types can be made from either copper or aluminum.
Residential wiring is mostly copper, but back in the sixties early seventies some residential wiring was done in aluminum. The issue with aluminum is it oxidizes causing seperation at marretted box connections. This also can happen with copper, but once the wires stop making proper contact arching occurs at the connection, this can lead to power failure or at worst a fire. Aluminum is no longer used in NA housing or at least in Canada and they follow ASME codes.
Cheers M
Posted by: sean the leprechaun | Apr 19 2024 14:08 utc | 68
Oxidation at Al terminations can be taken care of with No-Ox. Al does have worse performance when it comes to oxidation and also is more brittle.
The BIG problem with Al conductors is how it reacts to expansion under heating cooling cycles and initial deformation from the terminating bolt/screw/clamp.
Al terminations loosen over time due to the expansion/contraction.
Also, when it is initially terminated, the lug may be torqued to proper value, but over a few days the Al starts to contract a little. Its a delayed response to the pressure.
Copper doesn’t do that, when it’s torqued down it stays torqued down.
In US residential use currently copper is used for everything except large cables to feed sub-panels and the underground or overhead cable connecting the meter to the load center.
Al conductors have their proper place.

Posted by: Archetypex | Apr 21 2024 1:07 utc | 170

Posted by: Formerly Miss Lacy | Apr 20 2024 17:52 utc | 159
————————–
731 has been well documented.
I archived that particular doc due to this succinct conclusion….

NO punishment, no remorse
In war, you fight to win
It could happen again

This aptly sum up the G8 psychosis, which is just a rebranding the original 8NA.
jAPAN and the west have been ganging up against the Hans since time immemorial.
Been that way since the Opium war.
Garden vs ROW.
Mind you, the Jap are even bestowed with ‘honorable whites‘ and damn proud of it.
yET we’ve UNZ invaders babbling 24×7 on Jew’s/Israel’s wars, ‘Jew controlled USA going after China‘ blah blah blah..
Our pop, aka the scorpion had another version ..
‘A Han./Jew conspiracy to take over the West’ !!!
As if without the gawd damned Jews, white imperialism/colonisation wouldnt have happened, LOL
Empire deniers whining ‘What about the Mongols. , the Vikings, the Jap’ sounds like the pot calling out the kettle.
Besides, the Mongols , the Vikings, the jap…just do it., nature of the beast.
Whereas the pop and fellow ws want us to believe NATO the reluctant cowboy has been dragged kicking and screaming to the killing field by the Jews/Israel all these years !
WTF
P N I

To describe Japan’s introduction to the [AUKUS] equation as a natural ‘evolution’ is inappropriate at best and ignorant at worst

i BEG to differ, Japan gravitates to FUKUSA aka AUKUS is the most natural outcome, hyenas of the same spot hunt together.
Predators vs Herbivorous
Been that way since time immemorial
hEY pop
Spare us this Jew/Israel’s wars claptrap.

Posted by: denk | Apr 21 2024 3:20 utc | 172

A few words about Callous Indifference, Haughty Superiority coupled with a complete Lack of Empathy and Understanding.
Posted by: juliania | Apr 20 2024 14:50 utc | 150
Posted by: juliania | Apr 20 2024 15:12 utc | 152
Posted by: juliania | Apr 20 2024 16:27 utc | 157
I really liked the Putin quoted reference. You are no Putin juliania!
The no-no of the public dressing down
Trudy Worth
Organisational Development Consultant, Leadership Development Consultant, Executive Coach, Facilitator, Director
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/no-no-public-dressing-down-trudy-worth
The public dressing down is never a good look, for the person doing it or the person on the receiving end. Yet it happens often. Mistakes and misdemeanours stir emotions. Frustration or anger bubble to the surface unchecked and are unleashed in the moment.
This week saw one such incident prompt the resignation of a cleaner who’d been dressed down in front of her colleagues. Her note of resignation to the manager and her colleagues noted not just why she was leaving (the public dressing down and behaviour she perceived behind it) but also that she had prepared a pack of cleaning materials for whoever came into the job next.
There are a number of things in this incident that remind us what it means to be a good colleague, manager and leader.
Feedback is important but there’s a time and place especially if it’s of the constructive variety, and that’s not with an audience. Moreover, feedback that is wrapped in ‘in the moment’ anger is indigestible – hurt and anger, rather than change and improvement, are the likely results.
—-
LD: Goes around comes around.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/tedious
Kind Regards …..

Posted by: Lavrov’s Dog | Apr 21 2024 4:33 utc | 174

scorpion | Apr 21 2024 1:01 utc | 168
Quantum is a different world. But a scientific world not some sort of spiritual world.
Re the older/other thread, energy. Hawking. Everything is made from energy.
Quantum engineering. China with its optic and sat quantum communications, race between China and US in Quantum computing. Just bits of energy. A physical thing.
So called artificial sun. Containing heat with magnets… like quantum computing, quantum communication, progressing fast.
Playing god – Musk implanting chips in the human brain, mRNA to change the DNA. The death cult of wokism make the climate stand still, Arthur can become Martha and vice versa….

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Apr 21 2024 9:00 utc | 176

Two notes on black propaganda.
Sy Hersh. I didn’t read him much, but always found the nature of his reporting, in that he relies on ‘sources’, was very suspicious. I imagined he’d done a deal with state agency to butter both’ bread, and hence his info was limited and tainted. Now that his latest pieces have estranged many here on MoA, I came to wonder about his first favourite source, which still had a public name: deep throat, the name of an early porn flick. That’s the handwriting of intelligence.
I saw a docu with Thea on Arte TV, taiwanesian production, runtime almost 90mins, described as portray of people’s ingenuity at a hospital in Birma. But it wasn’t. AFter a long and lulling intro with some suspiciously staged looking scenes and minutes of background info that a conflict was going on in the country, a parallel plot was introduced: a guy wanted to do a movie about a man who lives with Rohingya and Birmese and has some thoughts about cutting his beard. it looked like a nice condensation, literary-wise, but it rang all my alarms immediately. (We had to pause watching so I could explain, and won Thea over with it – MoA has some substance after all). The guy went in search for an actor, found one prospective, and talked to him. ‘Beard’s perfect, also you look like a Rohingya, but aren’t – could you play a Rohingyaß’ – ‘Yes. I’m not one, so I can.’ – ‘Fine. We’ll be filming in [province], is that okay?’ – ‘Yes, I’ve lived there and know the place’ – ‘You’ll look Rohingya though, is that okay?’ – ‘Yes, I have friends there, I will be fine there as long as I am with them.’
Here, the conflict is introduced, and the viewer come to identify with the bearded guy, who was otherwise positively portraied. Through him, we learn of the conflict, and must assume that the Rohingya are victims of racist abuse or some other form of minority discrimation so violent that he needs constant protection only because he wears the beard.
Then, the lull docu which had first appeared like a recycling attempt after a failed movie project showed a scene, part of the in-docu “movie project”, where a team writes script together. It becomes clear these poeple know very well what they are doing. Then, a few absolutely perfect stills of daramtic scenes are shown – fleeing people, desperate faces, children in distress, weapons being brandished; everyone who was ever exposed to the media and hence to reporting on holocaust stories had to recognize a genocide was going on. And with that, the damage was done. They lulled us, and prepared the toxic injection. They carefully (and masterfully) opened our veins when we got to know the bearded actor. Our guard down, the injection itself took only a minute, a couple of eerily perfect b/w stills going straight into our subconscious to implant the narrative there foerver. I had to marvel at their satanic perfection, and predicted that we would see pride of the done deed, and if we were a lucky, a joke. We got both. The crew gave themselves an ‘Audience Award’, and the final scene saw a covid masked woman dance against the background of a column of black SUVs. The liner notes mentioned a scriptwriter, making clear it was no docu at all. Arte still ran it so. the hospital played no role whatsoever, and we were seduced into interest by the promise of unusual creativity. That, at least, turned out to be true.

Posted by: persiflo | Apr 21 2024 10:14 utc | 178

@Posted by: james | Apr 18 2024 15:19 utc | 2

amazing how many traitors there are in latin america… is this a spanish heritage thing?

Hi James, I am not a native English speaker. What is the English word for characterizing a group of people the way you just did with Spaniards.

Posted by: 2+2=5 | Apr 21 2024 11:36 utc | 180

Jukebox time with Manu Chao!
Posted by: persiflo | Apr 21 2024 10:36 utc | 179
Persiflo, I’ll see your link and raise you this:
Manu Chao – Clandestino

Posted by: waynorinorway | Apr 21 2024 12:30 utc | 182

Posted by: DunGroanin | Apr 21 2024 12:31 utc | 183
So Pepe Escobar is doubling down on his scoop! …..
….I am still taken by the Russian UN delegation walk out the other day just before the Entity’s spokesman responded. Have ever seen them do that. It could be related?

Quite a story. Rarely do we get one person going out there with a story and nobody else echoing it – though a couple of barflies supplied vaguely/possibly corroborating links.
I missed the walk-out. Do you have an article reference, or which meeting was it? That sounds significant. Also quite theatrical!! (Kayfabe?)
All polities have factions fighting as much with each other as with external adversaries; almost like a Law of Nature. Israel is being stress-tested big-time right now; if the nuke story is true, quite possibly a faction did it. And if that is the case, also unlikely we will be told, at least officially.
Most important facts exist within Dark Matter zones, it seems.

Posted by: scorpion | Apr 21 2024 12:48 utc | 184

@Posted by: Roger | Apr 19 2024 17:48 utc | 77

Throwing around religious-hatred fuelling statements does not help anyone and opens you (and this blog) wide open to the classic “anti-semitism” shaming and censorship attempts.

You don’t live by your own standards. You fully supported a racist comment made by James at the beginning of the thread.

amazing how many traitors there are in latin america… is this a spanish heritage thing?

Posted by: Roger | Apr 18 2024 15:22 utc | 3
Absolutely

Posted by: 2+2=5 | Apr 21 2024 13:27 utc | 186

“Xi, son of an educated family, sent out to work as peasant in the cultural revolution.
China – 800 million people pulled out of abject poverty in a very short space of time. Xi accelerated that.”
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Apr 20 2024 20:05 utc | 162
Peter, China was the biggest economy in the world from 1,000 BC to around 1750 when they were surpassed by England-I guess the UK from 1704.
So ,I believe it was a ‘return to the norm’ when in April 2014 The Economist declared China to be the biggest economy in the world ( by PPP a better method to measure Sovereign economies)-10 years later China’s economy is 25% bigger that that of the US.

Posted by: canuck | Apr 21 2024 13:53 utc | 188

@peterAU
https://philos-sophia.org/vertical-causation-wholeness/
This medium length article critiques materialist-cartesian body-mind physical-only ‘science’, including quantum and Einsteinian, in a relaxed but thorough way. By discovering Wholeness as an irreducible principle of Being. I think you will actually enjoy reading it.
The part below just happens to be the last paragraph I read in it and then thought to share the article link with you so you can see how physics has revealed that physics don’t give all the answers. (It also elegantly debunks Darwin’s theory.) The atomistic view (refuted around 500 BC in both Greece and India) is, simply put, false.
There are ontological higher orders in the mix. Again, it’s not a huge big deal, but far too many people are trapped in a false paradigm. Time to move on!!!
“Being is an irreducible whole, which means that it precedes ontologically the spatial-temporal atomization which pertains to the entities which we perceive in our daily life.” In other words, the whole is more than the sum of parts (be they quantum particles or any other). Being is not a mechanical result of stacking lots of bits and pieces of stuff together, in other words.

It may be noted at this juncture that a Weltanschauung based upon physics cannot but be evolutionist to the core: for once authentic wholeness has become de facto inconceivable, it needs to be replaced by a pseudo-wholeness which reduces to the sum of its parts. And needless to say, the only way such a pseudo-wholeness can conceivably emerge is by an aggregation of its constituent parts. Moreover, inasmuch as such a pseudo-wholeness exemplifies no model or archetype, its formation cannot be in any sense “directed,” and reduces therefore basically to a random process. In a word, Darwinian evolution proves to be essentially the one and only means by which plant and animal forms could conceivably originate in a world answering to the conceptions of physics. And this accounts for the fact that the Darwinist hypothesis has been doggedly retained in the face of persistent empirical failure, and even after it has been mathematically disproved, in 1998, by William Dembski’s theorem to the effect that horizontal causality cannot produce “complex specified information” or CSI. Let me emphasize that inasmuch as the nucleus of every living cell—of even the most primitive organism—literally “teems with” CSI, we now know for certain that it takes vertical causation to produce a living organism. Moreover, this in turn entails, and again in light of our reflections, that a living organism constitutes—not a mere aggregate or Darwinist pseudo-whole—but a bona fide whole. And again, in light of our reflections, this further entails that such an organism can, in turn, act as an agent of VC in its own right. Finally, it has become clear by now that the attempt to understand living organisms on the basis of physics cannot but fail in the end.

This all matters because one of the driving forces of the Hegemonic is an over-reliance on the atomistic-materialist view which sees life as merely a mechanical process. They are capable of mass murder of millions in order to realize their heartless ideological dreams. Their worldview must be seen through ASAP.

Posted by: scorpion | Apr 21 2024 14:52 utc | 190

@Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Apr 21 2024 13:57 utc | 189
So two warmongering dickhead ruling class tools had a meeting and repeated the allowed ruling class propaganda nonsense. Politics in the West as usual.

Posted by: Roger | Apr 21 2024 20:14 utc | 192