LoveDonbass | Apr 11 2025 23:56 utc | 203–
Yes, the Germans made heavy use of the Aryan Myth as did/do some Hindi and for the same reason–to justify their Caste System. The Indian subcontinent is one place where geology played a big role in moving peoples/civilizations around since it altered the courses of the region’s major rivers and will do so again in the future.

Posted by: karlof1 | Apr 12 2025 0:12 utc | 204

@ persiflo | Apr 11 2025 22:47 utc | 197
It’s almost as difficult for rich people to face embarrassments of the material realm as for poor people. Picture a modestly equipped elder, having enough physical and mental stability to enjoy things like learning how food can be both nutritious and delicious. The modest equipment includes a serviceable hearth, whose service (eg cooking beans) comes close to one’s highest calling.
I’ve as well as confessed this unlavishly equipped doddering cook is myself. In the life-trajectory of a homegrown philologist such as me, I honestly can’t imagine what further needs might be satisfied by stock-market winnings. Winnings of any kind — this is something which has always confused me about Dostoyevsky: a spirtual/philosophical sage addicted to gambling. When the form of gambling obsessing him inevitably results in someone else’s loss. Why would ol’ Dusty or me want such a triumph over rivals at the green table? I’m not into humiliation on either end, I don’t need the money, and I have better things to do. Mainly outside.
Careful writers should always apologize for “nothing but” statements, which are the epitome of reductionism. Because reductionism is the epitome of kindergarten philosophy: Reduce, reduce, always down to one or two (solely interpretive & arbitrary) dichotomies, or to one cause having a single effect. The philosopher’s disease. I got it bad.
My philosophy is a bit askew, which should feel comfortable by now, as Walter Kaufmann has persuaded me that (my guru!) Karl Popper is something of an asshole — expressing fairly shocking ignorance in his opinion of Freud and Adler. KP can think what he likes about whether psychology is a science or not, but nobody has a right to go out on a limb of ignorance without me grabbing a hatchet to bring them down.
I’ve lost patience with Plato, upon closer study of that awful Republic he envisions, where worthies look after the worthless like compassionate cowherds. Next up: Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo. So far, I’m liking these guys. This is the form of my (poor man’s) bucket-list. Until they kill me, I drop dead, or something in-between (like Nietzsche in January of 1889).

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Apr 12 2025 0:24 utc | 206

Ah, Aleph_Null | Apr 12 2025 0:24 utc | 207, you have lost patience with Plato, and Dostoievski’s gambling addiction also turns you off. Here’s what I have to say on each: first, Plato was a young man when Socrates was condemned to death for having blasphemed against the gods and diverting the youth from their necessary adherence to the oligarchical tyrrany of his day. Plato himself went on to write a large number of dialogues in which Socrates, the teacher to whom Plato was himself devoted, walks the streets of Athens in dialogue with many who would later become his assassins.
Plato is not obsessed with the ‘Republic’ being created in the dialogue of that name; that edifice is only being examined as a largerthan life depiction of the human soul. Rather, Plato might be considered to be obsessed by Socrates’ methadology. It is that with which you have lost patience. Just so you know.
Dostoievski had been a liberal in his youth, falling into disfavor with the then tyrannical tsar and caught up with his friends in a diabolical scheme to terrorize the by arranging their individual executions which ultimately were fake, but by which meansm until the last moment, each was convinced they were about to die. He then was sent into harsh exile in Siberia. These events triggered in Doestoievski {possibly latent) extreme epileptic seizures (a friend had actually lost his mind from the experience). These seizures were somehow inherited by his second son Alexey, who died from them at the age of three years old. Earlier, his first child, Sophia, had died as a baby. Still, Dostoievski wrote for a living, using his own experiences as the stuff his writings are made of; and yes, he gambled. You may blame him for that; he blamed himself. In his final work its hero has the name of his three year old son, while the ‘villain’ of the work, the hero’s father, has his name, Fyodor – in Russian the name Theodore, which means ‘God’s gift’.
But of course, you must have already figured all of this out, so bravo to you. I’ll just say these, for each writer, are paradoxical real life elements which fascinate me as much as any combination of fantastic culinary ingredients, maybe more. But perhaps you would enjoy Montaigne’s essays instead, so I’ll recommend those.
To each his (or in my case, ‘her’) own.

Posted by: juliania | Apr 12 2025 1:09 utc | 208

Posted by: Refinnejenna | Apr 11 2025 23:22 utc | 201
The Occult Roots of Nazism by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke is an interesting book that goes into great detail about all the Volk / pagan elements of Nazi ideology. In Mein Kampf, Hitler speaks a lot about being exposed to “Volk” ideas when he was young, if I remember correctly.

Posted by: lex talionis | Apr 12 2025 1:36 utc | 210

“Interesting fact – Gold is the only element that reflects infrared radiation.”
Posted by: osi not ossi | Apr 11 2025 0:30 utc | 81
Not a fact. A 10 second internet search and a minute of reading shows otherwise.
Posted by: Spectator | Apr 11 2025 0:39 utc | 82
*****************
A research group I was leading over 30 years ago constructed a fibre-optic calorimeter based on the absorption of NIR/FIR by pure metallic gold deposited by non-chemical deposition processes onto the glass surface of a stripped single-mode fibre. IR absorption rates between 99.9 and 99.99% were achieved. The physical structure of the pure metallic gold was of critical importance.
Posted by: General Factotum | Apr 12 2025 0:47 utc | 208
Yes, I see that other metals do reflect infrared radiation, not only gold.
Thank you for the information and clarification and also the absorption rate of the pure gold.

Posted by: osi not ossi | Apr 12 2025 1:57 utc | 212

@ psychohistorian | Apr 12 2025 2:05 utc | 215
i read it a few days ago, but thanks!

Posted by: james | Apr 12 2025 2:09 utc | 214

@Melaleuca | Apr 11 2025 23:22 utc | 200
That cartoon is priceless and not what I expect from Chinese diplomats – so it came from Beijing …

Posted by: Don Firineach | Apr 12 2025 2:17 utc | 216

STATEMENT OF ADMIRAL SAMUEL J. PAPARO
COMMANDER, U.S. INDO-PACIFIC COMMAND
U.S. INDO-PACIFIC COMMAND POSTURE
APRIL 2025
China
China continues to pursue unprecedented military modernization and increasingly aggressive behavior that threatens the U.S. homeland, our allies, and our partners. China is developing and integrating cutting-edge technologies – AI, hypersonic and advanced missiles, and space-based capabilities – at an alarming pace. China’s anti-access/area denial capabilities are designed to prevent U.S. forces from operating within the first and second island chains. China is outpacing the U.S. in testing not only these critical technologies but also technologies from across their military industrial base.
In 2024, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) demonstrated its growing capabilities through persistent multi-domain pressurization activities of increasing scope, scale, complexity, and number against Taiwan – combined with a significantly expanded daily air and maritime presence. China employs a multi-faceted approach combining military pressure, cognitive and cyber operations, and economic coercion. China’s development of advanced missile systems, space and counter space capabilities, hypersonic weapons, chemical and biological weapons, a growing nuclear arsenal, and expanding maritime capabilities presents an evolving challenge to regional stability.
https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/testimony_of_admiral_samuel_jpaparojr.pdf

Posted by: Don Bacon | Apr 12 2025 2:22 utc | 218

MSN
China Launches New Trade Salvo Against US
China’s Ministry of Finance announced Friday that it plans to increase its current tariffs on all U.S. goods amid escalating trade tensions between the two countries.
Tariffs on all U.S. goods will rise to 125% beginning on April 12, according to China’s Ministry of Finance. The announcement comes after President Donald Trump paused tariffs for other countries for 90 days on Wednesday, but made moves to increase tariffs on China. . .here

Posted by: Don Bacon | Apr 12 2025 2:32 utc | 220

The hits keep coming: Dell, HP, Lenovo pause laptop shipments to U.S.
As the trade war between the United States and China heats up, laptop makers including Dell, HP, and Lenovo will reportedly stop importing new devices into the U.S. for “at least two weeks.”
The report comes from the Commercial Times, a Chinese-language newspaper in Taiwan. The pause by companies like Dell and Lenovo could affect all of the consumer electronics they sell in the United States, such as laptops, Chromebooks, and tablets. (Mashable reached out to Dell, HP, and Lenovo for comment; we’ll update this story if we get a response.)
As President Donald Trump and China engage in a tit-for-tat tariff escalation, electronics manufacturers have been scrambling to adapt to a chaotic market. Already, Nintendo delayed pre-orders on the Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. and Canada. Laptop maker Framework paused shipments. Brands like Anker and Asus are raising prices for U.S. customers, while some DTC companies have started adding “Trump Tariff Surcharges” to their customers’ bills. . .here

Posted by: Don Bacon | Apr 12 2025 2:37 utc | 222

@ lester | Apr 12 2025 2:11 utc | 218
projection…

Posted by: james | Apr 12 2025 3:06 utc | 224

The U$ media is making much that TeamTrump told Xi to call…. He didn’t and raised tariffs.
Xi may have not called trumpty, but….. anyone wanna wager the back back channels between Beijing and Moscow may have run hot. A joke is twice as funny when shared with someone who totally gets it..
——
There’s many reasons the bond market spooked TrumpTeam …. A reason Big Money didn’t seek a safe haven in bonds, as the stock market plummeted…as is the historic playbook…maybe, could be, perhaps, because of the lesson learned from the frozen Russian foreign reserves.
Confronted by an erratic, irrational, irritable Trump, Big Money doesn’t want to find itself sanctioned-frozen or captured.

Posted by: Melaleuca | Apr 12 2025 4:28 utc | 226

GlobalTaiwan – In February, The Economist published the results of a stunning survey of China’s diplomatic aggression against Taiwan around the world. The results should serve as a wakeup call to Taipei: as of 2025, a decisive majority of internationally recognized sovereign states accept China’s fiction that Taiwan is a part of its territory. Of these, 70 fully endorse the Chinese regime’s threat of war to seize the island nation, including essentially every country in Africa. A majority of the “Global South” now subscribes to Beijing’s views—very much shredding the fiction that the Third World will be “non-aligned” in this century’s superpower competition.
https://globaltaiwan.org/2025/04/taiwan-is-losing-will-it-fight-back/
Posted by: Don Bacon | Apr 12 2025 2:24 utc | 222
Hah, love it when an organisation calls itself the “Global Taiwan Institute” turns out to be based in Washington DC.
Looks like all the USAID and NED related NGOs is still running just fine.

Posted by: Autumn | Apr 12 2025 5:33 utc | 228

Love Donbass @ 203:
If the Nazis appear not to have targeted children in the way Zionists have targeted Palestinian children, that could be due to the nature of reporting of Nazi crimes against Jews, Poles, Romani and other people at the time. Media outlets could have been squeamish about reporting Nazi atrocities against women and children.
What may be overlooked is that Palestinian society over the last 70+ years has been one in which the majority of people have been children aged 15 years and under. This may say something about the nature of class in Palestinian society: that the majority of Palestinians living in Palestine since 1947 or 1948 have been working class people, living in urban and rural areas, who have long had large families out of tradition or custom (because farming families need a lot of hands to do farmwork).
By contrast, Jewish people in central Europe in the 1930s and 40s may have been mostly urban middle class, with small families. The Nazis actually took advantage of social class among Jewish people by setting up concentration camps where Jews were incarcerated to replicate social divisions among them. Judenräte (Jewish councils) were set up in ghettoes established by the Nazis to carry out Nazi orders and these orders included selecting people to be taken to the death camps for extermination. The people who made up such councils were usually rabbis and other people who were influential in Jewish society.

Posted by: Refinnejenna | Apr 12 2025 5:37 utc | 230

Russian patience is limitless. Because it is a sorry cowardly state being bullied by 3rd US pets. No country could even imagine seizing a US ship but here we are Russia being humiliated again again by Ukr, Lith, Est so and so on. Russia is so weak it doesn’t deserve to exist.

Posted by: Melih Ender | Apr 12 2025 5:50 utc | 232

To each his (or in my case, ‘her’) own.
@ juliania | Apr 12 2025 1:09 utc | 209
Thanks, juliania. I don’t aim for any “I’ve figured it out” tone. I haven’t figured anything out. But I profoundly trust my reaction on several levels to authentic text. (This includes the Gospels, for instance, where I find Luke by far the best writer.)
Prior to any hope of truth, I’m willing to settle for a modicum of clarity, at least. Walter Kaufmann observes, I think accurately, that clear writing is a sign of clear thinking (and the obverse, or whatchacallit). Aristotle has complicated ontological ideas which bear more than one reading, but at least comprehension is possible when the writer’s first duty is clarity. I rather enjoy somewhat difficult reading; Clears out the synapses.
The focus behind all my theological and philosophical reading is practically the meaning of what life remains for me: To investigate how human thought got so severely off-track. Very few critics, very few philosophers in history, have an abundance of intellectual courage: willingness to plumb for severe faults in the foundation. Heidegger and Jung were about as close to Hitlerian worship as Musk’s infamous Roman salute (Heidegger even trimmed his moustache like the adored fuhrer), and yet they remain respected thinkers. As if being a horrible human being has nothing to do with being.
Such compartmentalization — morals here, conquest there — has everything to do with the hellhole into which humankind has rendered the home planet. As to ‘her’ case, how many female philosophers can you name? Poor Hannah Arendt has been on my mind: a Jewish woman preyed upon and pushed around by her formative teacher. She never stopped loathing herself as far too “inauthentic” to meet the strict quasi-existentialist demands of her personal monster.
Nobody’s perfect. We try to keep open to the wisdom of teachers who sometimes go astray. But, lordy! 20th century philosophers were an incredibly miserable bunch. By and large.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Apr 12 2025 6:25 utc | 234

Mwahaha …
The satellite photos of the airforce bases on the illegally occupied Diego Garcia islands in the Indian Ocean!
As straight a message as anyone needs it — DUDES WE CAN REALLY SEE YOU – DONT EVEN THINK ABOUT IT!
‘MenchOsint
@MenchOsint
10h
📍 Diego Garcia (April 10th)
Additionally to the USAF deployment 🇺🇸 6 x B-2 Spirit, 6 x KC-135R & C-5M, a British Royal Air Force 🇬🇧 A400M (reg ZM412) was parked on the North Apron
MenchOsint
@MenchOsint
23h
📍 Latest location of the two aircraft carriers deployed in the region (USS Truman & USS Vinson)
Apr 12, 2025 · 12:22 AM UTC ‘
Yup the NuttyYahoos are about to get whipped until they gray and scarper back down on their shitholes in Europe and 5 Eyes to lick their wounds.
That along with Lavrovs New Front talking to Kurds means IT’S ON !
Kellogg’s last ditch flakey begging for a piece of the action in Rump Ukraine having been received with the fullest respect it deserved. Nyet! Get the fuck out and let the people decide if they want to be Russian.
The New Yalta is ready to be signed and delivered – just a few last loose ends and scores to be settled.
I dare say blitzing Secret Diego Garcia is an easier sacrifice than a couple of Carrier Groups with high public awareness.
Are the miltary going to allow it ? And the naval forces in he crosshairs messing around in other peoples hoods like cowboys.
Let’s Find Out – all the Humpffty Drumpffty’s – it’s time to get off the walls in a single piece.
That includes Turks and Satrap Sand Tribal Gas stations.

Posted by: DunGroanin | Apr 12 2025 10:40 utc | 236

“Climate: The Multiplier of Crises
Meanwhile, the climate crisis accelerated. North Africa entered its 12th consecutive year of drought, with tens of millions facing food insecurity. South Asia suffered cascading crop failures. Flooding, wildfires, and heatwaves ravaged American infrastructure from California to New York, causing hundreds of billions in damage and forcing painful evacuations.”
Posted by: Peru | Apr 12 2025 1:35 utc | 211
Anthropomorphic climate change is MSM total bullshit.
And elevated Co2 is good for planta, animals and humans:
Green plants grow faster with more CO2
. Many also become more droughtresistant because higher CO2 levels allow plants to use water more efficiently. More
abundant vegetation from increased CO2 is already apparent. Satellite images reveal
significant greening of the planet in recent decades, especially at desert margins,
where drought resistance is critical. This remarkable planetary greening is the result
of a mere 30% increase of CO2 from its preindustrial levels. Still higher CO2 levels will
bring still more benefits to agriculture.
Plants use energy from sunlight to fuse a molecule of CO2 to a molecule of water,
H2 O, to form carbohydrates. One molecule of oxygen O2 is released to the air for each
CO2 molecule removed. Biological machinery of plants reworks the carbohydrate
polymers into proteins, oils and other molecules of life. Every living creature, from
the blooming rose, to the newborn baby, is made of carbon from former atmospheric
CO2 molecules. Long-dead plants used CO2 from ancient atmospheres to produce
most of the fossil fuels, coal, oil, and natural gas that have transformed the life of
most humans – moving from drudgery and near starvation before the industrial
revolution to the rising potential for abundance today.
The fraction of the beneficial molecule CO2 in the current atmosphere is tiny,
about 0.04% by volume. This level is about 30% larger than pre-industrial levels in
1800. But today’s levels are still much smaller than the levels, 0.20% or more, that
prevailed over much of geological history. CO2 levels during the past tens of millions
of years have been much closer to starvation levels, 0.015%, when many plants die,
than to the much higher levels that most plants prefer.
Basic physics implies that more atmospheric CO2 will increase greenhouse
warming. However, atmospheric processes are so complicated that the amount of
warming cannot be reliably predicted from first principles. Recent observations of
the atmosphere and oceans, together with geological history, point to very modest
warming, about 1 C (1.8 F) if atmospheric CO2 levels are doubled.
Observations also show no significant change in extreme weather, tornadoes,
hurricanes, floods, or droughts. Sea levels are rising at about the same rate as in
centuries past. A few degrees of warming will have many benefits, longer growing
seasons and less winter heating expenses. And this will be in addition to major
benefits to agriculture.
More CO2 in the atmosphere is not an unprecedented experiment with an
unpredictable outcome. The Earth has done the experiment many times in the
geological past. Life flourished abundantly on land and in the oceans at much larger
CO2 levels than those today. Responsible use of fossil fuels, with cost-effective
control of genuine pollutants like fly ash or oxides of sulfur and nitrogen, will be a
major benefit for the world.” (1)
1.https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/FC7C4946-11A3-4967-BF28-8D0386608D3E

Posted by: canuck | Apr 12 2025 11:01 utc | 238

BARFLIES!
first and most important – i am a little worried that opinions are being touted , flags raised to see how many salute – about the Judaeo Christian Connection with Nazism and Germany of Hitler!
Seriously????
is the proposal that they were anything less than joined at the hip?
Don’t try and confuse with snake oil of paganism – that NEVER came up during these years – btw it was our very own Great Beast Aleister Crowley who was supposedly using the Dark Magick against Hitler!
The connection of the Vatican going back forever to the schism as the pagan Roman Empire took on the bloody sheep’s skin of Christianity as the Holy Roman Empire to go further than they could as self declared living god Caesars did.
The Protestantism as a supposed break from Rome to fools the Orthodox!
The whole fascist mindset originates and resides in the Church of the West – that means he Judaeo Christian totality. If anyone doesn’t get that I am happy to expound further.
I’m not talking about personal beliefs – just the Organised State Structures.
Without a doubt – HITLERITE NAZISM = Western Judaeochristianity ≠ Eastern Orthodoxy
And it for sure has fuck all to do with ancient EurAsian or South Asian religions
(except perhaps the crazed perverted Buddhism of fascist slave lamas of Tibet!).
M’kay???
—————————
Second and only in passing.
Having gone back to read the thread after posting my latest above a couple of opinions stand out – first the passing one on the attempt to mitigate the loss of the Crimean Caper with the expansion in The Levant which I referred to with my last post an hour ago.
@ Posted by: RygelThe16th | Apr 11 2025 18:03 utc | 172
Welcome R…I posted mine above before reading the thread and your concerns … hope you can report back that everyone KNOWS !

Posted by: DunGroanin | Apr 12 2025 11:21 utc | 240

The Hidden Power of Sovereign Wealth Funds
Here:
https://new-wayland.com/blog/hidden-power-of-sovereign-wealth-funds/
Dollars earned from trade surpluses are immediately reinvested, often into U.S. Treasuries. There are no dormant pools of dollars needing a middleman. The real action lies not in crypto or stablecoins but in how governments use their currency-issuing powers to actively manage currencies and reserves.
The real geopolitical financial weapon is the sovereign wealth fund (SWF), not digital tokens. Governments have long used SWFs and their variations to manage foreign exchange reserves, intervene in markets, and subtly manipulate currency values.
There is another, less discussed function of sovereign wealth funds: providing an exit ramp for holders of speculative assets like cryptocurrencies or even gold. Any proposal for a “crypto reserve” or a “gold reserve” should be read with this in mind.
An SWF with deep pockets and central bank backing can act as an ever-present buyer, offering actual state money for digital or physical assets even when private markets dry up. Large crypto holders—or gold speculators—can convert their holdings into real, spendable currency. This isn’t about securing the future or hedging risk—it’s about guaranteeing liquidity to powerful financial players.
Just as gold reserves historically provided a means for private holders to liquidate their assets at a favourable price, a modern “crypto reserve” would serve the same function. It legitimises speculative wealth and absorbs it into the state system—quietly socialising the risks while privatising the gains.

Posted by: Sun Of Alabama | Apr 12 2025 11:31 utc | 242

From Bankrate.com
On Saturday, April 12, 2025, the national average 30-year fixed mortgage APR is 6.91%.
Ouch !

Posted by: Exile | Apr 12 2025 12:23 utc | 244

Total fucking bullshit about Carl Jung.
Posted by: canuck | Apr 12 2025 10:48 utc | 240
My claim is that C.G. Jung admired Hitler. Profusely.
My evidence is what the poor man said when it most mattered most, in the thirties:

The Jews got their inferiority complex from geographical and political factors.
If he [Hitler] is not their true Messiah, he is like one of the Old Testament prophets: his mission is to unite his people and lead them to the Promised Land… the goose step really is a most impressive step.
The only way to save Democracy in the West — and by the West I mean America too — is not to try to stop Hitler.

All direct quotes of Jung from ’38 & ’39, cited in Diagnosing the Dictators by H.R. Knickerbocker. My charges against the even more execrable Heidegger (where I’m only just warming up) are much better attested.
Whitebread Wikipedia is lame as hell about marginal Nazis, for some strange reason. Diligent scholars look elsewhere.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Apr 12 2025 13:04 utc | 246

Publishing in a German journal, writing from Basel in 1934, Jung’s animosity for Freud rose to such a self-destructive level that Jung spewed a toxic attack on Jewish psychology, similar to Hitler’s condemnation of Einstein’s “Jewish Science”:

The Aryan unconscious, on the other hand, contains explosive forces and creative seeds of a future yet to be fulfilled… The still youthful Germanic peoples are entirely capable of creating new cultural forms… The Jew, being something of a nomad, has never yet created a cultural form of his own and probably never will, since all his instincts and talents presuppose for their development a more or less civilized host nation.
The Aryan unconscious has a higher potential than the Jewish… In my view it has been a grave mistake of medical psychology to date that it simply applied Jewish categories, which are not even obligatory for all Jews, to Christian Teutons or Slavs.

See Walter Kaufmann’s Discovering the Mind, volume 3.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Apr 12 2025 13:31 utc | 248

@all – If you feel like reading Aristotle’s Metaphysics, let me suggest to choose the Translation by Erwin Sonderegger, it is the most up to date one, and the only one truly able to help investigate how human thought got so severely off-track.
https://philpapers.org/archive/SONAM-3.pdf [full english text]

Posted by: persiflo | Apr 12 2025 13:49 utc | 250

Conclusion:
Jung was not a Nazi sympathizer or supporter. He made some unfortunate political moves early in the Nazi era (mostly due to being part of a complicated international medical organization), but his personal and professional actions generally showed opposition to Nazism. Most scholars agree today that labeling Jung as a Nazi supporter is inaccurate.”
Posted by: canuck | Apr 12 2025 10:48 utc | 240
That is correct.
Jung was one of the greatest minds that ever lived. If more people read his works the world would be a much better place.

Posted by: JB | Apr 12 2025 14:00 utc | 252

Posted by: Melaleuca | Apr 12 2025 14:03 utc | 257
#########
Trump, like Zelensky, is an entertainer.
He’s the big band banging out familiar songs on the Titanic after its struck the iceberg.
There is no “next day” plan for manufacturing. None of the fundamentals 100% controlled by America are being addressed.
Tax cuts for the rich but no tax incentives to manufacture in the US. Tax cuts for guys like Bessent and Lutnick but no support for STEM education. No prioritization of “natural born Americans”.
I’ve worked in manufacturing. I’m seeing none of the necessary steps to re-industrialize.
As adults we must judge people by what they do, not what they say.
As usual, the next Democrat President (perhaps sooner than you think) can reverse everything Trump has done thus far during 2.0.
It’s running to stand still.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 12 2025 14:17 utc | 254

Trump is not just blinking, he’s backtracking with the microprocessor carve outs.
All those regular folks wiped out in the stock market. 😂😂😂
Trump did an e-coin pump-and-dump and then he nuked small investors.
“It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.”
-JC Fields
At this rate, China will be unaffected by tariff policy in 12 months, as BRICS membership swells.
As I attempted to explain yesterday, Trump is trying to run a “protection racket” but it is useless if the biggest neighborhood business isn’t “subscribing”. It’s either 100% success or not worth the effort.
It’s barely been a week and China has already broken MAGA.

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 12 2025 14:33 utc | 256

@ persiflo | Apr 12 2025 13:49 utc | 254
Your recommend a translation of only Book Lambda from Aristotle’s Metaphysics (not the whole shebang). Does this error result from ignorance, or do you really think there’s nothing to see in books Alpha, Little Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Mu, and Nu? Sorry for the Greek-letter tedium — publishers commonly mistake parts for the whole, caveat emptor.
Sonderegger’s edition is mainly commentary, for those more interested in commentary than text (not including me). His subtitle advertises a pathetically off-kilter approach:

A Speculative Sketch devoid God

That’s vacuously unimpressive, right from the literary starting blocks. The subtitle might not be as semi-literate as it sounds, aiming for some kind of mysterious impression by using bad English. At any rate, if the poor soul approached Aristotle with a preconceived notion to confirm about the existence of God, he’s lost in very high weeds.
Aristotle, to my reading, is neither theist nor atheist. His conception of “divine” is from a time when overwhelming shallowness wasn’t so common as nowadays. Incidentally, I’m reading a 2016 edition from C.D.C Reeve (of UNC Chapel Hill) — complete, with about 60% endnotes.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Apr 12 2025 14:41 utc | 258

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 12 2025 14:33 utc | 260
The US miscalculated the economic war against China, much in the same way the miscalculated the war against Russia in Ukraine.
Both cause fatal damage for the empire.

Posted by: unimperator | Apr 12 2025 14:52 utc | 260

Interesting discussion.
Next Phase Down in Stocks Will Drive Us Off the Page in Gold, Silver and Miners | Michael Oliver.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHE0G0bt4lU

Posted by: unimperator | Apr 12 2025 14:58 utc | 262

Barflies,
Facisism was considered a legitimate ideology in the 1920s and 30s by a slight majority of the world‘s population. Communism was also considered a legitimate ideology. Both were horrific tyrannies similar to the worst manias of the Jacobians.

Posted by: Exile | Apr 12 2025 15:03 utc | 264

Posted by: unimperator | Apr 12 2025 14:52 utc | 264
##########
The question becomes, in my mind, is there a common reason for the miscalculations?
Is the arrogant superiority necessary to justify the cruelty of Empire also producing blind spots due to that hubris?

Posted by: LoveDonbass | Apr 12 2025 15:22 utc | 266

@Posted by: Exile | Apr 12 2025 15:03 utc | 268
Lies, lies and more lies. The actual history of the French revolution shows the bourgeoisie/liberals launching a war upon the revolution they started because the little people were getting too much power, the Jacobins then fought a war with them. The winners (the bourgeoisie) then rewrote history. Read some Losurdo for actual history. The French liberals then spent the next decade buttressing the monarchy and ruling class in general to keep the little people down.
Communism rescued the vast majority of the populations of so many nations from abject poverty and ignorance by throwing off the landowning class. This was as true in Poland as it was in the Soviet Union. Ideologues like yourself, and of course Western propagandists, will always try to paint the history of communism in as negative light as possible because it does not allow the bourgeoisie to control society. As in China, which is communist. As in Vietnam, which communist. As in Cuba, which is communist and has survived 6 decades of outright economic warfare from the West.
Without Stalin there would be no Russia, rather a German lebensraum spreading to the Urals and a Europe dominated still by the Nazis. And the extermination of the Jews, the Roma, the Slavs west of the Urals would have been completed. Capitalism is the tyranny of the bourgeoisie.

Posted by: Roger Boyd | Apr 12 2025 15:27 utc | 268

You can’t even help yourself from denigrating non-first language users.
@ persiflo | Apr 12 2025 15:26 utc | 271
I’m always happy to be ignored by devotees of fashionable ignorance. Pretty much par for the course, all my life.
For some reason, persiflo wants to portray what I just wrote about a book published in English, offered as the only worthwhile English translation. The English usage of no MoA user (persiflo included) was denigrated in my observation that an author published elsewhere is semi-literate.
I don’t know if smears like this are standard operating procedure from this one — persiflo lashes out here because the shallowness of his pseudo-scholarship is laid bare for all to see. Most embarrassing.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Apr 12 2025 15:49 utc | 270

Mind you Europe is already supporting Neo-Nazi’s, and Zio-Monsters – so this wouldn’t be out of place.
“Ukraine is the central point around which a new geometry of Europe is being built, Kiev’s Prime Minister Denis Shmigal has said.
During his speech at the EU-Ukraine Business Summit in Brussels on Thursday, Shmigal tried to persuade the bloc to speed up the process of making his country a full member.
“Today, Ukraine is not just a country at war,” he said, referring to the conflict with Russia. “It is the central point around which the new geometry of Europe is being built.”
“We are not a buffer zone. We are not a gray zone. We are a new opportunity for Europe to rediscover its identity,””

Posted by: Republicofscotland | Apr 12 2025 15:54 utc | 272

Not so fast, ye democratic party re-enablers! What is it about the re-enstatement of brinkmanship as per WW3 that we all might be ready to re-embrace come midterms?!
I just said that one thing the Spanish did right, which was truth as I see it, the name ‘Santa Fe’ meaning ‘Holy Faith’ of the good Saint Francis whom even we Orthodox would love to include.
Trump has done one thing right and it’s a biggie. Oh, he’s full of hot air, he says one thing and does another — but that one thing he’s done is enough! Let him be, let him be. He’s NO THREAT, and what we had before WAS A THREAT. An existential one. He was the answer to a real threat to the world. Okay, an American answer, plenty to laugh at. So, relax and laugh and listen to the music.
Now, roll up your sleeves and get to work. He didn’t clean the Augean stables. He’s got very noticeable feet of clay; a lot of it is hogwash. Better that than what we had.
Sure, Trump’s the Music Man — remember him? Same thing. Flim-flam is okay — we needed a ton of that! Trump’s no god, but he’s a fine figurehead. Let him be; he tried his best. He’s done enough.
You want different? Okay, you do it! But no smelly d-party stuff sneaking back in! As far as Russia goes — maybe they had to begin with Yeltsin- he looked pretty good on that truck first up, and something certainly needed to happen to churn things up and get it all yeasty back then. Well, fermentation is where it’s at! Decomposition takes time!

Posted by: juliania | Apr 12 2025 16:02 utc | 274

>The exemptions also include solar cells, flat panel TV displays, flash drives, computer processors, memory chips, semiconductor-based storage devices, and machines that are primarily used to make semiconductors.

Posted by: Melaleuca | Apr 12 2025 16:08 utc | 276

@Aleph_Null | Sat, 12 Apr 2025 15:49:00 GMT | 274

he only worthwhile English translation.

To be precise: the only worthwhile translation from the Old Greek that I am aware of, for reasons that become apparent upon reading the first three pages of the introduction; he’s done Zeta as well, though that is currently not available in English.
“Let me suggest” is what I wrote, and I added that Aleph’s worthwhile undertaking of examining the root issues of the wastern rot may thus be helped with. As far as I can tell, a lot of the recent discussion of the role of the Church of Rome in this rot coming about has been kicked off by me bringing it up here (and others taking it on – h/t aristodemos). Nothing has done so much to radicalise me in this regard as has the book by Sonderegger. Caveats apply.

Posted by: persiflo | Apr 12 2025 16:22 utc | 278

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Apr 12 2025 16:14 utc | 281
I have learned a lot from both Aleph and pesiflo (thanks for the book tips!) and pretty much everyone here.
I’ll just mosey over to the jukebox and bounce some EPMD.
You Gots to Chill
This is such a cool place. Thanks b and everyone.

Posted by: lex talionis | Apr 12 2025 16:36 utc | 280

Let’s have a virtual hug, and let there be peace.
@ persiflo | Apr 12 2025 16:35 utc | 283
Big of you (truly) to extend an olive branch (one is forced, kicking and screaming, to admit). At risk of scratching an angry scab, didn’t Heidegger publish his own translation (Greek to German) of Aristotle’s Metaphysics? In my acquaintance of Aristotle, he’s already difficult enough to be accused of squid-ink clouds of obscurity. And you must be aware that sorting out the early, middle, and late Heidegger is acadamic pesto sauce enough to build a career on. An enigma inside a conundrum? Does anyone reference Heidegger’s translation these days, or does it lie undisturbed, awaiting rediscovery as a secret hideout of eternal wisdom (like the I Ching)?
I wouldn’t know, because I’m not a German reader. With you-all I want to share a personal reflection of some relevance. Freud once opened one of his many chatty letters to a colleague with “The cocaine makes me voluble…” as a warning to readers. That’s not precisely the case in my case, but we have a similar paradox for those intent on keeping mind aloof from body: The weirdest flu ever. Not as brutal and scary as COVID (not a recurrence either, we tested), but neurologically bananas, people! My spouse and I caught the same thing at a very sad funeral for a cousin who more or less died in the gutter: three days of nothing, then three days of fever and don’t dare eat anything, then one week of low thermometer readings.
The fever phase got into my head such that it was too difficult to put sentences together when trying to read, so I took a timeout for abject vegetation. I couldn’t even understand TV commercials (maybe I still don’t). At the outset of my current low-temperature phase, I was able to resume eating and start gaining back the eight pounds I lost, but still weak and woozy.
But now, with the wooziness gradually fading, the whole world is looking more vivid, somehow. What doesn’t kill me makes me even more obnoxious.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Apr 12 2025 19:09 utc | 282

Did USAID start paying the anti-Russia trolls again?

Posted by: Roger Boyd | Apr 12 2025 19:35 utc | 284

“A research group I was leading over 30 years ago constructed a fibre-optic calorimeter based on the absorption of NIR/FIR by pure metallic gold deposited by non-chemical deposition processes onto the glass surface of a stripped single-mode fibre. IR absorption rates between 99.9 and 99.99% were achieved. The physical structure of the pure metallic gold was of critical importance.”
Posted by: General Factotum | Apr 12 2025 0:47 utc | 208
Thanks, good info. Gold definitely has physical properties that are useful in industrial applications. It isn’t solely mined for speculative and financial purposes.
I wonder if other physical properties of pure elemental gold, such as its ductility, non-brittleness, and relative chemical inertness and resistance to corrosion, also contributed to its use in that particular application. Besides just the IR absorption rates.

Posted by: Spectator | Apr 12 2025 23:37 utc | 286

@ aleph
But what if one has no enemies? This is certainly true of Christians. Though we do work against the mob, althougn it is a more of a force that lacks differentiation. A satanic event that sweeps up individuals in its contagion, according to Girard, and in the act of violence against the other, permits the crowd to forget it was involved in such violence–the madman’s lunacy about killing God, which showed that he, in a moment of piercing clarity, remembered!
Would Nietzsche have given a pass to coworkers who urinate on the toilet seat?
I can contort my buttocks around your bodily fluids, thank you very much!
Shame can be a good thing. I see a lot of evil in the world today and the underlying pattern exhibited seems to be a lack of it.

Posted by: NemesisCalling | Apr 13 2025 5:07 utc | 288

It seems that Belarus has some serious demographic problems.
Article from Rt.com:
“East European state invites up to 150,000 Pakistanis”
More from the article:
“Belarus will soon accept up to 150,000 migrant workers from Pakistan, the Eastern European country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, has said”
““Let it be 100,000 or maybe 120,000 or 150,000 of these specialists. We are ready to accept them in Belarus and create the necessary conditions for them to work here,” he said.”
“Just over 60,000 migrant workers were employed in Belarus, which has a population of about 9.1 million, in 2024, the country’s deputy trade minister, Tatyana Astreiko, said in November. Around 40% of them were Russians, she added.”
Full article: https://www.rt.com/russia/615702-belarus-pakistan-migrant-workers/

Posted by: NoName | Apr 13 2025 9:32 utc | 290

The israeli Supreme court removed a member of the Knesset from the Knesset itself. This seems to be the resul of a powerstruggle between the Supreme Court and the government of Netanyahu.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/j6_ejzhzJe8
A short video from “Middle East Eye”

Posted by: WMG | Apr 13 2025 11:17 utc | 292

@psychohistorian | Sun, 13 Apr 2025 05:40:00 GMT | 294

I am reading as of 3 days ago over 600 foreign students are being deported and 13 of them are at the state college in my city, Corvallis, OR

Hear now what the wokists teach their family: shit all over yourself, and be spared being pushed on a plane —

Posted by: persiflo | Apr 13 2025 12:55 utc | 294

Would Nietzsche have given a pass to coworkers who urinate on the toilet seat?
@ NemesisCalling | Apr 13 2025 5:07 utc | 293
Rather than ask me, you could consult Zarathustra. But I do have an opinion on your question: That it’s so ill-phrased it practically surrenders under the brunt of intellectual domination, believing all the terrible things people say about Nietzsche. And never ever summoning sufficient self-respect to read him for yourself; keeping the door resolutely closed to scary ideas.
Which is my whole problem (and Nietzsche’s) with Christians: Too often they obediently comply when ordered to don blinders. Such a closed-door policy is essential for pseudo-Christian sects as well. The “church” I grew up with, “Christian Science,” rigidly forbids inductees to read truthful accounts thereof, such as “God’s Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church” by Caroline Fraser.
Reading Nietzche isn’t much like reading anyone else. Usually there’s some palpable doctrine underlying philosophical words, whereas Nietzsche consistently proves to you he doesn’t have anything to sell. He’s surely not trying to convert anyone, for God’s sake! Your question about what he might or might not approve of offers a Pope’s pedestal for him to perch on. But he’ll never sit down, you see.
Those interested in Nietzsche’s approach to morals can consult The Immoralist (his own words, not somebody’s else’s impression of it). Whatever you make of him, exposure to Nietzsche’s approach to the written word is practically guaranteed to improve your own prose.
Intellectual honesty is awfully contagious.

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Apr 13 2025 13:36 utc | 296

@ I forgot | Apr 13 2025 13:44 utc | 302
STFU (aka fascism) is our secular religion, here in USA.
The next step, after getting everyone to pipe down, is inside the brainpans: to silence all troublesome thoughts. It’s healthier all around to not think about bad stuff, and our Lord has very little patience with wanderers who experiment with putting their little gray cells to use.
I know it’s confusing: Why did God give us brains if He insists on keeping mental mechanisms on standby? Because it can be so very difficult for people to figure out on their own, I’ve explained it all in this here book you can read. But don’t read anything else!
(Congratulations, btw, for having successfully forgot: Good on you.)

Posted by: Aleph_Null | Apr 13 2025 14:26 utc | 298

Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound.
The AA automobile association has changed its pricing for breakdown recovery services.
Business executives, nurses, teachers, engineers, doctors who travel to work in their cars to earn their livings won’t have to pay extra for breakdown recovery.
But those filthy evil, overpaid, plumbers, electricians and dirty collar workers who carry the stools of their disgusting trades in their vehicles will now be charged extra.
Hire and reward is OK, but underfloor, inside kitchen cupboard, above ceiling , unrespectable, service engineers who keep life running for doctors, bankers, nurses, carry Tools …..in domestic vehicles. How obscene, malign, devious , conniving , cutthroat can you get, than carrying foul tradesman tools?
travelling
asdo

Posted by: Giyane | Apr 15 2025 19:53 utc | 300