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The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-230
Last week’s posts on Moon of Alabama:
Ukraine has lost the drone war against energy facilities. Zelenski is throwing the towel:
> “We need stronger defenses, faster execution of all defense agreements, especially regarding air defense, to render this aerial terror meaningless,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram. “A unilateral ceasefire in the skies is possible, and it may open the way to genuine diplomacy. America and Europe must act to force Putin to stop.” <
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Other issues:
Europe:
Russia:
China:
Others:
Use as open (not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine) thread …
30 years ago, when Yeltsin n Clinton were Presidents, I cannot see how anyone could have for seen this prevailing across Europe today. Except Rand corp maybe?
Posted by: dodger | Oct 5 2025 23:05 utc | 101
No, no need for conspiracy theories here.
Let’s dig a little in the official archives. The first post-WW2 plan (the first might actually be attributed to Hitler^^, and before him perhaps to Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi (1894–1972), a figure still honored by the EU today) of a unified European economic and monetary union might be traced back to Pierre Werner. His so-called Werner Report already included fixed exchange rates; it’s the contemporary Ur-blueprint, eventually leading up to the Treaty of Maastricht of 1992, double-vindicated by the 1989 Delors Report which only needed Mitterand and Kohl to get it done. Back then they already conceived the Euro.
Come 2001, the Treaty of Nice, signed to be effective on January 1, 2003. It first actually messed with the founding principles of the not-so-overbearing EU most people would still identify with:
- Weighting of votes in the Minister Council in favor of France of Germany, to the detriment of Malta and Luxembourg
- East expansion, meaning 27 potential commissars, one for each member state — however, reduction of the commissar count, rotation, and thus less national representation
- Member states now could start EU projects on their own, even without everyone in the boat. Think “coalition of the willing”.
Jacques Delors rightfully called this a treaty without soul. French ex pres Valéry Giscard d’Estaing wanted to fix this by means of a Constitution for Europe (always read: EU), in a grand attempt to save the EU from disenfranchising itself from its people: There should be a President, a Union Anthem, a Flag and a Motto. The preamble was full of pathos about one united people sharing a single destiny. While in 2004 25 member states already subscribed to the idea, France and Netherlands asked their people.
- France, May 2005: 55 % “Non”
- Niederlande, June 2005: 61 % “Nee”
A total disaster. Hence, plan B: The treaty of Lissabon of 2007:
- The EU as its own legal entity
- A “High Representative” for Foreign and Security Policy
- A permanent President of the European Council
- …and in essence, a bureaucratic monster with own institutions and agencies
So, to cut a long story short, the EU today is by the largest extent possible a self-serving entity. Germany, as EU sugar daddy from day one, even got to send Ursula von der Leyen (who was facing corruption charges thanks to her in-family dealings while German defense minister) to Brussels as head of the Commission, voiding the great attempts by the media to paint the EU as democratic institution where the people get to elect this post — yes, in 2014 when this election was due, Jean-Claude Juncker won against Martin Schulz and Guy Verhofstadt, but in 2019, Manfred Weber was a televised “candidate” who never got a majority, and von der Leyen never actually ran as candidate.
Now, one may ask, where do these people come from? Just look at Merz, von der Leyen, Macron or Kallas. Very wealthy and/or influential families and/or once-employed by top City of London banks, thus having the right connections. This so-called élite laughs at what Otto, Piet and Francois Normale think and worry. Also, they don’t need 10+ years of real-life (that is: non-public-“service”) working experience. Besides being in the right political party, a core requirement for working in such places of institutionalized corruption is unconditional loyalty to the party line, ideally enhanced by a truckload of kompromat.
Hence, this generation of EU leaders have non of their own visions, no outstanding personality, no charisma, and no ideas — they’re totally replacible. Actually pretty simple.
Posted by: Nervous German | Oct 5 2025 23:55 utc | 110
Philosophy is often more a practice of questioning rather than a science of answers. However, once one begins to question ones questions, there is a need to make at least some assumptions about the ideas which go into them. This kind of methodology is foundational to modern understanding of knowledge; with science being an applied method rather than a collection of answers.
This is one of the reason why applied philosophy has so many facets. I liken it to toolmaking sometimes. You may want jackhammer if you’re digging for opal, but someone’s got to make the jackhammer first so you can use it. Digging a huge hole in the ground somewhere may look ridiculous to a random passerby, but I’m sure if you teleported a neolithic human into a steel smelter they would also say, by golly this looks no good to me – then you hand them a toolset, and they may come around.
The great thing about MoA is that it is a collaborative, with this thread being a prime example. Returning here now after more than half a day off, it feels more like yeast feeding on grape juice to make a good wine, rather than a linear succession of replies. I’ve had some doubts about whether it was a good idea to go so deep into specialist topics and do so such early in a thread, and I will keep trying to tread carefully in the future. But it’s in the nature of these things that they fly over the heads of some for a while, until things start getting to make sense, and eventually new and useful tools emerge in return.I have actually often thought about this process as akin to mining. It is hard and tedious to dig for the gems. Also, as a relative (who was bricklayer for all of his life after returning from Stalingrad in 1955) said, „you need the right tool for the job“. There’s wisdom in there, methinks.
Philosophy is lighthearted and fun when life is pleasant, but it becomes existential when the foundations are ill. This is clearly the case in our times, and it is why I keep digging my hole. The alternative would be to let it all come down, and let humanity start everything over, regardless how long it may take until mankind comes up with the Schrödinger equation again if ever.
Thank you all for the many replies, I cannot possibly answer them all. However I would like to pick up some things that came up in this thread.
First, thanks to NemesisCalling for pointing his finger to this neuralgic spot. Then, thanks to the Marxists who chimed in with a sober and forceful critique of the critical theory school; I fully support this harsh take on it, but wouldn’t have been that explicit about it myself. Next, thanks to malenkov who asked me about my definition of fascism – I have none, and I only recently began using the term actively, for now with reluctance. That said, I think I can now sometimes recognize it when I see it, as I feel is the case here.
I view fascism not so much through a sociology lense, but more as Ideologiekritik – it’s profoundly ironic that this in an important term for the Frankfurters, by the way. It is akin to people ganging up against others without questioning the ethical dimension of their conduct. Why would one do such a thing? The intruiging and disturbing answer is that some people seem actually interested in control of others as an end unto itself. Take Heidegger for instance: he had the opportunity to be spectacularly right about „things“ and apparently(?) chose something else … Hanna Arendt characterized him once as a pathological liar, and for the keen observer this casts an immediate doubt on his personal motives. One now expects that he is prone to falling for perverse machinations and aims; and it is for this reason that his anxiety is important for the analysis of the man’s legacy. I call him a fascist because he ganged up with the Nazis against Husserl, after first dedicating Sein und Zeit to him, and then leading away his flock of students in Freiburg like a pied piper in what certainly was a conscious act.
I’m not yet fully sure if Heidegger himself believed he was actually right about „things“. In any case, he acted on his own, unlike the Frankfurters. I would not be surprised if they are the front end of a longstanding plan by the usual suspects to overthrow old orders – almost as if their institute was already founded before Hitler took power in 1933. There is rumour out there, as well as information, but I can’t corroborate; perhaps we can dig this up in the future.Therefore, the attack by Habermas on the phenomenologists is possibly a political move to begin with, whether fully conscious or not. It was the whole point of my post to seperate this onslaught from a proper understanding of the term Lebenswelt; which seems to have mostly worked out thanks to the sharp minds of MoA.
The last word be given to VVP, as quoted by juliania, with his remark – I’m paraphrasing – that a people who remember their own Lebenswelt do not have much need for radically new things. That’s quite the diagnosis of many current events, and it contains many an answer as well.
Off to bed now, good night/day everyone![Nemesis, I see your 128 only now – will read later]
Posted by: persiflo | Oct 6 2025 4:32 utc | 140
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