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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-113
Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:
> I tried, at every opportunity, to distinguish between the crimes attributed to us, of which I refused to confess, and the carelessness and indifference to the Palestinian victims in Gaza and the unbearable human toll we are taking there. The first charge I denied, the second I admitted.
In the past few weeks I have been unable to do so. What we are doing in Gaza is a war of destruction: indiscriminate, indiscriminate, cruel and criminal killing of civilians. We do so not because of an accidental loss of control in a particular sector, not because of a disproportionate surge of fighters in any unit — but as a result of a policy dictated by the government, knowingly, deliberately, maliciously, lawlessness. Yes, we are committing war crimes. <
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Other issues:
Gaza:
Europe:
Miscellaneous:
The Bezzle:
Use as open (not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine) thread …
@48 LoveDonbass
It is more complex than that. In real time domestic terms there is a rift in the US between national economy and profiting from outsourcing.
The socialist minded wrapped into neo-liberal see no problem with productivity being moved to China as long as reinvestment by China in US returns to their hands. In other words as long as affordability of goods increases, there is no loss and ‘let’s call the profit ideological’ . Have to serve something to be a service economy.
The fincap crowd are just fine with China providing a means to own profit and market monopoly also. Out with local competition and impenetrable small markets and in with Amazon etc. But hey, that is progress for you, just as long as affordability appears to be increasing etc. etc.
Then there is the local surplus manpower, rising wider costs due capital inflows being used to profit from monopoly over basic supply (property for example) , all the disturbance of trying out a neo-liberal economy. Those who started the adventure with assets only see their value and wealth rise. Younger generation though end up in debt and low pay just to get onto the ladder.
Why ? Because the rest want to pay Chinese wages and access cheaper goods, they like seeing return investment return to them, via deficit or capital investment that boosts their asset values.
That is not China’s fault. Beggar thy neighbour tactics are legitimate, or at least relatively peaceful.
The trick to it is that though – for those discontented, it is easier to have them blame China than address the corruption of their own country.
So you end up with pro-China and against China domestic differences. The politicians work off of this base, because both political sides profit in their respective ways from the equation, and they profit from own adjustments to it…profits which are sold through to respective supporters as a form of resolution, rebalancing, freedom, globalisation, neo-liberalism, common privilege, geo-political, or what have you.
Most criticism of China should be disregarded as irrelevant. Possibly nine out of ten criticising have no idea, have not even visited China. To imagine that people are resentful of China’s successes is just an own mindset, or an attempt to sell China to people who just are not interested beyond being able to box it in into whatever definition they prefer that suits their own reality. Sure, it seems arrogant or hegemonic, but any insecurity is coming from how their own nation is going about it all, not from “fear of Chinese” per se. It’s just simpler to draw the line at foreigner vs national, and so put China down.
In other words isolationism would also, at least hypothetically, be one answer to the problems mentioned.
The essay Karlof linked is very relevant, but there is also a difference between being sold out and of attempting to return to a past, a difference between legislative impediment and that of taking an easy way out. A lot of the discontent is from those who understand those differences.
I should also critique Alastaire Crooke’s essay…he misses the point completely in his top down overview. For example, economics is not a science any more than ‘social science’ is.
Criticism of demand price theory, or maximum utility via world mapping, using the ceteris paribus tautology, is flawed. Maximum utility is a real observation, as is price demand, but attempts to extend that beyond individual choice to an aggregate ‘law’ is bound to fail. It is an attempt to co-opt the ceteris paribus, which is in fact individual preference, and for whatever reason it exists. In other words it is an arrogance.
Top down says ‘it’ knows better than any person’s own choice. It uses force and manipulation.
The liberalisation he talks of has never been liberal. It is all managed via political and monetary and financial interventions. A joke.
From that he goes on to deduce
“No, the bigger problem is that the archetypal myth of individuals (and oligarchs) pursuing their own separate and individual utility maximisation – thanks to the hidden hand of market magic – is such that in aggregate, their combined efforts will be to the benefit of the community as a whole (Adam Smith) has collapsed too.”
Apart from invoking some kind of voodoo to demean individual choice and responsibility, he makes himself judge of the result ! Based on incorrect obervation of what is actually a manipulated market.
The truth is that there is no reference point available to judge one system vs another, how one reality would be better than another, because both cannot be experienced under exact same parameters to compare and judge by.
So, with most economists, we end up with a sale of obfuscation and its excuses.
Those who promote individual choice and responsibility base their opinion on its fairness and a TRUST that community will benefit from its own arrangement, because as mentioned empirical judgement is not possible.
He then goes on to conflate national economy with neo-liberal interventionism at international level, misses out monetary and financial corruption completely, and then draws on european values (no such thing, or at least you will find all kinds) and ‘libertarian values’ as a revolutionary mindset engrained in US thinking…all of which narrow the argument down to a set of false paradigms : Which would be the left right divide as originated by the french revolution.
Which means nothing in comparison to the deeper themes I mention, and has proven itself to be corrupt and without hope of any synthetic understanding. Hence played off on populations for the last couple of hundred years to great effect.
And so, to understand what the current transition actually is, we have to look at how ‘the powers that rule over us’ have decided to morph the stage into something just slightly different to allow a change of orientation while maintaining or furthering their own control.
Posted by: Ornot | May 26 2025 16:20 utc | 78
@juliania || 84
a core belief in Orthodox Christianity also, as expressed by many of the early desert fathers. It is interesting that some modern Orthodox theologians have disagreed, describing a division between concepts of good and evil in human nature, a tipping point to be guarded against. I don’t agree with that.
While I don’t know about the scholars you are speaking about, it does seem possible, if not perhaps even likely, that the problem they are trying to solve is inherent to a mono-dimensional view of good vs. bad.
Here’s my argument:
If evil exists, we must question why that is, and how it computes with a mono-God, who is typically said to be all-good, all-knowing, and all-powerful. Without going into possible solutions to this conundrum – as
there as many as imagination provides – I shall instead wonder if any of this three premises can be withheld without losing coherence of the overall question, as rooted in Dasein, or (which is almost or fully equivalent) the situation of encounter between I and Thou.
For instance, we can assume God does not withhold his all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing nature from us for sake of some later to be recognized certainty, but because he lends us such freedom. That is, he removes his alleged powers from our situation, rendering him effectively less than so from our perspective. Any notions to foresee the later or final certainty are, by their very nature, questionable. This includes scripture.
That means we have to face evil as an intractable part of Dasein, which frankly should not be there.
Now to rebuild the starting hypothesis. If this is the case, we are to assume that God is basically in the same situation as we are: unable or unwilling to resolve evil for good.
You can ponder the question of how he is supposed to be unwilling to right all evil while being all-good on your own; I’ll simply rule it out, if only for sake of the argument.
So he is either not all-knowing, i.e. forgetful, or not all-powerful, i.e. not alone. Now we have already introduced ourselves as his party guests, as I like to quip, but does that mean we brought evil? Obviously he either made us evil then, or he didn’t make us at all. In the latter case, he is not God; while in the former, he is not all-good. Therefore, we must conclude that he didn’t make evil.
This is a rather sensible idea. Suppose you are dancing with 16 angels on a pin in heaven, the music’s good, the drinks just fine, and the light is perfect. What would you like to do? Perhaps express yourself in joy, in playful encounter, in perfect unison and then again out of it. What you would not want is fear of life, misunderstanding, distance, clouded thoughts and perception; nothing of this does any good in a notional encounter with a Thou. So why is it happening?
Because evil. God didn’t make it, he found it, and inadvertently so. Basically he jumbled into it while dancing his socks off. Good and bad are not located on one end of a one-dimensional (yardstick-like) measure; they are two distinct dimensions. One afflicts the other by adding to it with another principle, and that is where we are. The principles are, in full abstraction, are awareness/perception and no-thing-ness [not even some-thing, because no perception/awareness is present]. Analog.
Why is that so? I don’t know; this argument can’t tell.
There’s a very old Persian saying which captures it all very poetically: We are distanced from Him like we’re gazing through a mist. We are Him, and She is us, but we do not fully realize. Again, why is not answered in a coherent manner. We are not just One, but also Many. That’s Mani for you.
Posted by: persiflo | May 27 2025 0:45 utc | 88
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